[Forte]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zkool448 /img/forum/go_quote.gif My current project the SOHA II is about to get cased up... To those perplexed or stumped with casework to house your DIY creations, don't count out wood. Compare to the popular (and pricey) Hammonds cases, wood are much cheaper, accessible, and easily 'shapeable' to any custom size and shape your heart desire This one is ready to receive a deep red cherry stain then will be sealed in clear lacquer (thanks smeggy!).

Looks great, can't wait to see it stained up.

Just how did you shape the top and make the recess for the Vol knob?

 

[oneplustwo]

Nice! Do you make the cuts for the sides with a miter saw and then just wood glue them together? Also, is the profiling with the top done with just a router?

Quote:

Originally Posted by zkool448 /img/forum/go_quote.gif My current project the SOHA II is about to get cased up... To those perplexed or stumped with casework to house your DIY creations, don't count out wood. Compare to the popular (and pricey) Hammonds cases, wood are much cheaper, accessible, and easily 'shapeable' to any custom size and shape your heart desire This one is ready to receive a deep red cherry stain then will be sealed in clear lacquer (thanks smeggy!).

 

[zkool448]

Thanks guys. The case was mitered cut on the table saw. I'd use a miter saw but I much prefer the table saw because it cuts cleaner and more accurately.

All recessed holes were cut with forstner bits, and lastly the top/bottom mdf 'lids' were machined on the router table -- the tube holes still need to be cut.

 

[MisterX]

Quote:

the tube holes still need to be cut.

Pfew... you had me wondering about that for a second there.

Edit: what's the metal piece on the bottom?
(kinda looks like the bottom off an old cdrom drive)

 

[zkool448]

The tube holes will be oversized a little bit for added ventilation. More holes will be added also for the bottom lid to help vent air through the case.

I am using a couple of socket savers to make the tubes stick out taller (thanks to adamus for the tip). The savers add an additional 20mm or 0.80" to the height of the tubes if you want them to stick out like I do. This is a very good alternative to air-wiring the sockets to the top lid.

EDIT: Yes! that's exactly what the metal ground plate is from

 

[dude_500]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chews89 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hey dude_500, I'm considering building one of those nixie clocks. Does it require a lot of DIY experience to be able to build one of those? Is the soldering tricky? Or anything in particular that I should watch out for? I'm thinking about getting a full kit off ebay. I currently only have experience with a cmoy and a mini^3. Thanks

If you get a kit it wouldn't be hard at all, there's no surface mounting in most sets. I did everything myself which is a bit more difficult since you have to work out bugs as you're going. I ended up putting in a few unplanned logic gates to get the base-12 handler working. If you don't know much about digital logic it would be a good idea to at least look up schematics and then it shouldn't be bad.

I spent about $200 on mine, $80 for the tubes (I didn't want to wait for Russian tubes to arrive so I ordered IN-14's locally for 10x the price) and the rest from mouser and some extra PCB's. It could be done a lot cheaper. Also my powersupply is somewhat overkill using a full c-filter isolation transformer for the 180V supply where an inductive resonance system would work fine.

 

[oneplustwo]

i just bought a kit from tubeclock.com. I got the 4-tube version with the pre-milled Hammond case for $99.

Nixie Clock Kits

Not as cool as dude_500's but probably safer with the kiddies running around.

 

[fishski13]

zkool,
love the top-plate. i hope to have a table for my router in the next copule of weeks. i bought a chamforing and biscuit bit set yesterday in anticipation for the new table.

 

[smeggy]

Cool, I have a small router table that I still need to learn. Luckily over the years I've amassed a bunch of stuff like table and mitre saws, drill presses, routers and dremmelly type things along with the lathe.

I still haven't had time to get familliar with them all. I'd love to get good with the router but for some reason it still eludes me as I'd love to do some nice routed enclosures and routed cups. Especially oval cups, I'd love to do that. One day perhaps....

Nice work as always zk

 

[krmathis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zkool448 /img/forum/go_quote.gif My current project the SOHA II is about to get cased up... To those perplexed or stumped with casework to house your DIY creations, don't count out wood. Compare to the popular (and pricey) Hammonds cases, wood are much cheaper, accessible, and easily 'shapeable' to any custom size and shape your heart desire

That wooden is simply stunning! Great work!

 

[tubesmuggler]

Here's my first start to finish DIY "design". Not even burned in yet, but no problems at first start up and the sound is very nice. It's a SE 6G6 output tube with a CCS loaded 6SN7 input/preamp tube.

Using killer AmpOhm Polyester (Mylar) in Oil/ Aluminium Foil coupling caps (a poor mans alternative to the AudioNote Tin/Mylar caps), JJ and Solen PS caps, and JAN-Sylvania 6SN7WGTA Chrome top, RCA 6G6-G power tubes, Tungsol 6AX5GT rectifier tube. The output transformers are custom Edcor GXSE's.

It's not *dead* quiet, but it's very quiet, just a little hiss you'll hear if you're in a quiet room. Certainly nothing I will be trying to eliminate because it's just so subtle.

All I need now is a knob for the volume pot!!

 

[adamus]

looks great mate, i love seeing amps like this. got a schematic? how are the output biased?

 

[tubesmuggler]

The 6G6 output tubes are cathode biased. I used carbon-film resistors, bypassed with Nichicon Muse KZ caps. Each 6SN7 triode has a CCS load and is biased by a red LED.

I don't have a schematic yet because I don't have software to produce one. I suppose I could draw it up.

 

[ephrank]

awesome mogwai album!

 

[linuxworks]

another ugly-build, demo'ing my spdif input selector switch:

this shows the ugly side to prototyping and testing out circuit ideas

see that nasty socket hack to the right? it started off being a 74hcu04 driver chip to import coax spdif. that didn't work for me, so I reverted to an older design (differential receiver chip) and that worked! rather than unsolder the socket, I 'adapted' the top socket module so that its pin compatible (lol) with the 'interface' below.

it saved me having to rip up that bottom socket. that's a win

this is showing a coax-out coming from half a gamma1 (the usb-spdif part), out thru the yellow video cable (sssh, its really an spdif cable) and into my switch. I temporarily set the input to the switch via that center white molex connector with the yellow/green wires going under (they are tied to +5 and ground to create a '10' in binary for this input #). then finally, opto-out is routed from the single output toslink block to the input of another gamma1 dac, this time its a full gamma1 build and it takes opto-in and gives good sounding music out the other end

at least at this point, bits are flying and the sound seems ok to me. I'll do more testing of course, but I'm thinking this may be a really cheap poor-man's spdif input front-end to a dac, to add MANY more inputs to any old dac via this circuit.