Hamptone JFET kit...1st DIY attempted

shedshrine · Post by **shedshrine** » Mon Nov 21, 2005 10:54 pm

No soldering or electrical experience really at all. Well, there was the one time when I had to reattach a wire to a guitar pot with a woodburning tool, but we won't talk about that...

Had had the kit sitting around for about 2 months now, getting my nerves and head around what I was about to undertake. Man I was intimidated by this box of zip lock bags with resistors and capacitors and all. Perused all the soldering irons Weller makes online, and on a friends reccomendation picked up a wse51, along with a little workstation jobby with the alligator clips and magnifying glass, and one of those spring-armed extending lamps (again with the magnifying glass) that clamp on to a desk too. Couldn't find the exact solder Scott uses, which sounded sexy as it was lead free and had silver in it, I just got some "regular" stuff, and put a fan a few feet away on a low setting to blow the fumes out the garage door. Oh, and I got some brush on liquid flux.

As far as using a multimeter, I really didn't have a clue, I just turned the little dial until I got a reading like one of the resistors was supposed to have, and that setting worked for identifying the rest of them.(except for two, but they were the only ones left so it was obvious where they went). The sheets with the layouts are easy to read so you can get the right resistors in the right locations without confusion if you don't rush it.

So as not to chance $#@ing up the board from the git-go, I bought a cheap breadboard from Radio Shack and a pack of resistors to practice. That weller works so well, is so easy to handle, I was getting good joint results pretty quick ,and decided to go for it. "Populate" the board, turned it over and went to town. I just tried to make sure I got the wire hot a little before touching the solder, and boom, it was making nice little volcanos. I couldn't find in the Weller instructions or on Scott's site the temperature to use, but the warnings section said that accidentally flung solder can be around 700 degrees, so I set the Weller to that. A little hotter was where I eventually ended up setting it.

Thats as far as I've gotten now, but I really was only scared of the soldering for some reason, but it's really not hard if you take it slow. I'm hoping this will help someone else, because this is exactly what i wanted to read when I was first looking into making these Hamptone preamp kits.

Just want to put together a small streamlined but kick-arse signal chain and a few other nice components in one small rack thats easy to fire up and get busy with. Getting there.

ulriggribbons · Post by **ulriggribbons** » Mon Nov 21, 2005 11:54 pm

Welcome to the machine

There's no turning back.

Regards

ju

luckybastard · Post by **luckybastard** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 4:30 am

hey man, besides badly soldering a pickup swap, i had no soldering experience before bulding the tube kit. if you take it slow, you should be fine. i had a blast building it and now i have a whole list of diy stuff i want to do.

inverseroom · Post by **inverseroom** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 6:00 am

Keep it up, man, you're going to love this pre! Mine actually worked on power-up...I didn't have a variac so decided to take the risk. I do have a year or so of DIY/kit experience, but Scott has designed this kit so beautifully--everything FITS, it's all very elegant and clean--that it was hard to make a serious mistake. And my handful of questions were answered promptly and courteously.

DI'ed electric piano sounds like a million bucks. So do synths, and vocals of course.

trodden · Post by **trodden** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 9:21 am

man, this is inspiring.. not sure which one i want though, tube? fet? boba fett?

BigCats · Post by **BigCats** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 11:24 am

Awright . . . so this is kind of freking me out. You and I are doing exactly the same thing.

Totally new to kits, but I usually learn by jumping into the deep end of the pool. Ya know, the "ready, fire, aim " thing. I got the FET kit in August and it's been in the corner taunting me so I broke down and started working on it this week.

Good call on practicing on the bread board - I did the same thing and God help me it would have been a disaster if I hadn't practiced. One other step I found helpful was to just step through the entire project, pulling everything out and getting an idea of what I was in for. Made it a whole lot less intimidating. The pix on Scott's web site are invaluable.

I'm going to start populating the board this afternoon. Where'd you find the Weller iron? I've been using a Rat Shack model and I get the feeling already it's not the best tool I've ever used.

BTW - RS does have the lead-free solder.

Cats

shedshrine · Post by **shedshrine** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 11:41 am

I researched the Wellers at all-spec.com, but finally decided to buy from a local electronics place so I could see what they had in person and ask questions.

The Weller WES51 was recommended to me by a freind who works in electronics, and he said this was a good basic workhorse.

