Hi,
great skills again. A good quality finish of the rough brushing of the Aluminum is very hard to achieve on a larger surface. I know of the many difficulties the casing manfacturers of the Purist devices I designed had and how many casings we rejected. Just a little too much pressure on the sander, just a slightly too used sanding belt/sheet, just a single metal chip sticking to the sanding sheet, just slightly too long sanding at edges or display cutouts .... and all the effort done striving for perfection is moot. After that experience I no longer wondered that only very few brands offer that kind of finish, even though it looks exceptionally good in black.
jauu
Calvin
ps. my preamp design orientated very much at T&A of that era. "Fidelity" was not in my focus, but I can spot certain similarities
btw. didn't I say .... 😉
great skills again. A good quality finish of the rough brushing of the Aluminum is very hard to achieve on a larger surface. I know of the many difficulties the casing manfacturers of the Purist devices I designed had and how many casings we rejected. Just a little too much pressure on the sander, just a slightly too used sanding belt/sheet, just a single metal chip sticking to the sanding sheet, just slightly too long sanding at edges or display cutouts .... and all the effort done striving for perfection is moot. After that experience I no longer wondered that only very few brands offer that kind of finish, even though it looks exceptionally good in black.
jauu
Calvin
ps. my preamp design orientated very much at T&A of that era. "Fidelity" was not in my focus, but I can spot certain similarities
btw. didn't I say .... 😉
Thank you Calvin.
I once was a custombike world champion, so i know how to do this and that. Brushing in the industry is nowadays done automatically on a machine with a felt roll. Today you can really get perfect results every time.
What is a real problem tho is anodizing in black. There is not a single company who can do black without a red tint. In 2010 when i took part in the competition, i sent test parts to more than 20 companies in Germany and all of them came back with a red tint. And what is especially sad is that the employees don't even recognize. I talked with them, showed them the red tinted black and they said it is normal, or even that there is no tint. I ended with having the parts anodized in the USA.
As far as my fronts are concerned, they are not perfect by any means. Opposite to yesterdays i like it when you can see things were made by hand. One should see the efforts put into a device. I find nowadays you can order anything on the Internet, like perfect PCBs, cases, CNC machines knobs etc... And i made the experience that people who come along have a high esteem for the charme of handmade things and stay longer, carefully investigating what i have done. And the talking is different. When i built devices with parts ordered from the internet, we talk about where i ordered and what the companies offer. When we talk about handmade parts, we talk about how i made them. And most of the time we exchange experiences about handcrafting.
For me that is like fine slow cooked "Rouladen" vs McDonalds 😉
T+A, yes i see similar buttons, but i remember they typically had rounded cast aluminum fronts and a sans serif font. What pushed me towards Fidelity and Sugden is the script font on yours. I think i still have a T+A CD1210R somewhere BTW.
BTW, yesterday i did a first test run with buffer attached. I measured clipping on the negative part of the wave at higher volumes. But only from the buffer. Something is wrong and i don't know what. Interestingly i couldn't hear it distort. Actually it sounds really great with loads of punch. Maybe my ears are not worth a penny any more 😄
I once was a custombike world champion, so i know how to do this and that. Brushing in the industry is nowadays done automatically on a machine with a felt roll. Today you can really get perfect results every time.
What is a real problem tho is anodizing in black. There is not a single company who can do black without a red tint. In 2010 when i took part in the competition, i sent test parts to more than 20 companies in Germany and all of them came back with a red tint. And what is especially sad is that the employees don't even recognize. I talked with them, showed them the red tinted black and they said it is normal, or even that there is no tint. I ended with having the parts anodized in the USA.
As far as my fronts are concerned, they are not perfect by any means. Opposite to yesterdays i like it when you can see things were made by hand. One should see the efforts put into a device. I find nowadays you can order anything on the Internet, like perfect PCBs, cases, CNC machines knobs etc... And i made the experience that people who come along have a high esteem for the charme of handmade things and stay longer, carefully investigating what i have done. And the talking is different. When i built devices with parts ordered from the internet, we talk about where i ordered and what the companies offer. When we talk about handmade parts, we talk about how i made them. And most of the time we exchange experiences about handcrafting.
For me that is like fine slow cooked "Rouladen" vs McDonalds 😉
T+A, yes i see similar buttons, but i remember they typically had rounded cast aluminum fronts and a sans serif font. What pushed me towards Fidelity and Sugden is the script font on yours. I think i still have a T+A CD1210R somewhere BTW.
BTW, yesterday i did a first test run with buffer attached. I measured clipping on the negative part of the wave at higher volumes. But only from the buffer. Something is wrong and i don't know what. Interestingly i couldn't hear it distort. Actually it sounds really great with loads of punch. Maybe my ears are not worth a penny any more 😄
Finally here is the finished crossover. I had to overcome some problems, like channels only partly working, but that was because of under etched traces. It took me a while to figure out what was wrong because the damaged traces were barely visible. But the circuit works really well now sound-wise. I will show some measurements and upload the shematics and PCBs once i find the time.
The case is build from 2mm aluminum. Folding was done at home. The front is 20mm aluminum, what allows for simple cutting threads from behind. The metal was hand grinded with 400 and 800 grid wet sand paper. For the surface finish i used zapon varnish. For labeling i used toner transfer.
The case is build from 2mm aluminum. Folding was done at home. The front is 20mm aluminum, what allows for simple cutting threads from behind. The metal was hand grinded with 400 and 800 grid wet sand paper. For the surface finish i used zapon varnish. For labeling i used toner transfer.
Often have parts anodized.
In fact my very first commercial project, in 1969, a guitar treble booster pedal, was housed in a cigarette pack sized Aluminum box I had anodized.
Guys laughed and didn't charge me (minimum order was 300kg) so they just tied my puny box to some industrial job they were doing.
"Boy, you do NOT get to choose colour, you'll get what we do next" ... which happened to be beautiful Royal Blue.
But then I learnt that deep neutral black was the worst colour to get ☹️ so most stop at what amounts to deep gray, not real black which turns reddish as you mention.
But one anodizer told me that in part it's due to alloy choice.
A friend was making "NEVE recording mixer channel strip" clones, mounted on long narrow aluminum chassis, black anodized, with all holes (pots switches even mounting holes) and labelling cut on a CNC machine.
This anodizer sent him to a certain shop to buy a certain alloy (which I don't remember now) and results were stunning.
I mention this, maybe you can ask around and find it.