EQ ONE Build and Support Thread

[sahib]

This is the Total Audio Control EQ ONE build and support thread.

Link to the introducion of the module  http://www.groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=52444.0

Link to the assembly manual. http://www.robotica.co.uk/tac/EQ_ONE_MANUAL.pdf


I was only able to ship to Udo and Louis before I went on holiday. Udo has just completed and fully tested his units. Before I leave the microphone to him I would like to thank Udo for his almost hourly  progress report and valuable suggestions. He has been great.

 

 

[kante1603]

{A man-say aged 50 or so- enters the speaker´s desk}

"......EEEeeeeeemmmmmhhhhh......microphone?.....Check one-two-one-two...."-------wwweeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeep-!!!

{The sound of a heavy feedback,EQ One chimes in}

"Oh,that´s better,waaayyyyyy better......thank you very much indeed.......
First let me say thank you dear Mr.Langley and dear Cemal for the amazing time I had building the EQ Ones,I feel very honoured having been the first to do them...."

{The man stops,raises his head}

"....another feedback?.......no biggie,I have 3 more full-parametric bands left-plus a hipass-filter....HAAAAHHHHAAAAAAAHHH!"

{The man pulls something out from behind the desk}

"And another EQ One!"

{The man puts the eq back,
Silence.}

"...but that would be overkill I bet...."

{The man´s face seems to turn to red,tears in his eyes}

"........bbbbb-----bb-b-bb-but aaa-a-a-I cannot have enough of them,really ccc-c-c-cc-can´t haha-have e-e-e....."

{The man appears to have a nervous breakdown.
Two strong men wearing white suits take him away and guide him to the exit.
The sound of an ambulance car from outside.
Silence.
Then standing ovations}

END.

 

[kante1603]

O.K.,couldn´t resist,let´s get serious.

The package:

When I opened it it nearly blew me away!
Plastic baggies everywhere,containing other smaller baggies.All have stickers,written by hand!All stickers correspond exactly to the bom!
Came with printed manual,schematics and a drawing for the ribbon cables.
Even parts like resistors are packed in value groups etc.!Same for screws.Unbelievable,this must have taken ages,congrats and my deepest respect for you Cemal!

The manual:

It´s excellent,tons of additional info,well-thought,bazillions of pics.
Just follow it and you´ll be there pretty soon!

The mechanics:

Very nice,the plates have threaded inserts on a lot of usefull spots.All parts including the faceplate fit like a glove when assembeled right.

The boards:

Again excellent,gold plated,very nice layout,a big fun soldering on them.
The silkscreen is sometimes hidden by their neighbour parts,but no biggie,just print out the parts designation paper from the manual and you´re good to go.
On my main boards there was one minor issue with the pads for the transistor Q1,the solder pads are very close to each other.
I found a workaround,easy to do,can show you a pic if you want.

Ribbon cables:

Must be done by yourself.Use a vise and some perfboard pieces for the transition headers.
Cemal has sent me some nice photos of the how-to-do it and allowed me to post them here.Just tell me if it´s needed.


The specs:

Great,not more or less than that.I had a big fun measuring and testing them.


The sound:

Blew me away,had a deja-vu like sitting at the Amek consoles we had back in the 80s and early 90s.
Powerfull,punchy and fast....these have balls people!
Wide overlapping filterbands,lows and low-mids have big capabilities,the highs go far up so can use them as "airband" in shelf-mode with ease.
Hpf and lpf are fantastic tools to even form a telephone sound.Add some mids in the 2 to 3k area and some noise,maybe run them through a compressor,done.
The hpf of course easily makes you get rid of all that lf-rumble from your microphones.
Stunning.
A "surgeon with british big b...." (we had that before).

Assembly issues:

None.

Grounding issues in a 51x rack:

None,I did AES grounding as usual (jumpers ground to chassis).

That´s it for now,hope some of you will do them too,you´ll have a lot of fun-PROMISED!

Best regards,

Udo

 

[kante1603]

Mandatory pics.

Main boards:




More progress:




Assembeled finally:






Best,

Udo.

 

[kante1603]

Here´s my workaround for the Q1 issue,easy to do,self-explaining I think:

 

[11gerard]

Firstly, many thanks to Cemal.
He did a great job, proposing that "reference" EQ and also for the packaging, everything in small bags, then in bigger bags with stickers for every value of component... A huge work.

I read Udo's nice review of his work on 2 EQ ONE he had. I think everybody should read his work, there are a lot of useful informations. I used his solution for the Q1 issue, it simply works, thanks.

I find the look precise, readable, functional and clear (sorry Udo...).

The only difficulty I had was to mount ribbon cables. Cemal sent me a how-to-do and I reverse 2 cables, shame on me.

