Still on the line (II)

I found some modern cable with a brown fabric weave over the top, for the vintage look.  The trick to stripping it is to wrap a piece of masking tape round it then cutting through the tape.  Otherwise the fabric covering goes everywhere.

This connection is quite important.  One not to forget.

Still on the line

Wiring in the turret board (pots and ground bus)

Once the valve holders were done, I started on the other side.

Again, there's no real trick to it.  It's easy to get blind to wires though - look at the black wire from the volume pot (LHS of photo) that I completely missed.

Some of the mustards looked a bit exposed so I found some mustard coloured heatshrink for the legs.
 

Wiring in the turret board (valve holders)

Finally.  The big job.

Starting with the valve holders (note the cut wires and trimmed ends building up at the bottom of the chassis).

There's no real secret to this.  Just work methodically, think about where the wires are going to run (direct like the shielded stuff or against the chassis like the teflon wire) and double check it's going to the right place before you cut, strip, tin, solder and trim.  Repeat about eight times for each valve holder.

The Cable Tie

The first of many, I suspect.

The unused secondary OT wires (for the 4 and 16 ohm outputs) were getting the way so I zip-tied them under the chassis.  I probably don't need them but I think it would be short-sighted to snip them off completely.  I'll probably cable tie them neatly inside the chassis when it's all finished.

That sinking feeling

Soldering onto the ground bus is quite tricky due to the thickness of the wire.  Even with my relatively decent soldering iron, it involves heating the joint for 3-4 seconds to get it to the right temperature, which is greater than the ideal two second maximum for a joint.

For a more technical explanation of relative thermal mass, here's 80s American Soddering Guy:



I'm not worried about heating bus wire or any of the teflon wires attaching to the ground bus, but I really didn't want to overheat the vintage mustard cap that connects directly to the bus.  The solution is to use a crocodile clip as a heatsink:

The croc clip conducts all the heat away from the cap and removes any chance of overheating.  Simple, cheap and effective.

Tickling round the edges

No real progress this evening, just a bit of prep for the final push.

Added the wires that will go from the pots to the ground bus (and fixed the cap that was going to the wrong lug of the volume pot on the tremolo channel).  Still need a bit of thin bus wire from the tremolo channel input jacks to the main ground bus.

Turret board fully wired and bolted in place:

I did a bit of retwisting of the valve heater wiring and I'm a bit happier with the main run of it now.  Now just need to find a way of holding it in place.  All the wires from the turret board are in place and run approximately to the right valve / pot.  Spotted a wire I've missed from the normal channel vol pot to C1 which will be a bugger to add.  Glad I spotted it though.

Ready for the final wiring at the weekend.