Stage 3
Construction
I first laid out my parts on the chassis to get a sense of what goes where. This helps me to decide whether functionality or style is more important. Good looks won out and so I am putting the trannies and choke at the rear, with all tubes up front, the power supply in the middle, and the volume pot dead center in the front. I am still thinking about where to put the RCA inputs. I've looked at other designs and a lot of folks seem to put the inputs on top near the first tube, probably so that the signal wire is as short as possible. Unfortunately for me, my custom made Kimber KCAG interconnects are only two feet long to keep costs low. Hmmm... what to do?
I marked all the drill holes with a marker. Missing are the marks for the capacitors on top; hidden from view are the marks for the binding posts in the rear; and on the sides I'll mount terminal blocks for the wires from the output taps of the OPTs.
After drilling and punching, I painted the box gold with Krylon spray paint. It looked nice, but while I was mounting the parts, the paint chipped and peeled off easily. Needless to say I was pissed off. I refused to unscrew all my parts just to repaint so the final product will look somewhat shabby upon close inspection. Note the center holes for the ASC PP-oil capacitors. I thought about drilling a 1-3/4-inch hole but my accuracy with a hand drill is quite poor, and I was not going to purchase a drill press just for this project.
Here's the underside of the chassis with most of the parts mounted. There's a lot of wires in the back under each tranny... I'm not sure if I will be able to mount the power supply caps back there...