Forum rules
The DIY forum is for personal projects (things that are not for sale, not in production), info sharing, peer to peer assistance. No backdoor spamming (DIY posts that are actually advertisements for your business). No clones of in-production pedals. If you have concerns or questions, feel free to PM admin. Thanks so much!
I started building a Vibrochamp when I was still in college, bought a reproduction chassis off eBay, from the same guy who builds the lovetone clone boxes, and built the board myself, sourced most of the components from Doug Hoffman (which I highly recommend for amp and "mojo" pedal components should that sort of thing interest you. Anyway, I never wanted the 8" speaker, I wanted a 12".. a nice guy from California under the moniker of Rawcabs makes just about everything, so I ordered a pine 12" enclosure for the vibrochamp head. It's beautiful and I also got red wine tolex and period authentic fender grill cloth. I have the Silverface era handle and bottom corner caps not pictured. I'm going paint the whole thing black and then cover with the wine tolex. I've watched about 20 videos on it so far .. seems like 30% technique and 70% artform..
I was wondering if anyone has any experience with amp face plates ? I don't want a fender reproduction, but something classy and probably shiny aluminum ..
Attachments
20180407_090540_crop_540x367.jpg (147.23 KiB) Viewed 5044 times
Yeah man I won't say it was cheap..
Transformers: $130
Chassis: $45
Cab: $180
Speaker: $60
Grill cloth: $20
Tolex: $24
Electronic bits: $50
Handle: $12
Chassis straps:$10
Tubes:$40 (it'll run 6L6 or 6V6, and has a toggle for diode/5Y3 rectification)
And probably some other costs along the way. I just like building
Boxed my stripboard Corruptor, put in the straight square wave toggle since the Fuzz is kind of brutal. Fredrik helped me with a volume trimmer, the Fuzz only mode was way louder than ring mod..
Yeah the enclosure is hideous, but pink sparkles.
Attachments
20180412_174931_crop_270x431.jpg (123.16 KiB) Viewed 4975 times
I put a pink led in it. It sounds dope as hell of course.
Finished my Arcadiator and into the unknown too. Lots of Freppo circuits this week.
The knobs man, I just set the zero position (all the way down) to be vertical, and then draw a pointer. So as you turn it up the pointer points at a higher number they only go up to like 8.5.. but that's cool
I have some of those knobs too. I installed them to where the 0 is at 12 o'clock when the dial is full CCW. Honestly, I hadn't noticed that they cannot reach full on until you two mentioned it. Now that I do know, it will only act as a reminder that we can never reach reach our theoretical maximum of potential and I'll Zen on whilst others suffer.
I really like lovemyswitches as a supplier, but for production stuff I find *any* bottom dollar knob somewhat lacking in quality. I used a bunch in my 90s serial range after Mouser more than doubled the price on my preferred knob, but have gone back to using the Eagle Plastics knobs for quality reasons. For random shit I build for myself, LMS knobs are good enough because of their outstanding service.
Yeah for sure man, I'm not happy with most knobs these days. The 1900 clones from Tayda are about the best imo, and smallbear has the cool synth pointer knobs as seen a page back on my wolf computer builds. I've looked on Mouser at knobs, but that's a nightmare if you don't know exactly what you're looking for.
The fit & finish of Davies & Eagle are super nice. Being able to turn the set screw and not have the pressed thread end ridge catch and shift the pot shaft position while tightening is dreamy, the the knob slides right on.
They cost more, but ultimately that is what the user feels while in direct interaction with your build. Mouser's filter function works pretty well if you feed it right.
There are tons of cool knobs in the cut throat realm of surplus too, and hopefully more craftspeople will start popping their own custom jobbers through etsy and shit (for yeah, escalating cost, but... KNOBS)