Saturday, August 12, 2017

I Am The Bassman, part 2.







I've done a little more work on the I Am The Bassman since we spoke, which included building and populating a proper Fender style eyelet board and doing some preliminary wiring of the things other than the controls and the power supply capacitor array.

For that I will have to buy a capacitor board and backing board as well as a cake pan to finish it off. The plan is to use the old Bassman 50 faceplate to mock things up and then change over the vintage Bassman faceplate I have upstairs.

I know that people say to me "Whyncha just buy da boards from somebody already made and save yourself a lotta work? Jeez."

Well, there are a few reasons.

First of all I like to have total control over my work product, and as you can see I do a pretty decent job of cooking up main boards and a sorta custom bias supply board because this amp will use a tube rectifier.

Second of all I get it when I want it, don't have to wait around for the post office, and I get exactly what I decide I want.

I've got the tooling to make boards and the know-how thanks to Jeff Gehring. I've also got a pretty good American made 1936 vintage Walker Turner  drill press, a Dake arbor press for staking eyelets, and some suitable anvil type stuff. I've just about used up all my stock of board stuff so it's time to get some more vulcanized fiberboard from Mojotone or whoever has it.

I did purchase a board one time from an unnamed source professional courtesy forbids me to mention by name because I was feeling lazy and the price seemed right. When it arrived the board was nice until I got it half way out of the envelope and half the eyelets were missing. So I had to pay for postage back to the seller because I think they didn't really believe me. Had it been I who was making boards and offering them to the trade I woulda just nutted up and sent out another one but that's just me and how I roll.

Between paying postage both ways I could have made it myself for less money and if I really had anything to squawk about I could find the guy in the bathroom mirror.

Either way, it's better to make things yourself if you can. It rules out such dismal considerations. I believe it is called good process control.

Anyway that is my story on making eyelet boards.

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