DIY Gear

PaulBrewer

Does anyone here build or use home made gear ?

Are there any 'boutique' equipment manufacturers in Ireland ?

The only one I know of is David from Enhanced Audio who build a mean mic mount and mic and speaker stands.

fitz

I have a customised 70's Sound City head that Alladin's Amps worked on.
I supplied the parts for him to gut it and rework it into a HiWatt DR103 circuit. He used some of the original 70s parts, including the Partridge transformers, and it sounds incredible.
Brilliant work.

One of these days I'll get around to doing some practice PCB soldering, then I'll have bash at making an SSL bus comp or one of the other "straightforward" DIY projects using a PCB kit.

PaulBrewer

Yes - I'd guess there's a fair bit of guitar amp tweaking going on .

I meant more recording equip - does anyone here actually design/build anything ?

krd

One major drawback here - we don't have things like Radioshack.

We have Peats - but it's nothing as good as radio shack. And I think their bits and bobs are overpriced.

Building your own equipment takes a bit of know how - and access to components.

Building something like a patch panel wouldn't be too difficult. Or a DI box. An old amp or guitar given a bit of resoldering could do it a world of good. I'm fixing up an old electric guitar at the minute. I had to resolder part of it. And oiling bits, with oil (obviously) did a lot for it. I'm missing the alan key to adjust the truss rod (anyone know where I can get one - tried Perfect pitch, they said that they're all different)

The same could be done for old noisy mixers that people are throwing out - they probably just need a little resoldering or a capacitor changed somewhere.


I'd like to build a talk box at some point - which gives you a fancy vocoder effect - it's simpler than it would seem. It's an old speaker cone and a rubber tube you put in your mouth - search you tube for how to makes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MARws55puHo

Paolo_M

I designed and built this valve amp from scratch, including custom drilling a blank chassis.
Dual channel 60 watter (channel footswitchable and solo boost footswitchable), buffered valve FX loop and a bunch of other features like sag control.
The circuit is completely original.
I've yet to make proper recordings of it, I'll throw some up sometime, these are just a casio digital camera. The camera's clipping and you can still hear my pick attack!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgqx9vUCg4w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D8G71x0Xx0

I'm considering build a proper valve based mic preamp, not much of a stretch from this project.

Doge

krd wrote: »

One major drawback here - we don't have things like Radioshack.

We have Peats - but it's nothing as good as radio shack. And I think their bits and bobs are overpriced.

How do Peats prices compare to Maplin?

Surely they're not as expensive, maplin can be very saucy, with the exception of sale and clearance items.

The funny thing is, that people i know in the States, constantly complain about Ratshack being overpriced ****e.

The way to go is ordering online imo. For orders over 75 euro, Mouser is great, free courier + custom duty paid for, despite it coming from Texas.

Theres also, Radionics.ie (RS), Farnell, CPC (sub company of farnell), and ebay can be great also.

krd

waveform, people in the states do not know how good they've got it. Radioshack carry lots of stuff, you wouldn't find in any shop here.

Maplins and Peats are overpriced on a lot of little things. You're probably better off buying on the internet. I think I saw two quarter inch jack heads on sale in Peats for 13 quid.

When I was in the US Radioshack, I was just surprised at what they had right there on display in the shop.

TheBigRedDog

This is a great site for components and things.
Radionics
I've built plenty of circuits before, in and out of college(I'm studying electronic and computer engineering), but not really in the audio component side of things.

I'll be taking time over summer to start building things to actually use in the studio. I'm looking forward to the challenge!

Quiggers

I built a talkbox last summer, using bits bought in maplin and a kitchen funnel, made a case from 3mm ply for it too. These little lo fi projects are great starting points and the parts
data sheets give you circuit layouts, just build them on vero board is you dont fancy mixing acids to etch pcb's.

radionics are good too but they charge quite a bit for shipping and tend to sent each component type in a different shipment.

slavedave

Have built a few mic pre-amps and also a trigger to midi controller for edrums. Great learning curve on all projects but all worked! Source parts from all over the place, Maplins for convenience due to it being 2miles away but they are very expensive. Best place I have come across in Ireland is RSelectronics (Radionics) because their stock list is huge. CPCFarnell are also good but they ship from the UK so there is additional handling charges to add to prices. Bought a few bits from europe and the States too (building a line array column needed 36 drivers and it was cheaper to import from the US inc VAT and Duty than buying from anywhere in Europe). Sub woofer plans called for a driver sourced from the US too. Speaker paint, VHB tape, fixings etc all sourced from the UK because I couldn't find suppliers in Ireland/ N.Ireland.
The internet is a wonderful thing

PaulBrewer

What sort of pres Slave ?

studiorat

Chap in Sonic Studios is working on some high end amplifiers including a high end headphone amp on the workbench at the moment.

eoin5

Hoping to get into it this year. I want to at least make a good piezo preamp then move onto peggles etc. Radionics are spot on, I got a soldering station from them with the thermostat gone and they replaced it without any issues.

slavedave

Nothing boutique Paul. Very low tech. Needed to get something to power very small, discrete electret panasonic capsules for on-location recording / interviews etc. Managed to find a supplier of tiny 3mm capsules in Canada. Wired the capsules up to the preamps/power circuit and voila - success. Made a couple of earset mics for use on Sundays but being omnidirectional they were a bit of a nightmare in a live, reverberant room. Messed around with pseudo binaural recording too. Lots of fun.
Did have a look at one or two of the kits that were available for higher end pre-amps but decided it was one of those risk of experimentation V loss of moolah scenarios (and I wasn't in a position to throw money away at the time).