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If you're stuck at home, what are you building?

March 18th, 2020, 12:01 pm

So, like many of us, I'm stuck at home a good bit of the time right now... So, what's everyone working on with all they extra time? I'm working on rebuilding a pair of outboard playback electronics for reel to reel playback.

Anyone else?

Roscoe

Re: If you're stuck at home, what are you building?

March 18th, 2020, 12:08 pm

I have all of my amp building stuff in storage but I am considering opening a couple of boxes, just for something to do. I have an old Baldwin organ amp that I might play with. I was planning to donate it at the next north of DC meet.

ray

Re: If you're stuck at home, what are you building?

March 18th, 2020, 12:30 pm

I have a Mark Levinson head-amp I've been meaning to restore and upgrade for sale.

Then following that I figure I might as well upgrade my Spectral DMC-10 pre-amp for sale.

Plus -- I have other stuff to sell that I have been too lazy to deal with. The time is ripe and money is tight.

Altec drivers, tubes, Radio Craftsman amps., hi-end interconnects, and parts that may have value to post.

Re: If you're stuck at home, what are you building?

March 18th, 2020, 1:31 pm

I'm trying to buckle down and finally finish my phono preamp that I started years ago.. I've been running up my PayPal account getting power supply parts and other stuff I've misplaced or forgot to get before. :lol:
I wanted to see how many tubes I could use so I'm up to 13! Only three in the signal path: two triodes gain stages and a cathode follower to drive the cable. The gains stages are single triodes, the follower is a dual triode, 6 voltage regulator tubes and two damper diodes. Lots of CCSs in the mix as well.

Re: If you're stuck at home, what are you building?

March 18th, 2020, 2:14 pm

Since hopefully we will be moving into the new house in June, I'm spending most of my time preparing the current house. Lots of packing, repairing and cleaning.

Re: If you're stuck at home, what are you building?

March 18th, 2020, 2:23 pm

My wife will start working from home tomorrow so I will hide in the basement working on my Janis W-1's to get ready to sell.
I have been wondering what is going to happen with the looming recession. What going to happen to superfluous industries like home audio

Re: If you're stuck at home, what are you building?

March 18th, 2020, 2:47 pm

Like every other recession it depends on how soon things get under control which will be a combination of medical and psychological factors. How long it will take to recover is anyone's guess but things will come back. Along the way marginal companies will go away but new companies will spring up to create new opportunities. If the black death which killed an estimated 30 to 60% of the population did not wipe us out, I'm sure we will get through this with admitted hardships. If you are one of those that don't survive it sucks for you but that is true of any disease or accident.

Re: If you're stuck at home, what are you building?

March 18th, 2020, 3:23 pm

i guess that was optimistic

Re: If you're stuck at home, what are you building?

March 19th, 2020, 9:18 am

I'm restoring/updating a pair of Heathkit W4's I bought a while back and replacing the original Chicago OPTs with a pair of Acro TO-300's, a far nicer OPT. So now they'll be sort of hybrid W4/W3A-M's. Then I want to get my "Musician's Amplifiers" off the breadboard and into a final build with the Peerless S-265-Q's.

I also restored/updated an old homebrew 807 Williamson a guy on Audiokarma found. Man, it was a mess, A monumentally amateurish build (yes, those are bare twisted plate leads running right under the ground buss) and would hardly have been worth the effort except that it had a Partridge WWVB output transformer that was worth salvaging. We tried to figure it out long-distance but the guy was understandably a bit daunted and finally just sent me the signal chassis. Pics below. I was also interested to measure the WWVB and see what it looked like on a scope. What a disappointment. Couldn't get a decent 10K square wave out of it. I did my best but getting it stabilized was a bit beyond my skills. I tacked in a Peerless to make sure it wasn't the build, but the Peerless looked perfect. But it's up and running and sounds nice enough.
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Last edited by Grover Gardner on March 19th, 2020, 9:26 am, edited 2 times in total.

Re: If you're stuck at home, what are you building?

March 19th, 2020, 9:20 am

Here are the after pics. That's a temporary umbilical for the Heathkit W2 power supply I used to work on it.
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