2A3 GSG complete

[tmbg]

[Geek]

Beautiful!

[tmbg]

Thanks! This is my "rough draft" chassis. I didn't want to spend the money or wait for shipping on a hammond box.

The top plate is 12ga steel that I had lying around, and I CNC plasma cut all the holes except the power switch and lamp, which I forgot about until after :)

The box is made from bamboo flooring planks. I've been working on re-flooring my house, and I have a PILE of flooring lying around. I cut the miters sloppily on a cheap, badly set up miter saw, and the fit isn't fantastic. I rounded the top with a router. I debated between making a steel plate for the rear connectors and just setting them in the wood. I ended up setting them in the wood because it gives me ground isolation.

I bought a lock miter router bit, and if I can get it set up, I'm going to build a nicer box with tighter corners. Also I want to cut a new top plate, and make it a more standard size and do a better job with paint.

[tmbg]

Here's a video of me cutting a new top plate for the next chassis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3rhhnSkbfw

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Working on the new lock-mitered box

[Shannon Parks]

I also see Jim Hagerman's Kickstarter Bugle2 phono stage there! Very nice setup.

Did you follow a particular thread on the forums for the 2A3 build, or do your own?

Shannon

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I followed your 2A3 manual from the post at the top of the forum pretty closely. I bought cheapy $70/pr Sino power tubes, a sovtek 6SL7, and a JJ 5U4GB. Coupling caps are .56u MKPs from Angela. James 6112HS OPT, Hammond 302AX power.

I have the Bugle2, and also a Boozehound Labs preamp with all russian PIO caps in the passive RIAA eq.

To the left of the Bugle in that photo is an AMB gamma1/gamma2 24/192 DAC. Under the amp is a preamp made from AMB parts... It's got a sigma22 power supply, a pair of alpha20 linestages, a delta1 relay stepped stereo attenuator, and an arduino to control the attenuator. The knob on the front is an optical encoder with pushbutton. In normal mode, it controls the volume by switching the attenuator via I2C. I also have an old klipsch sub from a computer 5.1 setup, and it had this goofy external control box. I figured out that it just spoke I2C to an attenuator chip in the amp inside the sub. I can hook it up to the preamp, and when I push the encoder pushbutton, the arduino switches over to controlling sub level.

Current speakers I'm using with the GSG are fostex FE126 in the recommended folded horn cabs. I have a pair of Alpair 10p ordered, and I'm going to build Pensil 10p boxes for them.

Right now the weak link in my system is that $70 Pyle turntable. I have a uturn audio orbit plus on order, but they've been pretty slow to ship :) I really can't wait to get that in.

However, right now everything but the turntable I built... this means I really need to build a turntable :D

[tmbg]

mkII chassis is looking pretty good, but there's some flaws. I envision a mkIII in my future :)