Yikes:

Wiring the tubes today was probably one of the worst things to do with cloth wire.   Boy, what a mistake.

I went to home depot to get some #8 gauge wire for ground bussing.  I’m going to cut the buss way down near the PT so I can ground the higher stuff like the B+ filter there, and preamp/input jacks on the right side closest to this photo:

The grounding scheme i would go after:

I will go after the grounding scheme once I get all of my parts later in the week [but i wont’ have my brother’s camera with me for this :( ].

Put in the tube sockets.

Like the knobs, I had to ream all of the holes on the chassis to be able to fit the choke bolts through.

I began my wiring:

For the filaments, I had to tape up one of the terminals because it was almost about to touch the chassis.  Better safe than sorry:

The hardest part: Negotiating the direction of those stiff green cloth wire:

The AC jacks.  I grounded both to the chassis.:

The speaker jack.   I used the green 4 ohm as this amp is specifically for the 2x12 configuration.

Hopefully more going on today.

Not much to explain since the last post, but I will post some more images of me wrapping up the circuit:

Towards the end of the board...:

A little messy soldering :(  :

Still missing the 0.1uF:

By the way, great companion to the soldering station:

I had problems with the knobs not fitting onto the potentiometers, so I used a 1/4 drill bit and just twisted by hand:

Worked on a circuit that sits under the chassis.  By the way, the alligator clips are used as a heatsink:

Soldering wires that will go to the tubes:

Be back next time, hopefully with my capacitors!

I went and double checked some more things with the list from yesterday, and I discovered that i actually wasn’t missing an 820 ohm resistor.  Instead, I was missing 2 more capacitors and 2 volume pots along with the slide switches.  I did go out and buy two slide switches, but I forgot to get the screws :( .  Pewp. However, I’ve started to populate the chassis.

Just for those asking, I took these pictures with a Canon EOS 40D with a 16-35mm lens and a macro adapter for most of them. Combination of ISO400 and ISO800.

Before I started, I made sure to sort out my devices. I grouped them into different Ziploc bags along with labels and tags so I wouldn’t have to fumble around with the color codes.

One thing to note is that it’s pretty difficult to see the color differences at times. So, I find it very important to have a lamp nearby to make sure I could see the colors on the resistors.  Fortunately, I had enough sunlight in the living room along with this Canon EOS 40D to grab some macro shots.  Browns and Reds can screw you up sometimes.  Even the violets, too!

Also double checking the pots and their labels to make sure I have everything (but I obviously don’t have the 1M volume pots):

Firing up the soldering iron:

My first order of business was to start mounting the potentiometers and input jacks.  The best thing to do was to mount them all on the brass plate first, then solder some simple things.  I had a tough time with the normal input jacks, but I did fine with the vibrato input jacks.  Here are a few pictures

I ran into a bit of trouble with the speed pot, as it was becoming non-wetted (I believe that’s the term):

Instead, i soldered it onto the brass plate just to be sure that the resistor doesn’t pop off from vibration.

Also,  make sure you don’t have the intensity pot’s switch lug touch the chassis :).  Just turn them:

What I decided to do with the bias pot was to put it in place of where the unused ground switch was.  I wanted to adjust the bias while the chassis is inside the cabinet instead of having to separate them to do that, so here we go:

At this point, I still have to wait for the volume potentiometer, as well as opening up the knobs so that they fit on all of the pots.

I began working on half of the circuit board:

I was skeptical about the .001uF capacitor (the long yellow one denoted as 102K in the second picture) fitting into the eyelets to the left as many other designs I’ve seen have shorter capacitors, but this was indeed the right one that Weber shipped, so I just had to bend both leads back to fit:

Also, don’t forget that the polarized capacitors has the positive lead on the dimpled size (or if you look at arrows, current goes from positive to negative)!

This is how far I’ve gotten for tonight:

I’ll be back on this tomorrow.  Sleepy timeeee.