Poorman compressor done...

Did not think I would ever finish this.....












Thanks to analag, silent-arts and lolo-m....

Looks Great !

How does it sound ?

What a beauty  

How does it sound?

Excellent layout! A nice twist of the Blackbird compressor layout. Your build is possibly the first poorman that doesn't look incredibly busy and difficult to manage rats nest. I remember the upside down tubes through the panel trick from some earlier photos of yours, but it seems to work even better on this finished build.

I thought I was the only one sanding off those screw holes of modushop side walls for better faraday caging. A word of warning: they rust. Have you also already found that the screws modushop provide for their tops and bottoms of cases are just too small? One little extra twist and they just roll around and barely hold the lid anymore. I'm still looking for a slightly bigger alternative screw for all my projects.

Thanks for the kind words. It sounds like a vari mu I guess. It does very cool things to audio other compressors don't do.
It's very quiet, that really surprised me. I've 12 different time constant settings, all done with relay's which are below the vero board.
That's 3 for analag mode and 9 for the side chain booster. This time I really took my time to find MY favourite attack & release time.
If I remember correctly I've used 2,2uF, 4,7uF and a 20uF caps together with 5,6K (for very fast release) , 47K and 200K resistors (+ the original 221K resistor of corse)
This resulted in some slower attack together with very fast release times, which is not what the original Fairchild had to offer.
You can really hear the compressor work this way, but I also have some more Fairchildish settings i.e. fast attack slow release for a more subtle effect.

I've tried different input transformers as well but I liked the Edcors better. For me, the purpose of this tube compressor is after all that it's a vintage warmer...

Kingston said:

I thought I was the only one sanding off those screw holes of modushop side walls for better faraday caging. A word of warning: they rust. Have you also already found that the screws modushop provide for their tops and bottoms of cases are just too small? One little extra twist and they just roll around and barely hold the lid any more. I'm still looking for a slightly bigger alternative screw for all my projects.

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I think one of my screws feels a little flimsy indeed.
Also, these cases lack structural integrity (jean luc picard  said so himself ;-)). No but seriously, my unit weights 15 kg, and with the weight mostly at the backside (due to the toroids), I hardly trust this thing in a rack only supported by the front panel.  
I had to put in extra screws in the front panel to make it kinda sturdy. The steel plate (which holds the pcb's and tubes) is also connected to bottom and side plates and that also helps to make it less wobbly....

Modushop is cheap but in this case not plug & play....

Kingston said:

Your build is possibly the first poorman that doesn't look incredibly busy and difficult to manage rats nest.

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+1! Best looking porrman to date!

wow, very nice and clean build, with lots of thoughts behind it.
congratulation!!!
front panel looks nice and clean too!

Wow!  Absolutely beautiful build... nice job Radiance!!

Here a pic of my new bigger heater heat sink...



It's some kind of old CPU thingy I had laying around....It still gets too hot to tough, well you CAN tough it but not like for 1 second or so...This was after 2 hours with top cover on so I guess it'll do.

Congratulations! Looks very sweet!

What a piece of work 
I like the layout a lot....very inspiring

8) 8) 8)

I thought I was the only one sanding off those screw holes of modushop side walls for better faraday caging. A word of warning: they rust. Have you also already found that the screws modushop provide for their tops and bottoms of cases are just too small? One little extra twist and they just roll around and barely hold the lid anymore. I'm still looking for a slightly bigger alternative screw for all my projects.

Click to expand...

Yes it rusts, and screws are bad true, most of the metal tapping screws are the same when screwed on thin layer, best is always normal screw and a nice tapped hole, one trick would be to epoxy glue the knot underside, and use normal screws, but gluing isn' perfect...

Looks great! I'm still a long way from completion with mine, but I fired up one channel yesterday and noticed how very, very hot the tubes get. Your build got me thinking about putting them at the top of the case, so they are outside (top of the rack)...

wow!! REALLY nicely done!! It looks pretty cool with the tubes mounted this way.
I will celebrate it with a couple of beers during koninginnenach tonight.  ;D

living sounds said:

Looks great! I'm still a long way from completion with mine, but I fired up one channel yesterday and noticed how very, very hot the tubes get. Your build got me thinking about putting them at the top of the case, so they are outside (top of the rack)...

Click to expand...

Check the Thermionic Phoenix for inspiration...

Looks good, very nice layout

Cheers

Bravo, Bravo
Very clean wiring for a beauty compressor.

Cheers

Wow!  That looks great!
Best,
Bruno2000

Very nice!!!

Are the tube sockets still board mounted?

All of the components on the underside? Genius.

Separate DC filaments?

I love the bypass. Did you get that surplus?

Inspiring.

Lovely ! -  super clean - wich makes it easy to troubleshoot and do maintnence.
also tons of thought behind this.
Im using mine a lot - and i came to find that the time constant mod is a must.
Congrats!