![]() Because unfortunately, the headphone circuit is integral to the amp’s operation: its ‘disengaged position’ allows the electrons to flow to the speaker taps. In hindsight, I should have tried harder to seat the thing. I got it desoldered ok (again with brute force, the part was toast), and finished the build. This means that when you assemble the chassis, the h/p jack isn’t in the right spot where its hole is. The part wasn’t seated down on the board like it needs to be. That’s the time to go slower.Īfter my replacement connector arrived in the mail (thanks Victor), I finished up the kit – and only then did I notice that the headphone jack wasn’t soldered well. You want to be more careful (while desoldering) not to damage the board itself.a ruined board spells a horrendous amount of rework! Please take your time: as you get deeper into the build you will naturally want to go faster. Of course, the part itself is easy enough to replace. Desoldering a part like this involves some brute force, and the part isn’t likely to survive. ![]() I soldered a seven pin connector into the eight pin position. When I saw this, an expletive was heard as far as neighbouring Oxford County. The bigger parts become anchored in, and removing them can be a bit of a nightmare. A part with three pins is a lot more difficult to desolder than a resistor or cap with two legs. Another general comment: the bigger the part, the more careful you need to be. “Take your time” is the best advice I can give here. The PCB is very well laid out and clear, and in general, there’s enough room to make soldering easy (there are a few tight spaces, but thankfully not too many). So keep soldering as you work through it. You don’t want to stuff the entire board, flip it over to start soldering, and have a dozen parts fall out. They don’t always tell you exactly when to solder, but you soon pick up on what’s happening. You just follow along in the order the instructions are written. Actually with the resistors you might want to solder some as you go, because there are so many. My technique was to stuff the board with a full set of parts (resistors, diodes, etc) and then solder that set before starting on the next set. You can count all the parts if you like, but the people who package these kits are fanatically attentive to detail, and the chances of encountering a miss are very low. Just take your time, enjoy each step and try not to race ahead. They’ve done everything you could think of (and more) to make each step as simple and clear as it can be. If something seems complex, you’re not looking. Novice builders especially should take note: look at the little icons on the PCB, look at the drawings in the manual – look for clues. This is likely the best audio documentation I’ve ever seen. The 32-page manual deserves special mention. Very tidy and professional – no surprise, this is Elekit. I may not be the world’s worst DIY’er, but I might be the most impatient!įirst off, the kit arrived with everything nicely bundled and the parts sorted and arranged into their own bags. But wherever I encountered a problem, the problem was me. So I think going into this amp build, I was feeling “confident” I’d have an eas(ier) time with the 8600, and it turned out to be a little more challenging than I expected. There are aspects of this amp kit that are more complex than the TU-8500 preamp, which I built last year – but the preamp had more PCB’s, and tighter spacing overall. How did it go? Overall, I had a pretty smooth experience. What I’ll cover in this part will be the build process, and the upgrade to the Lundahl output transformers. So I ended up starting where everyone else would start. Elekit/VK needed it back, and Victor sent me a brand new kit. And in my mind, I’d thought (hoped?) that I’d be able to buy and keep that amp. ![]() That amp came to me fully assembled, as a “Rev.2 prototype”. In Part 1 of this series, I covered (mainly) the Elekit TU-8600’s performance.
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