Ceriatone DC30 update
The past couple of weeks have been busy with post-holiday activities and work, so I haven’t done much on the DC30. But I did get a chance to clean up my basement workbench over the weekend so that I can get going again. Nic at Ceriatone sent me a spare filter cap turret board and the caps, so the power supply section will be divided between the power-scaled output stage and the normal preamp stage. I still have to get my act together and order another choke and make a small turret board to hold the power scaling components, but the thing I need most at this point is time.
After cleaning out the basement, I was able to spend some time drilling holes in the chassis and mounting Tyco transistor sockets. You see, even though the London Power power scaling kit includes a MOSFET (IRFP350, if memory serves), I decided to use two IRF450s. The IRF450s are TO-6 packages that are easier to mount on the outside of the chassis where they will receive more air circulation and, hopefully, stay cooler. Instead of hard wiring the IRF450s to the power scaling circuit, I decided to use Tyco sockets, to allow for easy transistor replacement, and Aavid heat syncs, to allow for greater cooling. Using two MOSFETs in parallel rather than just one gives some degree of failover protection, and it also allows each device to run cooler. As you probably realized by now, cooling is a big concern.
Moving on to other news, I received the Ziricote I won on eBay. It’s a beautiful piece of wood and will make a stunning fascia for the DC30. I haven’t ordered the Zebrawood yet, but I’m not too concerned about that. What is becoming more of a problem is finding someone to actually build the cabinet. My plan was to contact a local cabinet maker I’ve known for some time and ask him to build it for me. Unfortunately, he’s semi-retired and, more to the point, wasn’t keen on taking on the kind of work that I want for the cabinet. My next thought was that I would rent a table saw, buy a dovetail jig, and build the cabinet myself. This plot was foiled simply because my local Home Depot doesn’t rent table saws, though I can get one from another local rental agency. I suspect this is the route I will go, though I am concerned about resawing the Ziricote for the fascia down from 15/16” to 3/8” or 7/16”.
Plan C is to farm the work to some other cabinet maker so emailed four shops today describing the project and asking if they would be willing to do the work. It will be interesting to see how many respond, and if any are interested. My other concern about Plan C is the price. I don’t want to total up how much this amp is costing me because I’m sure I could have just bought a very good, used amp for the same amount.
To be continued….