Ordered boothill 5e3 first build any advise

Yea, they will radiate heat so any separation will help.

 

Aww, man, I was going to be next to start one of these...

Seriously though, I'm curious - why did you elect to diy the chassis? Are you planning some control mods?

 

looks good. I'll def wire the heater to the side lugs. you can use cutoffs from your caps and resistors to link between the 22uf caps (top left of board) just a double check but you are going to put on the 4.7k resister on the bottom left side of the board right?

 

the one to the left. didnt even see the one in the shadow that threw me off.

 

Looking good Jason. Hey if you haven't got tubes I just posted this in the other build thread KCA has NOS GE 6v6 tubes with the "Fender" label on them, and for a few extra bucks you can get them matched to 1%. I got all NOS tubes for my build from them. I'm still waiting on my transformers and missing parts getting a bit anxious.

 

First and most important: do you understand how to do the safety earth & how to test it?

 

Jason the chassis looks good. It's nice to have resources that allowed you to DIY. Is you brother going to weld the sides on?

 

For the sake of other future builders - could you elaborate? I believe I know how this should go together, and I would use an ohmmeter to do a continuity check between plug and chassis, but are there other tricks/gotchas to be aware of?

 

First point is that the first time building even a simple circuit will seem like quite a complex task. The safety ground can't be just another item to tick off on a long list of tasks some of which you might forget or do badly if you're tired at the end of a long day. It's so important that it has to stand out on its own as a job with which you need to take special care.

Any time I've done this I've soldered a wire to an attachment which is bolted directly to the chassis. You don't want this to ever come loose (and it's always a good idea to give it a quick once over any time you open up an amp).

Soldering direct to the chassis is asking for trouble. Large masses of metal always increase the risk of a bad solder joint if they can suck heat away as fast as the iron can supply it.

To test: insert a fuse in the mains fuse holder and plug in the power cable to the amp (but not the mains...). A continuity test should give you a good ping to the earth pin on the mains plug from anywhere on the chassis.

We are all capable of making mistakes but you can't afford to make even one mistake with high voltage electricity. It's definitely a good idea to be a little bit obsessive and to self-consciously double and triple-check important parts of the circuit like this. That kind of patient attention to detail is what allows you to manage the risks.

 

What is the wire you are using for your ground bus? And does it have to go up to the jack or can it go to a dedicated ground screw in the chassis?