At least 99% of my frustrations / errors can be traced back to being startled by young women lifting horses. 
Seriously... 90% of my errors are from not slowing down and/or thinking that I'm now 'good enough' to skip a basic check. Most recent ookup was exactly that. I was in a hurry. I wanted to re-mount my main PSU boards above the toroid. I thought... meh... no need for a variac check. It was working before... it's fine.
Oops. One of my K-nuts on the bottom of the board bit into a rail trace and shorted the negative rail to the bolt... to ground... zappo.
2 mins would have saved me 5 hours and some 💰
Seriously... 90% of my errors are from not slowing down and/or thinking that I'm now 'good enough' to skip a basic check. Most recent ookup was exactly that. I was in a hurry. I wanted to re-mount my main PSU boards above the toroid. I thought... meh... no need for a variac check. It was working before... it's fine.
Oops. One of my K-nuts on the bottom of the board bit into a rail trace and shorted the negative rail to the bolt... to ground... zappo.
2 mins would have saved me 5 hours and some 💰
Looking back at my first builds, not from here 😞, I realize that my first kits were a bit advanced for my skills at the time. With the benefit of having completed a few kits, still need to troubleshoot the first 2, I would suggest that anyone getting started should consider something like the ACA Mini. These are pretty quick, instant gratification 
, simple to build, Cheap and have the best support. As a second project the A Jzm is a great option, not only will it help develop one's skills, it's a nice step up from the ACA Mini, also you have the benefit of @ItsAllInMyHead's excellent build guide.
, simple to build, Cheap and have the best support. As a second project the A Jzm is a great option, not only will it help develop one's skills, it's a nice step up from the ACA Mini, also you have the benefit of @ItsAllInMyHead's excellent build guide.
The tools that gave me the most success, and the fastest progress, back in nineteenhundredandyesterday, were the DIY articles written by Nelson Pass, and the people on this forum.
My first attempts in this, were ugly as sin, had no box, speakers were made of whatever was available, but it by far had anything I could afford at the time beat by a mile, and it paved the way for a bit more ambitious projects later on.
Tools and what not, are really just nice to have. You can get very far with very little in that regard, especially if you go the PassDIY route.
My first attempts in this, were ugly as sin, had no box, speakers were made of whatever was available, but it by far had anything I could afford at the time beat by a mile, and it paved the way for a bit more ambitious projects later on.
Tools and what not, are really just nice to have. You can get very far with very little in that regard, especially if you go the PassDIY route.
To date I have built 8 kits, 5 work, 3 need troubleshooting. The units that went together smoothly and function are a Bottlehead Eros 2 phono pre, 2 ACA Minis, an A Jzm and a Pearl 3. Moral, just about anyone can market a kit, but many have poor documentation or support.
This is not to say that there weren't hiccups, but with appropriate support, props to Bottlehead and Pass DIY, the odds of success with the Pass kits is very high!
This is not to say that there weren't hiccups, but with appropriate support, props to Bottlehead and Pass DIY, the odds of success with the Pass kits is very high!
And let us not forget Old Colony, where I bought boards for Zen amp, preamp and bos pre! Still have them, unstuffed. Started building tubes....until original F5.