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I've posted photos before of the amp breadboard. The pièce de résistance was the tube sockets mounted on the PCB, which finally happened this weekend.
Short aside: I ordered the PCB mount tube sockets back on August 31. Those sockets are still stuck in U.S. Customs and I'm still waiting for a response from an e-mail I sent them 3 weeks ago. The seller (off of AliExpress.com) was awesome and offered to send a second shipment as far back as September. I told them I could wait. Two weeks ago they offered again (we've communicated a number of times over these months) and I took them up on it. The sockets arrived Friday. 10 hours of soldering (114 wires). It's by far the most soldering I've ever done on a single project. My soldering skills have improved significantly in the past 2 days!
So, without further ado, the photos. Where the wires cross on the PCB, they're not laying on top of each other (it's hard to tell from the angle). There's about 3/8" clearance (the wires are raised). The PCB is mounted on standoffs and is a good inch off the bread board assembly.
Next step is to start breadboarding my blues amp project.
Very excited to finally have this done! I still have a few minor additions I want to make, but I'm not in a big rush:
1> Hinged legs for the breadboard so I can get it up off the floor a bit. It's too big for my worktable
2> A wooden box with compartments and a slide-in lid mounted on the bare side, so I can keep stray components, tools etc with the breadboard, slide on the top and lean it up against the wall when not in use.
3> I'm going to get an Edcor Tinkerer transformer that has 200V, 225V, 250V, 275V and 300V taps and permanently mount that. The black Thordarson transformer is mainly there for heater power (it has 350V-0-350V HT, but I don't expect to use that much). It lets me run the heaters at full power but run the other PT on a variac and not affect heater voltage.
Short aside: I ordered the PCB mount tube sockets back on August 31. Those sockets are still stuck in U.S. Customs and I'm still waiting for a response from an e-mail I sent them 3 weeks ago. The seller (off of AliExpress.com) was awesome and offered to send a second shipment as far back as September. I told them I could wait. Two weeks ago they offered again (we've communicated a number of times over these months) and I took them up on it. The sockets arrived Friday. 10 hours of soldering (114 wires). It's by far the most soldering I've ever done on a single project. My soldering skills have improved significantly in the past 2 days!
So, without further ado, the photos. Where the wires cross on the PCB, they're not laying on top of each other (it's hard to tell from the angle). There's about 3/8" clearance (the wires are raised). The PCB is mounted on standoffs and is a good inch off the bread board assembly.
Next step is to start breadboarding my blues amp project.
Very excited to finally have this done! I still have a few minor additions I want to make, but I'm not in a big rush:
1> Hinged legs for the breadboard so I can get it up off the floor a bit. It's too big for my worktable
2> A wooden box with compartments and a slide-in lid mounted on the bare side, so I can keep stray components, tools etc with the breadboard, slide on the top and lean it up against the wall when not in use.
3> I'm going to get an Edcor Tinkerer transformer that has 200V, 225V, 250V, 275V and 300V taps and permanently mount that. The black Thordarson transformer is mainly there for heater power (it has 350V-0-350V HT, but I don't expect to use that much). It lets me run the heaters at full power but run the other PT on a variac and not affect heater voltage.
Attached Files