My DIY progress so far...(lots of pics)

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Silvas

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 15, 2006
Messages
727
Location
Chia, Colombia
Hello

It´s been 2 years since i joined this forum, looking for advice on building a couple more serious pieces of gear. Now, after all this time, i´m very proud to present to you the fruits of my labor. Well, it´s nothing special, basically a couple GSSL comps, a green pre, and my own Fetboy version...and i´m very proud to be the first serious pro-audio DIYer from my country. Of course, working in the top recording studio in Colombia has been really useful when it comes to testing !

I´ts been quite difficult, since getting parts here in Colombia is very hard. Some parts i used are local but almost anything is imported from USA. All the metal work is done locally, and it was an extreme pain in the ass, i had to learn Corel to do the blueprints and the laser engraving for the front panels, and after some expensive trial and error i ended up with a really decent 1.5mm aluminium (front 3mm) 1RU box, never been done here before. For my Fetboy version i learned eagle and cooked my own boards at home. For the green, i used v1 boards plus the meter boards from peterc, also home etched.

It´s been an incredibly difficult and long way, but also an incredibly educative experience. The amounts of knowledge i gained in the process has been invaluable and helpful in my everyday work. I want to give a really big THANK YOU to all the nice people on this forum, especially Jakob for giving me a couple of wonderful compressors that i use and love everyday on top productions and for answering some questions, and peterc for all his help on the green.

Now, some details :

I built 4 GSSL comps, 2 for myself and the other 2 for studio´s use. All my fellow engineers love these things so much that i´m building a few more for them. On the ssl i used a variable scale led meter, with 5-10-20dB range, which i can calibrate within 10% error margin on any of the scales, i love this acuraccy when using the 5dB scale for light buss compression. The switches are grayhill, which i get here for cheap, 10 positions, programmable, but 36 degree index....as you can see these are hardwired to the control board. The trafo is custom made, but planning on using a toroid someday, anyway, noise performance is excellent.

The green, well, nothing special with it, i used some opa2134 and opa2227 samples i got from TI on 2 channels. PSU is Keith´s but the trafo is defective and haven´t changed it yet. However, i tested the pre side by side with a John hardy M1 and i can say that the green is a really nice clean pre.

The Fetboy, i used my own PSU and audio boards here, in the inside pic it´s using a provisional input trafo that i later changed for a big peerless trafo i ripped off a 1950´s ampex tape machine. All the dakaware knobs and the power switch are also rescued from that machine. The box is a generic project box coupled to a leftover PSU panel from our beloved Neve 8058. I took the color sample from the console itself. I left trimmers for the FETs, so i can make any FET perform well in the circuit, with a little component tweaking. I´ve changed FET´s many times, trimmed them and nice sound everytime. Key resistors are mounted on pins for easy tweaking. The PSU is based on Vintagedesign´s PSU but layout is all mine. I also left trimmers here for fine tuning the audio and phantom voltages. The sound? well, this pre is amazing, esp. as a DI, but the trafo is kinda dark and fat, i love it on miked bass, vocals, brass...i even used it on outside kick mic with a FET47, but had to put an inline -20 pad in front of the pre. The -14 pad wasn´t enough. I also compared this pre with the hardy and besides the color, it is an amazing pre.

I must have signed over a hundred times on paper to get a nice signature for the front panels !


And the last pic, well, that´s what i like to call "the DIY projects of my lifetime...!" you be the judges.

Thank you all !


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Hey 3nity, now i remember, the front panel of my pre is spray painted witn regular paint, which is similar to spray can paint...the only problem was the aluminium, it was dirty underneath the paint (i was aplying a new paint layer of the original color, to erase some scratchs). So i had to clean the aluminium with a little brush and brasso after the engraving was done...
 
Piotr said:
Great design and personnal input on those projects !!! Viva Colombia !!!

Thanks so much ! It´s been a while since i posted this, more than a year...My little angel is so big now, she loves playing with that gramophone..... ;D ;D ;D
 
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