So I'm scratch building a 5F1 Champ... stay tuned

[zbones]

Yup, here's another 5F1 build from scratch. I got a board off a guy on ebay, bought the hammond chassis locally and sourced the parts i needed. Figured i might as well post my process and share the experience with all you interwebs peeps that are always helping me learn this stuff anyway! So here goes.

I first needed to cutout/drill the chassis. Here's how that went last night.

I rounded up the suspects!


Because of the protective film on the chassis is plastic, it's quite hard to mark on and not smudge the marking after... so i used the always handy masking tape.


I think the placements of parts is pretty good. because i've had issues with a previous custom carved chassis and parts placement, i followed the tried tested and true layout as close as i could to prevent issues.

[zbones]

chassis cutouts/drills complete

I used a dremel to cut out the power transformer cutout. this worked best cutting it wet, so i kept a bit of water on the cutting disc to make it easier. it wasn't my best cut, but the PT fits well and the mounting holes match up perfectly. rather messy cut tho, id have to rig up some kinda jig next time as i'd really prefer to have it much neater.


once i got the protective film off, it looked much more promising! i'm also adding a power switch instead of using one on the back of the vol. pot, for no other reason than i just like the noise it makes flipping the switch. cooooool.

[zbones]

i mounted the 290ax hammond pt, and the 5watt ot from triode, along with the power switch, fuse, light and tube sockets

[zbones]

got as far as wiring up the rec tube. twisted the crap outta those leads lol.


ive decided to add a terminal strip for all the pt grounds, i didn't have a grounding lug on hand so i wired all 5 terminals together (not visible in the pic)

[zbones]

On to the BOARD!

so, after a bunch of reading up on grounding (and after experiencing grounding issues on a aa764 build previously!) i decided to try grounding the main ac cord, power filter caps, 6v6 cathode cap/resistor and pt center taps at the grounding terminal strip on the pt. i installed a bus wire to ground the v1 filter cap, grid resistors, vol pot and input jacks to be grounded at input 1. i hope this works out. did i do this right, is there a better way of doing this? from the readings on this board and others, it seems that a lot of ppl found good results separating the 6v6 cathode cap/r from the ground bus.. i attempted that here, which is why that grid resistor isn't gonna be connected to the cathode cap/resistor and it's just flying out to the ground bus there. how can i improve this, i'd love any input on this as now i'm getting into the meat of it and i'm a vegetarian!

[mort]

nice job on cutting the PT hole. Sounds like you have the right idea for grounding.


what are you going to house that chassis in?

[zbones]

Thanks man. I plan to build a pine cab for it to use with a decentish 10" speaker i have on hand. Ill eventually get a good speaker later. Im thinking a wide panel tweed cab with maybe a supro stripe or something, that would be wicked

[zbones]

What a cool lookin amp. Id go with a more closed back than the supros

[zbones]

got to put it all together earlier... fired it up and man this champ sounds awesome. i wish i had a good speaker for it... a beautiful 10, prob a weber or jensen. the grounding layout is working like a charm, thanks Mort. its insanely quiet, almost can't even tell if the amp is on even at full volume. didn't expect it to be that quiet. and that's with the chassis open too. the one bit of noise i noticed is coming from my guitar which isn't shielded. had no shielding tape when we were putting it together. but man those lollar pickups i got in my strat sing for their dinner. i'll post detailed pics of the grounding tomorrow.