Slo Clone Build Preparation Part2, Cross checking components (More Boring Stuff)

Exhibit B - The Source of all Truth

A long evening spent taking Exhibit A (Hence know as "The Box of Plenty") and matching all the bits in it to the list of parts needed for the amp. The list, Exhibit B (Hence known as "The Source of all Truth") is the parts list for the build.

Tube stuff, sockets, shields etc

Loads of things that need to be sorted and checked

Friday (2 days ago) I received 2 boxes of stuff from Mouser and from Tube Town along with an avalanche of screws and other small knickknacks. The point of this exercise was to take these boxes of stuff, envelopes of mystery, and to put them into the Box of Plenty, and then go through each section of the list marking off what I'd got, and hopefully ending up with a full quota of parts and not having to place any panic orders.

Calm down Screwfixphiliacs, go take a cold shower, these screws are not for you.

One mistake I made was that when I ordered, I didn't double check what I'd ordered against The Source of all Truth. Now whether down to impatience, being a bit ditsy or just overconfidence or over tiredness when placing the order, the end result is always the same, spend more time getting it right so you spend less time cleaning up the mess afterwards. But we all know that isn't fun, and quite frankly none of this is glorious or exciting, but mess this up, and it'll just lead to disappointment/panic later down the line, kind of imagine a sad faced lunatic running around in circles brandishing a soldering iron of defeat whilst muttering profanities to themselves. Not a good look.

The second mistake was that I didn't update The Source of all Truth when ordering. As it's an excel spreadsheet, there should be no excuses. I should have added a column with "part ordered". So it became the Source of almost all Truth, which just isn't as catchy. There were some things I had to find that weren't available any more, and some resistors that were out of stock and had a long restock wait. I should have noted what I replaced them with, and updated the list. This would have saved me a lot of cross checking.

Useful supplies for sorting stuff

Next mistake was that I should have taken the capacitore values on the order, and put them on the list, to save having to convert from nano to micro Farad all the time and figure out which was which. Would have made the process faster.

A few usefull things to have at this stage:
- A Pen/Marker, so you can write stuff
- Stickers, so you can stick them to bags and write on them
- A metric crapton of small plastic bags, to put a component in, and to stick a label on.

Anyway, all the "I should have paid more attention in class" stuff aside, the process went as follows:

- separate into piles of resistors / capacitors / switches / jacks / weird stuff
- start with pile of resistors
- grab a bag
- find the corresponding entry or entries on the Source of Truth
- if one component in the bag, mark the bag with resistor number
- if multiple ones, separate them into single bags, mark each resistor number on each (eg R21, R22 etc)
- repeat above process for the capacitors
- repeat for all the other parts
- whilst going through the list, tick of each component that is present.

So, after all that, I've ended up realising:

- I forgot to order some components
- Some of the resistors were only rated at 1/4w, whilst they were correct voltage rating, they should have been 1/2w or more. I'd thought they looked a bit small, which is what tipped me off, and lo and behold after consulting Tony (Henceforth referred to as "The Oracle") it transpired I needed to upgrade.
- Should have picked the power capacitors I wanted and not ended up with in some cases them in triplicate.

Everything sorted into the Box of Plenty. Almost Victorious.

I also ended up with a choice of power capacitors (the big big fat round things), with a choice between standard Nichicon from Mouser, and some rather nice F+T ones. The F+T ones are pricier, so I'll go with them and keep the others as backup. Also got a nice Mallory cap as well, so I'll be using that, as well as some sexy Sprague capacitors. I doubt I'll hear a difference, but you know, cork sniffing and all that.

Now some praise to RS Components. I've ended up ordering the missing bits from them, and they've worked out a tad cheaper, even if I had to buy some things in bulk (will just have them for the next build). It's also really easy to search on their site, so that's pleasing as well (once you get to the component type you need) with things like Voltage rating, Wattage, tolerance, all selectable. Next time I do a build I think I'll end up ordering from them, now I've got some more confidence on this. They also offer free next day shipping, which is really cool as well, so they score bonus points for that.

I also discovered I'd totally forgotten to get a pilot light. Handy thing to tell if the power is on or not, so ended up getting that from Hotrox with a choice of colours. So it'll either be purple or green. In any case, nice to have a choice.

Oh, and I forgot the IEC plug, another handy thing to get if you want to be able to plug it into to the mains power. Also stupid.

And finally, completely forgot about getting grommets. In fairness, it was The Oracle that reminded me, so I'll have to go hunting for those, as well as some isolation washers, which I also completely forgot, oh, and I am going to need some cable ties to help hold the huge ass capacitors on the power board...

All of the above things I forgot where on the Source of all Truth bar the grommets, so I really only have myself, impatience, and being slightly overwhelmed by the parts list to blame. I think this is a beginners learning curve thing though, and at least I have a Source of all Truth which has made things easier.

Tonight I am going to separate the components into Preamp, Power amp, Tube socket and chassis ones and also make a cardboard template of the PCBs, more on that later.

If I were to do this again, I'd try the follwoing tactic:
- Make a Source of Truth list with component values, arrange into sections as per the current List, of Resistors / Capacitors / Sockets / Chassis components / Pots / Variable Resistors / Light Dependent Reistors / Hardware
- Look up each part required, list the sirte to be ordered from, and the part number, and value the site displays
- Have the excel sheet do some magic where it can condense the order into X of component Y etc, to make ordering easier
- Cross check 2-3 times BEFORE placing the order
- Order as much as possible from RS COmponents, then Mouser, The Tube Town, then miscellaneous sites
- Cross check again

Other lessons learnt:
- Some of the parts are cheaper from wholesale electrical suppliers like RS, this is tru for the slo knos I got. They also sell more variety of parts as well.
- Try and order as much as possible from as few sources as possible
- Lookup all the electrical components one by one, and get the tolerance and wattage rating correct before adding them.
- Update the Source of all Truth at all times, every time something changes.

Anyway, this is almost the last of the boring bits. Once I've templated the boards as cardboard size replicas with mounting holes marked, Iand once I have all the rest of the component parts I forgot, then I can go off and start some soldering, beginning with the Power PCB as that has the least components on it.