None of those new fangled PCB's here...

Assembly of the turret board...

Once again, to keep the amp as compact as possible, I have re-organised the turret board layout. The original layout as per the AX84 website had the board measuring in at 12"x3". My board is just over 10"x2.5

Here I have all the components "dry" fitted to make sure there will be no clearance issues. There wasn't as I spent quite some time measuring up each component, turrent pin and mounting screws.I then drew up template "stencils" in microsoft visio which I used to design the layout.

As I posted earlier, the only real clearance issue is....








...I mounted the turret board a little too close to the front panel, leaving minimal clearance for the switches, in particular, the standby switch. This photo is probably a bad angle... it looks as if the switch lugs are touching the board. They have about 1/8" clearance. I'll just have to be careful with the wire routing.

Time to break out the old weller!!

The Speaker.

Upon advice from Ev, a colleague who has built many a valve amp, I purchased a 10" Jensen from Evatco rather than the planned 8".

Chassis is built.

I took a drive down to Rosewood on Thursday to visit Evatco to pick up the last few bits and pieces. It was well worth the hour and a half drive out past Ipswich. Met Mal and Carole, the owners and got to see what they have in stock. Had a look at some of the equipment used to match valves and was surprised to hear that Mal gets up at 4am to st start matching valves out in the shed! Highly reccomend Evatco. Very fast service, very helpful and pleasant to deal with!



Been a quiet week at work so I knocked up a chassis for the amp. I used 50 thou aluminium which looks to be strong enough.... probably should have used a thicker gauge.


I have attempted to make the chassis as compact as I can hence the knobs being close together. I can't see this being a huge issue. I can always use smaller knobs if need be.






I really should have set the turret board a bit further back from the front panel to allow more clearance for the standby switch which is huge!

It all just fits anyway.

Next up will be assembly of the turret board. Stay tuned!

Turret board time

Here is my nice 310mm x 80mm 1/8" thick sheet of phenolic board. I did a rough "mock up" of the turrent board, (have yet to buy pins), to see how it all fitted. Looks like I can resize it to about 60mm x 280mm. The pins are "swaged" in using a little tool. Will post some photos of this later.















You mite notice that a lot of the resistors are carbon types. I ordered a heap of 1watt and 1/2watt metal film resistors from Mouser but I am a bit dubious as to wheather they really are 1w and 1/2w. The 1w resistors are smaller than many 1/2w metal films I have seen and the 1/2w ones? They may as well be surface mount! I ended up just getting some 1w carbon jobs from Jaycar.



A trip to Evatco in Rosewood, Brisbane is next on the agenda!

Now this is how to buy your parts!

My shipment arrived today! After taking just 18 hours to get from Memphis in USA to Sydney Australia, It sat in Sydney for nearly 47 hours doing nothing there! It then took 42 hours from Sydney to Brisbane? Very strange!

Woohoo! Time to get stuck in!

Parts ordered!

I have ordered most of the parts I require through Mouser today! I ordered a lot of extra components for future use while I was at it. The only things I couldn't get through Mouser, were the speaker, valve bases, potentiometers and knobs and cabinet hardware. Total cost of those items will come to around $150.

Valve bases, speaker, potentiometers and cabinet hardware will be purchased through a Brisbane based supplier, that I have found!

www.evatco.com.au









I will be constructing the amp as a head unit with a separate speaker box.

I plan on using a Jensen C8R Vintage Ceramic 8" driver. I've yet to decide on grille cloth or covering for the cabinets! Little bit early yet!

It starts with some NOS valves...

Well, I have finally decided to build a nice little valve guitar practice amp! I decided on a circuit to use several months ago.

Over Christmas, I was visiting my parents and my father, upon discussing my planned amp, gave me a few NOS (new old stock) valves!

12AX7 (ECC83) x2 and an EL84 (6BQ5)

These NOS valves have motivated me to actually build the damn thing! I will purchase most of the components required through an online supplier based in Hong Kong.

Click here for Mouser Electronics

The amp I am building is based on the AX84 P1 project Click here to see the website.

That's all for now! Update soon!