Hamptone JFET kit...1st DIY attempted

shedshrine

Active Member
Kind of a journal entry thing from a few years ago. This was a dual mic pre for recording, but still relevant and hopefully inspiring to those looking to get into DIY.
________________
No soldering or electrical experience really at all. Well, there was the one time when I had to reattach a wire to a guitar pot with a woodburning tool, but we won't talk about that...

Had had the kit sitting around for about 2 months now, getting my nerves and head around what I was about to undertake. Man I was intimidated by this box of zip lock bags with resistors and capacitors and all.

Perused all the soldering irons Weller makes online, and on a friends recommendation picked up a wse51, along with a little workstation jobby with the alligator clips and magnifying glass, and one of those spring-armed extending lamps (again with the magnifying glass) that clamp on to a desk too. Couldn't find the exact solder Scott (Hamptone) uses, which sounded sexy as it was lead free and had silver in it, I just got some "regular" stuff, and put a fan a few feet away on a low setting to blow the fumes out the garage door. Oh, and I got some brush on liquid flux.

As far as using a multimeter, I really didn't have a clue, I just turned the little dial until I got a reading like one of the resistors was supposed to have, and that setting worked for identifying the rest of them.(except for two, but they were the only ones left so it was obvious where they went). The sheets with the layouts are easy to read so you can get the right resistors in the right locations without confusion if you don't rush it.

So as not to chance $#@ing up the board from the git-go, I bought a cheap breadboard from Radio Shack and a pack of resistors to practice. That Weller works so well, is so easy to handle, I was getting good joint results pretty quick ,and decided to go for it. "Populate" the board, turned it over and went to town. I just tried to make sure I got the wire hot a little before touching the solder, and boom, it was making nice little volcanos. I couldn't find in the Weller instructions or on Scott's site the temperature to use, but the warnings section said that accidentally flung solder can be around 700 degrees, so I set the Weller to that. A little hotter was where I eventually ended up setting it.

That's as far as I've gotten now, but I really was only scared of the soldering for some reason, but it's really not hard if you take it slow. I'm hoping this will help someone else, because this is exactly what i wanted to read when I was first looking into making these Hamptone preamp kits.

Just want to put together a small streamlined but kick-arse signal chain and a few other nice components in one small rack thats easy to fire up and get busy with. Getting there.
________
I researched the Wellers at all-spec.com, but finally decided to buy from a local electronics place so I could see what they had in person and ask questions.

The Weller WES51 was recommended to me by a friend who works in electronics, and he said this was a good basic workhorse.

I got the weller because it's a respected name, and I just KNEW
icon_eek.gif
I was going to love DIY, so I wanted a good soldering iron, no cutting corners for a cheap one there.

Yeah, the pics on the Hamptone site are really great for checking yourself. Like what a good solder joint looks like!
_________________

I probably get the prize for longest JFET construction window. I got the thing, stared at the box for a few weeks, and finally did a couple hours on it before Thanksgiving. Every weekend, (or so) since then I'd putter away for a couple hours until my mind would wander, and I'd call it a day and turn of the soldering iron. It was fun, but I have to admit a little stressful.

When I finally turned it on for the first time (no variac, didn't fully test with multimeter) I flipped the switch and stepped back, ready for some kind of pop or crackle or poof. Nothing, no lights, nothing. I grabbed the multi, and poked around and found the juice was not getting past the fuse box. I had eyed the fuse when I put it in, and it looked fine, so I thought maybe I'd kept the heat on near the plastic housing too long when I had soldered it in and had somehow melted plastic over the contact points or something. so I reach for the iron to take it out. BZZZNNTT!! of course I hadn't turned the thing off or unplugged it yet. Fried my power strip circuit, and took a little chunk out of the Weller iron's tip, but the Hamptone was fine as there was no current reaching it anyway.

So a new fuse later, and presto, Hamptone JFET pilot light blazing away. I ran a SR-16 drum machine through the DI and ran the outs into my nearby Eden bass head (WT-330) as it had a headphone out. First impression was it sounded big and had the sag of a tube amp, and the preset sounded slammin.

Encouraging comment received:

"Keep it up, man, you're going to love this pre! Mine actually worked on power-up...I didn't have a variac so decided to take the risk. I do have a year or so of DIY/kit experience, but Scott Hamptone has designed this kit so beautifully--everything FITS, it's all very elegant and clean--that it was hard to make a serious mistake. And my handful of questions were answered promptly and courteously.

DI'ed electric piano sounds like a million bucks. So do synths, and vocals of course."

 
Back
Top Bottom