I had one cosmetic issue with the 2 x M2 screws to fix the right hand side screen plate to the back plate. They are a bit too long and touch the 10K pots of boards LD022 and LD025 that are below. I used 3 washers per screw above the plate to fix this. Cemal would use shorter screws for all M2 ones if avalaible.

I had a lot of fun mounting the EQ ONE kit and the listening result is really nice, clear, punchy and precise, it is like everything may be done with it. I like it very much.

I had also no grounding issues in a 51x rack. I had jumpers ground to chassis. I use DImyself PSU with a SMPS that gives + and - 24 volts and 48 volts and + and - 16 volts are made with linear voltage regulators.

I hope many people will do EQ ONE, it a great moment for a great result. One more time, thank you very much, "kill the flu" Cemal.
 

 

[kante1603]

Congrats on your build,a really cool eq,isn't it?
Nice and interesting rack btw.

I find the look precise, readable, functional and clear (sorry Udo...).

No need to be sorry!
Maybe a language barrier,I didn't say that,I commented the finish which is a bit too "shiny" for my(!) taste.You're absolutely right with "precise,readable........clear".Personally I prefer more "mat" (hope the word is right?) finishes.
But maybe they look cooler in a rack full of TAC stuff,hahaha.......at least my 2 preamps plus eqs start to look interesting when side by side,some "magic" coming from there now
....and easy to find in the racks.......
Will delete my comment on the look to not confuse people anymore.

Now have fun with this excellent tool,

best regards,

Udo

 

[kante1603]

Hello everybody.

Thought I should share my latest experience with my EQ ONE-rack.I have 5 eqs meanwhile,so the rack is fully stuffed.

Although this eq is a great tool in the studio I gave it a try in a live situation.

We´re rehearsing a musical show here in our theatre/academy.
Budgets are low,so I have two digital consoles on my f.o.h.,one for the band,playbacks sounds/samples and monitoring,the other exclusive for the vocals which I´m mixing.
The p.a. system is the new ARCS from L´Acoustics (12 ARCS wide & focus plus sb18m subs in cardioid-mode),run as a true L-C-R-system.
Voc mics are wireless DPA4066 on Sennheiser SKxx and 1046 receivers.

So since the room is quite small there´s always the danger of getting heavy feedbacks,I´m having up to 20 open omni(!) mics at a pretty high spl against a rockband and on the same line as the p.a. speakers.Not funny.
The system by itself is really great,perfectly time-aligned and well tuned,it is even certified by L´Acoustics-engineers themselfes.

After a two day trial handling the onboard-eqs on the consoles (DiGiCo SD9´s btw.) on the lcr-outputs as well as on inputs in any combiantion and trying the different eq-types as well we were really disappointed.I then let other well experiencied engineers try the same for hours always starting with the onboard eqs flat.All of us failed.We all ended exactly on the same center frequencies concerning the upcoming feedbacks,only slight differences on  cut amount and Q-settings.
Although we managed to get rid of the feedbacks the sound went thin and harsh sounding as you live-guys here might expect.
Not cool.

I decided to hook up my EQ ONEs on my console outputs to try handling at least the first two to three main feedbacks as a last possible solution I had handy before swapping out my console to an analogue one (I had Cadacs and SSLs before).

And guess what:KNOCKOUT for the digital stuff within seconds!!!

Immediately I get about 10dB(!!!) more headroom accompained by now nice-sounding microphones,same as I´m used to have on high-priced analogue gear.Awesome!
The EQ ONEs do exactly what I want to hear,the response is hard to beat,and the sound.......brilliant!
We even went so far and flattened out all onboard-eqs to see what will happen.Still 7-8 db more headroom left,hahaha.....
Analogue beats them all.

So I can highly recommend them in this signal position.
They were great in the studio,they are perfect in my live situation now.

Consider what will happen when I can fine-tune the vox and hook up Jeff´s VP28 followed by Joe´s LA500´s on my eight lead vocals.......I´m very excited now and look pretty much forward to the next reahearsals and long soundchecks next week.

Get them as long as Cemal stocks them people!

All the best to you out there,

Udo.

Edited typos.

 

[MLAudio]

Are these kits still available?

 

[Electrobumps]

Just finished 2 of these and have been mixing with them over the last week.

I'm sitting these on the mix buss and they are capable of delivering exactly what you need from a buss EQ.  If I had a few more in my rack they would definitely be used for other jobs.

The kits are great, parts could not be more organised and clear.  That saves a lot of time when putting together.  The manual is very clear and makes building a breeze, if you have some experience.  A bug free circuit board with no work around's needed.  Great attention to detail on this project.

Any questions Cemal is very quick to respond and is more than helpful.  Due to the nature of this kit as long as you follow the manual you will not have likely have problems. 

I found the ribbon cables quite a task, so make sure you take your time to get this right, however the ribbon system and sub assemble boards for the EQ control pots is genius, saves hours in wiring.