Do It Yourself

So I have done a couple of soldering projects and both of them have not turned out so great. Just wondering if there is a good online guide or some place I can look to get some decent tips. I know a lot of it just has to do with practice, but I feel as though I am missing out on a lot of the subtle little things that will make soldering in general a lot easier on me. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I was looking around for something to bling my tubes around the base on the casework and found a nice and cheap way to do it for those little amps like the Starving student and CTH, EHHA and others with wee tubes. Looking around in Lowes hardware stores I found these solid brass Brainerd door viewers: If you unscrew the ends you end up with a pair of brass surrounds. One end fits the CTH and Ehha size tubes and the other fits the Starving student tubes so you'll need to buy two viewers to get a matching pair @ $7 or so each. When added to the case, you get this nice bling surround. They are pretty deep as you can see so you may need to trim them down depe…

I have a powered USB hub that I'd like to get up and running. However I don't have the wallwart for it. The input is marked DC 7.5V 2.1A. If I can't located the original wall wart, what rating range would be acceptable to use with this thing? Or does it have to be specifically 7.5V 2.1A?

Hi forum, I've recently purchased a set of Sennheiser headphone with no microphone. As my intended use was for the pc, i've purchased a few cheap headphones with mic to try and mod a mic onto my headphone. Unfortunately everything was going great until I reached a point where i had to dismantle this metal part from the line of the microphone, which resulted in me cutting into the cord by accident, so now I've just decided to strip the cord completely trying to figure out how i can connect / solder it back together. (Will have to buy the soldering equipment) Below I've attached an imagine of it all, this microphone was originally attached to the turtle beach XC1 xbox he…

What is the best way to break one? Thanks, Biggie.

Hey everyone, To make a long story short, some damage occurred to a b22 that I sold internationally during shipping. I know absolutely nothing about fixing it up, but from the pics he sent me I'm guessing it should be a relatively easy fix. Is there anyone with experience with b22s(it's a 2channel board) in the area of quincy MA (or anyone in general) who would be able to help him fix it (either in person or by talking him through it?). I would be grateful for the help, as the situation is starting to turn sour. Thanks for reading.

I have some of these Chinese "CMC" type RCA Jacks. They have a knurled ring that has indents for some type of PIN wrench. What do you guys have for these to keep them from getting scratched up via pliers? PIC

Not audio related but damn it's cool: Video: MakerBot's build-it-yourself 3D printer in action, replicator in the works -- Engadget CupCake CNC - MakerBot Industries If I had somewhere I could put it I'd be all over it. That is flat out frigging cool. Custom heaphone stands, knobs, wtf else. So cool

Hey, I'm having a slot milled that will accept a piece of aluminum bar that is nominally 0.5" wide. How wide should I have the slot milled in order to ensure that the bar can be easily removed? I'm not sure what the tolerances are on aluminum bar and not really sure what extra width to account for that doesn't require a hammer to (re)move the piece.

So I am planning on ordering a bunch of the BC546 and BC556 for the Unbalanced\Balanced board and I'll need to measure, sort, label and store them. 1. can I store them in a regular plastic parts bin with dividers? 2. can I stick labels on the pins and fold the labels closed?

A friend and I are both building Pearl IIs. A sizable portion of the cost is capacitors. I don't have enough experience to have a well developed gut feeling for value or any favorite brands. There are basically three flavors we have to chose: big-ish electrolytics that smooth power, caps in the RIAA network that are between the signal and ground and two coupling caps, smack dab in the signal path -one is two paralleled film caps of small-ish value and right at the output we have what is specified to be a 22uF electrolytic, bypassed with a film cap. There's an armload of these things, so just buying the fanciest boutique brands all the way through doesn't seem like …

Has anyone here built one? I have an RCA caddy, it's about the size of a maxed-out carry-on bag. Similar to this one: The thing is huge, and while it's interesting in an ephemeral way, it weighs about 40 pounds (full), and is of course pretty musty. Big arse mofo. Right now I keep my active, or popular- tubes in three file cabinet drawers. The caddy is filled with odd and end tubes that I may or may not ever have use for, but don't wish to toss. Then I have another cardboard carton with other, stranger tubes, such as duodecar and some extra compactrons. Deal is that it would make more sense to keep the non-active stuff in the file cabinet, and the stuff I …

Can anyone recommend a reliable PCB manufacturer in China?

