I finally got around to finding a free hosting service, so here are a few pics of my first amp. Unfortunately, I was rushing to finish it, so I don't have any pictures of the board by itself.
(click on the thumbnails for a larger picture)
Top view of the Penguin tin
View of the sides
Here's the inside
A closeup of the board
The other side
As I mentioned, I rushed the final stages of the build, because I wanted to finish it in time to give to a friend as a gift. She likes penguins, thus the choice of tin
Unfortunately, rushing anything means things usually don't go quite as planned. For instance, I only had the large thickness cutting wheel for my Dremel, so the board wasn't cut as cleanly as it could have been. Actually, it looked pretty ugly, and I did cut slightly into one of the traces
I also didn't have time to replace the switch wires with longer ones, so I simply routed them over the board. However, since I cut so much of the board away with the Dremel, I was still able to close the lid
The most interesting mistake was that I used the wrong resistor for the RLED; I didn't notice it until I had already cut the board and soldered it together. The blue LED is so bright, when the amp is turned on, you can use it as a flashlight
If it bothers my friend enough, I figure her husband can take it apart and replace the resistor.
Overall, I had the most problems with the casework, since I really don't have a proper setup (vise, drill press, etc) to do a precise job. The soldering part (even the SMD stuff) was fairly straight-forward. I really with I had taken pictures of the board, because I'm actually quite proud of the soldering job. I even positioned the resistors with the values facing up in the same direction
Most importantly, it sounds great
Anyway, next up is a Mint for myself, to replace my Go-Vibe (I need a higher gain for use in my car). Then, I plan to build a couple more to try out different op-amps and other options. I'll probably end up giving those away to family as gifts.
After that, I'll play around with a PIMETA or two (or more?), before I tackle the Dynahi
