Getting Started on SSS 002

[Vertigo]

Back in December, while my kids and wife were on winter break, I started to build a Steel String Singer 002. At the time, the plan was to follow the path laid out by Ryan Colgan (thanks for organizing so much information), build my own boards and make my own chassis because there were a few minor changes that I wanted to make. A good friend of mine has a shear and brake and I'm fairly well equipped for everything else I would have needed to do...then Covid hit and we took the stay at home orders pretty seriously.

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I had all the boards already drilled, eyelets installed and components in place when Ryan started selling chassis and board sets. Buying the chassis was a no brainer but I decided to go with the PCB's as well and just spend a little time pulling the parts off my boards and populating the new PCB's. They sure do look nice and neat.

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[Vertigo]

After doing a miserable job painting the chassis black with a 2K coating in a can that did not flow out well at all, I did my best to strip it. Don't do either of those things...the 2K SprayMax or stripping it afterwards. I didn't realize that I can't buy heavy duty stripper locally anymore and the 2K stuff is so tough that nothing I could buy locally would put a dent in it. Much QT with random orbital sander was necessary to get back to the metal. After that mess I sat on the project for a few months while I pondered how to get the chassis to look like something halfway decent.

I have a bunch of prototype bike parts and tools that I've machined over the past few years that just get put into use without anodizing. Most of the tools hold up just fine because they stay in the shop. Tools that go on the bike do much less well without a protective coating so I had been considering using a local ano shop to take all my stuff at the same time and just get a big batch of things done. They also do laser engraving, so that was on the table for a while too for control markings. In the mean time, I took a bag of unused glass blasing media to my buddy and in return, I got to use his blast cabinet to put a nice bead blasted finish on the chassis that I've spent so much time on to make it look terrible.

Since I've been dragging my feet on what to do with the Dumbleator (which will get anodized), I didn't want it to drag this project out any further and saw an opportunity to involve my youngest in a mini project. We pulled out my vinyl cutter, spent a little time tweaking the artwork provided by Ryan on his Github site (thanks again Ryan), cut some masks and then got to weeding. If you're middle aged like me and if you have a kid with great eyesight and hand dexterity, this is a GREAT way to put them to work. I couldn't get her to put on more than her underwear, so no photos of the master at work, but she killed it. I whiffed on the hole alignment though, but it'll be OK.

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After running out to an art and drafting store to get some Testors enamel, I did a few coats...

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...and after waiting for ~15min, I started pulling the mask off. It was still a bit too tacky, we have a little more weeding to do, but I stopped after pulling six inches and I'm giving it until I'm done posting this. The paint needs to be dry, but not hard, or we won't be able to keep the lines clean when we pull up the rest and finish weeding. I have high hopes but low expectations.

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[Vertigo]

It worked out pretty decent. I could have used another few hours as few areas are a little furry where the paint collected in the corners but most of it is pretty crisp. Part of me wants to spray a couple of coats of lacquer over it, but if it didn't lay down flat out of the gun, I'd feel compelled to give it a few more coats and then flatten in in a few weeks...and I really don't want to wait that long. If anyone has a compelling argument for coating the faces with lacquer, please share.

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[M Fowler]

Great job on the mask and applying the art work. Looks damn good!

Mark

[xtian]

+1! That's a great use for a vinyl plotter. Which one did you use?

[Vertigo]

+1! That's a great use for a vinyl plotter. Which one did you use?

Thanks guys! I’m pleased with how it turned out. Hopefully the front panel will work as well.

I have a the smaller Graphtec CE6000 that I use for making anodizing masks for my bikes. This little cutter is capable of very fine detail

[Vertigo]

Round Two. I took over weeding duties today as my 8 y/o weedmaster was having trouble keeping the centers of the hollow letters from pulling up. The smaller words were a heck of a challenge due to the horizontals of the letter being roughly 0.010". I'm not sure the enamel will stick to the chassis well enough to prevent being pulled up when I pull the mask. I'm going to try loosening it up with a bit lacquer thinner on a q-tip before pulling it and hope for the best. I'll recoat in a few hours and then try to pull it all up tonight. Hopefully it'll come out a little cleaner than the back.