For those that have not been following Tangent's thread on Headwize. http://headwize.com/ubb/showpage.php?fnum=3&tid=5806 No more board chopping in half, and apparently bye bye to the TLE rail splitter (yay). Now where can I order some SMD 0.1% thin film resistors?....... -Ed

I will be ordering some front a back panels for a gamma 2, if anyone wants a pair, let me know, I can order and if we get to 5 there's 10% from FPE. The panels are for no digital outputs on the front panel, neither to have a mini out on the front panel for the y1 output. I can also share the FPE files for double checking or if you wish to order them yourself(if you're in the US, it might be cheaper) Here's a picture: ps: mods, if there is any problem with this, please remove it and let me know

Not sure if this is the place, but I need knowleadgable people abou the subject so here we go: I study design and I'm thinking about building a hybrid headphone/computer speaker, and was thinking about the difficulties of this. I'm uncertain if it's at all possible, because I'd have to meet the sensitivity and dB output of both a regular speaker and a headphone speaker. And I can't actually design one (I'll only design the prototype around it), so I'd have to use something that's already out there. Sound quality is not really a concern, it just needs to be acceptable. One thing I considered was to have a regular driver (sort of those used in laptops) with some kin…

Well as a natural progression in this hobby, I find myself with more gear than power cords. In the past I have built power cords with 12 GA wire from Ram Electronics and VH Audio but the ones I have built are too damn stiff. All of my gear sits fairly close to the wall so I need a flexible medium weight cable for my power cord builds. I looked at the bulk cable offered at Take Five and Sonic Craft but they are a little on the expensive side and too heavy to stay properly seated in the IEC. Any recommendations for bulk cable would be appreciated.

Could someone point me to a schematic for re-termination of a Jade with a Stax Pro plug? Thanks, Jim

Looking to buy one of these: Hakko 936-12 ESD or Weller WES51 Any comments on pros/cons for each model? Has anyone got experience with both? Thanks Pete

Yet Another XLR Question... Building my first balanced amp, some connection questions: What do you do with the shield? Reading the RANE app notes seems not appropriate for parts of this, since I am using 4-pin XLR, and the 3-pin standard has pin 1 as ground. I am reworking the previous 4-conductore rewiring my phones right now, and chopped the previously wired 1/4" plug cable part way to wire in a 4-pin female/4-pin male (the male will be the main phone connector into a 4-pin female on the amp), turning this cable portion into an adapter for when I want to use the phones from an SE amp. The main cable terminates at the phones in a 4-pin mini XLR, in which the …

Hello, new to Head-case, but an experienced elec tech. After demoing a friend's, I'd like to build a balanced Dynahi, but am having troubles tracking down documentation and boards. Can anyone steer me in the right direction? Thanks!

Hi everyone, I really admire Dr. Gilmore's work, and ready to build the Krell Klone. I'm preparing for nearly a month. But my son (who is studying Shakespeare in the college), after Googling, told me, we can't just "see" the PCB and make a clone of it. (Cos the PCB has many layers, ususlly 2-4, diffrent layers has totally circuit, those copper layers are very well designed. And then he doubts Mr. Gilmore's Klone PCB image-files was drawn up on the computer after "eyeseeing".) In order to make a clone, we must destroy the PCB completely. He again told me: we have to remove all the components first and drop the PCB in a machine (can't remeber its name) and boil off the…

This is for use on my balanced beta22, the zobel networks described at amb`s beta22 site are: 22Ω 2W 5% metal oxide power resistor and 0.047

Anyone have a minijack (3.5mm stereo, panel mountable) that they like? I am having problems with a flaky Switchcraft 35RAP whatever they are, and need to replace. I have some Kobicon that I have used with no problems so far, but looking for any other suggestions.

Well, I'm looking at finalizing a project board that is currently 6.17" x 7.3". The 6.17" needs to be the width of the case, and the 7.3" needs to be the depth. I've looked at a few vendors, as I'm trying to find a width that will accommodate a few of the Hammond 1455 type cases. The Hammond unfortunately is too shallow. I looked at Context Engineering and notice they have one that supports a 6" card width, that might be able to work, with a 8.5" standard depth. I poked around a bit at Teko as well. Anyways, I know a few of you have gone through this and was wondering if you might have a few suggestions? The main deal is I need to finalize the size of the board…