Starting project needed...

[keantoken]

I just got a soldering station hooked up (not the brand). Look at my thread here for an idea of what I have:

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showt...71#post1039071

I am needing an idea of what to make first, hopefully a simple but good preamp or something like that. It needs to be possible to point-to-point solder it because I don't have a way of making boards yet .

Any suggestions are welcome!

[AndrewT]

Hi
how about:-
a 12way stepped attenuator.
If you gang two together, you can get small steps over a large range of attenuation.
I saw one recently that used a pair of 12step as a mono fed from a 6step that was stereo. So just three knobs for a -60db range in 1db steps and with a fine balance control built in.

If this is a success you can build opamp or discrete buffers to condition the signal into and out of the attenuator.

Voila, a pre-amp!

[keantoken]

Sounds simple enough... Is an attenuator like a POT except with switches with pre-defined resistances? All I have in my area for components is Radio Shack and North Texas Distributers...
I have a profound lack of knowledge, yet in some cases I know much more than the average person... It's just how my brain clicks, I guess...

[pinkmouse]

This is a great kit and will give you lots of good soldering practice.

[Nordic]

Small projects are invaluable in helping you establish new sources for components etc... basic things like vero/stripboards can be usefull for prototyping small circuits without haveing to straight away learn how to produce PCBs (I admit, even with haveing the facilities for photoetching, I still end up doing most of my PCBs with a black marker.

I would suggest once you have some stripboard you tackle some battery driven stuff like headphone amps... once again, invaluable lessons and practice in soldering cheap components before you get to the bigger stuff... those kind of circuits are much more resilient and can deal with reversed polarities and all kinds of newbie mistakes without letting the smoke out of $10 chips...

When you move on to bigger things small mistakes can be very disheartening, costly or even lethal.

I started with chipamps then did a valve based circuit and then went back to battery powered circuits, now I feel I have things under control... suddenly accurate measuring tools have value to me whereas in the past they were just used to identify components quickly and take the odd voltage measurement, and I have a burning desire for a scope as I now not only understand what I can do with it, but can atualy see myself using it to clear up stuff which is basicaly guesswork without it.

Oh as for a bigger project, my first P2P was Nuuk's IGC
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/nuukspot/...gainclone.html

Welcome to a very rewarding hobby, been at it for a bit more than a year... and my house is slowly filling up with usefull completed projects...