Wooden Circuit Boards?

[Structo]

If you do seal the wood, be sure to do it before you install the eyelets.
You don't want anything on them that would interfere with the solder.

PEC pots are nice but the back is made of stainless steel so you cannot solder to the back of them.

So if you use a ground buss wire you will have to elevate it over the top of the pots and use some short solid core wires from the grounds on the pots to the buss wire. Not at all uncommon to do it that way either.

[ic-racer]

Wooden circuit board just seems like a bad, bad idea in a tube amp.

[Matt J]

Yep, I'm going to seal the wood before I put in the eyelets. I am going to speak with some people at a woodshop near me and see what type they recommend, since it will be in an electrical environment.

I decided to go with the PEC pots after speaking with someone who comes by my local guitar shop and built a Trainwreck clone with them and was really impressed. Measuring them out with my multimeter they all came out extremely close to the stated values.

I have some sturdy 16ga buss wire from TubeDepot.com I'm going to use as a ground buss.

[Structo]

Just so you know and maybe you already know this but the PEC pots have a stainless steel can, you cannot solder to it directly.
So you have to run the ground buss either above the pots and join the ground lugs of the pots to it with short jumpers or run the buss across the board.

I like to run the buss above the pots the make a L bend near the input jack down to the chassis floor where the buss is then soldered to a ground lug that is secured to the chassis floor with a screw and nut.
I like to use either a star washer there or a KEPS nut with the integral star washer.
The chassis at that point should be bare metal free of any paint or powder coat.

[dreric]

Matt

A couple of thoughts. Rosewood is both very brittle (pressing in eyelets?) and difficult to "seal". It's an oily wood that finishes well with solvent based finishes. Solvent = flammable

It will take water based finishes poorly but ALL the water based finishes absorb and release atmospheric water which is exactly what you want to avoid in board material.

I understand where you are coming from I wrestle between the extrems of things looking cool and perhaps eccentric and functionality. What I have grudgingly come to accept is that functionality = sounds good and looking cool often= sounds bad.

Here's some scans from "the art of the amplifier" by Micheal Doyle, which I believe is where the wood board myth got it's start (along with a few others) I think HAD went through a period in the 90's of toying with others.

[Matt J]

I've got black stranded wire I'm connecting from the pots to the ground buss. The buss will run down to a ground lug to connect to the chassis, like what you have described.

I'm still mulling over whether to use the rosewood or not. I've still got the original board that came with the kit. I'll probably try to shape out the rosewood board and see if it will take the eyelets without breaking or warping. Nothing is set in stone so I'll be thinking it all over.

Thanks for the scans dreric, I've seen a small version of those before. Yeah, I have heard about HAD saying some misleading things... but then again the guy makes his own guns so it's kind of to make him not to!

[Pete]

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I've read 99.999% of all the posts on this board) but, there are no wood boards in Dumble amps, right?

Wooden circuit board just seems like a bad, bad idea in a tube amp.

Solvent = flammable

[Max]

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I've read 99.999% of all the posts on this board) but, there are no wood boards in Dumble amps, right?

Wooden circuit board just seems like a bad, bad idea in a tube amp.

Solvent = flammable

Never saw a wooden board in any Dumble.

Have a fine week

Max