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.