New house, new adventures, new problems

[Brandon Hartwick]

Over the last little while I got the chassis 100% drilled and ready for components. Last night I sandblasted the chassis and today I put down the base coat of grey to match the speakers and AV cabinet. The wood in the photos below is wormy maple that will be used to wrap the chassis. I also made some 3D printed transformer covers last night, but these are just a concept at this point.

 

[Brad225]

Grate job Brandon, as usual.
Can't wait to see everything finished.

 

[Robert D]

That looks great and very professional. You're going to have members here asking you to make stuff for us!

 

[Reverb]

What's next? Your space is really coming together. I'm impressed.

 

[Leporello]

Over the last little while I got the chassis 100% drilled and ready for components. Last night I sandblasted the chassis and today I put down the base coat of grey to match the speakers and AV cabinet. The wood in the photos below is wormy maple that will be used to wrap the chassis. I also made some 3D printed transformer covers last night, but these are just a concept at this point.

I built the M125 kits. The only customization I did is paint the transformers gold and add XLR connectors. But they turned out to be a poor match for my CLS2’s, the most abusive impedance curve of the full range ESL line. Highs totally rolled off. They did sound ok with the Ascents. Hope you do better with yours.

 

[Brandon Hartwick]

I built the M125 kits. The only customization I did is paint the transformers gold and add XLR connectors. But they turned out to be a poor match for my CLS2’s, the most abusive impedance curve of the full range ESL line. Highs totally rolled off. They did sound ok with the Ascents. Hope you do better with yours.

The CLS has probably 6X the panel area of my speakers so I'm not really surprised they didn't cut it. I had these built and running about 4 years ago and they sounded great from what I can remember so I expect they should work fine. I'll compare them against my Jeff Rowland model 1 that I'm currently using once they're up and running.

 

[Brandon Hartwick]

What's next? Your space is really coming together. I'm impressed.

Thanks

After these tube amps are complete and running I'm going to tackle my Class A First Watt F6 kit that I bought a couple years ago when they were back in stock. Maybe make new lights for the stereo room since the existing chandelier is too bright and ugly.

 

[Brandon Hartwick]

Chassis painted to match the speakers and cabinet. Very happy with how these turned out, they're currently sitting in front on the heat register at home so the oil based paint can cure a little faster.

Some people might ask "why tremclad and not automotive paint?". I have been using tremclad for many different projects for years now, including painting entire cars, they offer an easy to apply and very durable oil based finish. May automotive finishes are water based and require specific conditions to get good results, they're also extremely expensive.