What makes you think the Radio Shack one won't cut it? I got the weller because it's a respected name, and I just KNEW

I was going to love DIY, so I wanted a good soldering iron, no cutting corners for a cheap one there.

Yeah, the pics on the site are really great for checking yourself. Like what a good solder joint looks like!

luckybastard · Post by **luckybastard** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 3:59 pm

i did mine with a rs soldering iron.. not the greatest but more than serviceable

inverseroom · Post by **inverseroom** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 4:16 pm

I've got a low-end Weller with a pencil tip. $35 from Small Bear Electronics. It smokes the RS, but the RS will do the job. It's just harder to be tidy with one.

BigCats · Post by **BigCats** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 7:51 pm

Not that it probably matters to any one, but . . .

I've got the resistors, caps, XLRs - pretty much all the surface mount stuff on the audio boards. It's getting a little late to try my first foray into point to point wiring so I'll wait until I'm stuffed with turkey tomorrow to finish the DI/input wiring.

Amazingly enough my soldering all looks good and I haven't totally screwed the pooch on anything (yet). This is pretty awesome - I'm having a blast.

So - this is just what I need, a new time consuming sub-hobby to feed my already time consuming music hobby.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. I'm grateful for a whole lot in life - one small part being this board, the people on it and all the knowledge you've shared.

K

shedshrine · Post by **shedshrine** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 9:42 pm

I probably get the prize for longest jfet construction window. I got the thing, stared at the box for a few weeks, and finally did a couple hours on it before Thanksgiving. Every weekend, (or so) since then I'd putter away for a couple hours until my mind would wander, and I'd call it a day and turn of the soldering iron. It was fun, but I have to admit a little stressful.

When I finally turned it on for the first time (no variac, didn't fully test with multimeter) I flipped the switch and stepped back, ready for some kind of pop or crackle or poof. Nothing, no lights, nothing. I grabbed the multi, and poked around and found the juice was not getting past the fuse box. I had eyed the fuse when I put it in, and it looked fine, so I thought maybe I'd kept the heat on near the plastic housing too long when I had soldered it in and had somehow melted plastic over the contact points or something. so I reach for the iron to take it out. BZZZNNTT!! of course I hadn't turned the thing off or unplugged it yet. Fried my power strip circuit, and took a little chunk out of the Weller iron's tip, but the Hamptone was fine as there was no current reaching it anyway.

So a new fuse later, and presto, Hamptone JFET pilot light blazing away. I ran a SR-16 drum machine through the DI and ran the outs into my nearby Eden bass head (WT-330) as it had a headphone out. First impression was it sounded big and had the sag of a tube amp, and the preset sounded slammin.

Come to think of it, the Eden compression was on too, though. Anyway I look forward to messing with it with mics ( TapeOp ribbons!!, a Beyer dynamic, a GT-66, a Rode NT1) and compressors (Joe Meek VC3, Distressor, ART VLA)

Milkmansound · Post by **Milkmansound** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 9:27 am

inverseroom wrote:I didn't have a variac so decided to take the risk.

just stick a lamp in series with the AC - I keep one on my bench with alligator clips so that I can put it in and drop the line voltage without a variac. Its a handy little trick I picked up when I was a TV serviceman.

inverseroom · Post by **inverseroom** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 3:54 pm

Milkmansound wrote:
inverseroom wrote:I didn't have a variac so decided to take the risk.
just stick a lamp in series with the AC - I keep one on my bench with alligator clips so that I can put it in and drop the line voltage without a variac. Its a handy little trick I picked up when I was a TV serviceman.

Wait a sec, elaborate, how does this work exactly? I like it.

Scodiddly · Post by **Scodiddly** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 4:00 pm

inverseroom wrote:
Milkmansound wrote:
inverseroom wrote:I didn't have a variac so decided to take the risk.
just stick a lamp in series with the AC - I keep one on my bench with alligator clips so that I can put it in and drop the line voltage without a variac. Its a handy little trick I picked up when I was a TV serviceman.
Wait a sec, elaborate, how does this work exactly? I like it.

"just stick a lamp in series with the AC" is exactly how it works - pretend you were going to put a switch on the AC cable, and make it a light bulb instead. The most current that can be pulled is 1/2A, albeit at a slightly lower voltage. But it's a neat trick to limit burnouts if you made a mistake in the power supply. If the bulb goes on, you have a short.

Milkmansound · Post by **Milkmansound** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 12:44 am

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Hamptone JFET kit...1st DIY attempted

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