The bijou, building a case!

Might want to post this in DIY, or request it be moved.

Pabbi is right, you are more likely to get a better response in the DIY forum. The technique has been described by several people, along with images. The idea is an acrylic interface which is lit on 4 sides by leds - usually square with the circle cut into it for the volume knob. Noise is not really an issue as this leds are lit from a dc source other than the power rails..dB

I can tell you how I did mine, pictured here: 

Basically I had a circular region hollowed out from the front panel with a depth of .1 inches. I then had a circular piece of plexiglass made with a thickness of 2 mm, so it is very slightly recessed from the surface of the front panel. There are four holes in the aluminum underneath the plexiglass circle where the leds go. When I got the plexiglass I sanded it with fine grit sandpaper so that the light would be more diffuse. Both the front panel and plexiglass had a small hole in the center for the pot shaft to go through. The holes for the leds were inside the diameter of the volume knob so you really cant see the point source of light coming from the led, rather it is a diffuse glow. This is the volume knob I used: http://cgi.ebay.com/GOLDPOINT-1-4-ALUMINUM-KNOB_W0QQitemZ150511351780QQihZ005QQcategoryZ12050QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

The leds are not being run using any kind of pwm for dimming so there is no electrical noise. Even if I was dimming them using pwm, which I might do in the future, I doubt it would get into the audio chain. Hope this is helpful, if you are interested pm me your email address and I will send you the front panel express files for the front panel and the plexiglass circle.

My COMPACT BIJOU

^^^ That is really sweet.  Does it get very hot?  With all the holes in the case I imagine it stays relatively cool.

The outside gets warm, but not hot.

I have drilled some holes in the bottom of the case around the power transformer, too, to allow some air to cool it.

I am going to re-do the base, this one has a hard-wired AC line cord, I want to use an IEC AC inlet module instead, so I am going to re-do the base, buy a new base and do it over.  I will put even more ventilation in the new one, for the transformer.  The transformer gets really hot, with it sitting in the "tub" of the chassis it needs more air I think.  The other boards are fine.  It's a Hammond case, the bottom part is like $15

It's kind of hard to mount that transformer, really tight in there.  I don't think you could squeeze a Bijou into any smaller a space, LOL.