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[Vertigo]

Much time has been spent reading past threads and I've been slowly picking up little tweaks that seem to help this style of amp. I've been making my own layout in DIYLC that better reflect the PCB's from Ryan and Erwin as well as adapting it for adding a relay for the FET. I still have to make the layout for the reverb board at which time I can do all the virtual wire runs. Still being extremely green at building amps, building the layout is tedious enough that it helps burn into my brain a lot of details about where things go and will help me sort out where to drill new holes for the relay before I get too deep in the weeds with the wiring.

I also pulled one of the 22uF caps off the PS Filter board and removed all the goop. While I wait on the new cap and a few other odds and ends, I started the first layer of assembly with the hope of building upon what I learned with the 102 and to try to keep this one neater.

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I hope to hear back from Jelle soon so I'll be able to swap out some of the CF resistors before I put the boards in place.

[Vertigo]

I heard back from Jelle and will have some resistors coming for a makeover of my 102 and for this SSS. I'm excited to determine whether or not I can hear a difference between the two in my 102 and while I'm tempted to continue building this SSS as-is, I think I'd rather swap them all out with the boards out of the chassis. It's pretty cramped in there.

Baby steps while I'm waiting

I realized that I can keep the solder in place on the socket eyelets better if the chassis is standing up on its side, making it much easier to fill the entire eyelet without worrying about it flowing down into the pin sockets. I also discovered that the green wire I got with the rest of it isn't tinned and it's reluctant to soak up the solder. I was working in less than ideal lighting conditions last night and noticed a few cold joints on the green stuff today, so spent a little time reflowing it. One thing is for sure, this amp feels more cramped than the 102 and I don't want to have to retouch anything once the boards are in.

Sometime this weekend, I'll put in the ground bus bar and lay down some of the coax.

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[rccolgan]

You're most welcome! Team effort! Wow everything looks amazing!!!

[Vertigo]

All resistors were changed a few weeks back when I received the package from Jelle but I haven't had much more time to work on it. Fridays are supposed to be mountain bike days, but it's 45° and raining up in the hills today and it's much more comfortable in the shop. So with the day off from helping my kids with school work, I invited my buddy over. He's been wanting to get some lessons on how to use a lathe and I needed to make an adapter plate for converting the XLR hole in the back of this chassis to a DIN that I bought. It's a pretty decent and low risk project for a lathe newbie. I took some measurements and drew up a quick sketch of the critical dimensions and coached him through it. I didn't get any photos in progress because I was more interested in making sure we didn't crash the machine, but here's the almost final product. I don't have a #6 tap, so I'll have to get one to finish it up. I chose brass because I had a hunk of 1.5" rod in on my scrap shelf and because it machines easily enough that it's hard to screw up.

In the second photo, it's not pressed into the cutout all the way. I measured a few spots to get the average diameter and made the print so it would be a thou undersized if we nailed the dimension but didn't compensate for the burr left by was I assume was a water jet. This will be a press fit and I don't want to press it in until the threads are cut.

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[Vertigo]

After a quick trip to Ace Hardware

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[norburybrook]

Lovely work, but wouldn't it have been easier/better to use the proper switchcraft XLR socket? still readily available from mouser.





M

[Vertigo]

Lovely work, but wouldn't it have been easier/better to use the proper switchcraft XLR socket? still readily available from mouser.

M

Most certainly. But I'll probably use the same pedal for my ODS and SSS, at least for a while. I plan on sticking a FET relay in this amp and still contemplating the PAB

[daniboy79]

Sometime this weekend, I'll put in the ground bus bar and lay down some of the coax.

If you haven't gotten to the ground/buss bar or wiring the control panel switches and pots, this is what I did. I installed the pots on the outside of the chassis, and wired them all up. The access was much better this way.