This weekend's DIY

Ikea..

Spent the last four to five days putting together a pair of G9-51X tube preamps.

Had a horid time with the hi-v components and in the process of powering them up blew 7 or 8 fuses in the power supply, created a small smoke stream and a moderate amount of ozone!

After some fiddling got one to work....just the odd crackle which hopefullly will disappear with tube burn-in.

Have some nice tubes from Christian Whitmore but haven't tried them as of yet.

Next weekend will rebuild the hi-v section of the second unit!

Cheers
Mac

Upcoming weekend:
Testing and servicing an EMT266 Limiter. A bit anxious how it looks inside. Has been stored under suboptimal conditions (too warm, too humid) and not been in use for long time...
Quite complex analog lookahead limiter/compressor, that is much higher quality than the net normally thinks (e.g. on purple sites...). If i remember it right, Haufe und Pikatron transformers, lavish psu in a separate chamber, Eurocard subrack which unfortunately is a bit prone to contact issues on the backplane. Huge amount of socketed LF356 opamps - also prone to contact issues after years/decades. Need to research which type they used in the later "X" variant with better specs by opamp upgrade (if anyone of you knows, which one it is, please reply here...)
Lots of sources for typical technical issues. But sounds awesome if you know how to use the "compression" mode. Fast broadcast brickwall/"concrete" limiter/compressor. Very little compression artifacts/color, nice subtle sonic fingerprint, most probably due to the quality transformers. Lets an SSL buscompressor look like a cheap noisy distortion machine.

Researching external circuitry requirements for NTP limiters (4 cards), i.e. psu, binary coded release circuit switches, stereo board (wtf - nothing online at all except the 179-400 schematic still. I was in hope that some some manual or service manual docs might have shown up the last years. Last time i spoke to ex-NTP people at DAG2000, they literally had - nothing.)
These limiters sound awesome. ZFT module in and Lundahls on the outputs VCA limiter. Earlier models with a discrete VCA daughterboard, later ones with DBX2151 chip. AFAIK the NTP 179-310B limiter cards have same pin layout to the 179-400, at least i hope so, there is no docs at all about these. I am wondering if they can be used also on bass, guitar or vocals - only heard them in the 2-bus, where they are a secret weapon, very classy - awesome...

This weekend i walked by my Ibanez RB-888 "black bean" Roadstar 2 bass and intuitively decided to convert it to fretless - ghetto style.
My goal was to do the conversion as immediatly, fast and cheap as possible - and without buying anything.

I removed the frets with 1-Euro pedicure scissors. I saw these a few days ago in a danish "1-Euro shop", it was perfectly made to get below the frets and rip them out. No heat applied to them. Time - 5 minutes.
I decided to get a cyanacrylate finish and use some type of artificial wood filling instead of going thru the time consuming cutting and sanding of veneer that i do not have at hand. So  i.e. wood/cellulose/anything like this powder glued into the fret cuts with the same cyanacrylate glue ("superglue", "second glue" in german, because it literally cures in seconds). The cyanacrylate glue also comes from an 1-Euro shop and costs, well, 1 Euro. It is very fluid, which is perfect for this kind of tasks. It seems to work as good as the very fluid expensive stuff that you can get in the hobby modelmaker shops that many recommended for this - but for a fraction of cost.
I did not care to do any special thing to the sides of the fret slots, these easily come up a bit here and there when you remove frets. This is totally normal. Everything is sanded later *after* applying the cyanacrylate. The main idea is having a very nice and cheap fretboard finish *fast*, this will not be visible as soon as the first layers of cyanoacrylic "laquer"/glue are applied.
After a few layers, which i applied very fast because they need minimal time to first go into the wood and then build up thin layers like glass clear laquer, i used a sanding sponge, the rougher side. For application of the cyanacrylate i use a piece of paper or cardboard, both works well because it works good to get the glue everywhere on the fretboard most equally thick. I rub the powder into the fret slots again and apply the next layer/s immediately.
If you spill some of this glue, use water on it immediately. This hardens the glue so fast, that it most probably breaks from the resulting tension of the fast polymerisation.
So far, it looks great and i invested less than half an hour all in all (made two long breaks to do other things, but this is *maybe' helping the thing a bit).
I ran out of cyanacrylate and did not get more yet, but perhaps it is already enough to finally sand and polish.
The sanding sponge is a great tool for this, so i manage to sand the fretboard without really changing the radius in a noticable way, and i did not even use a radius block for sanding.
Cyanacrykate glue cures very, very fast. If it is very fluid, it is a matter of seconds to few minutes. Much faster than polyurethan that many use for this task.
Maybe i get ready with it this evening if it turns out i get ig to a good state without a further cyanacrylate layer. Depends, how well todays sanding result turns out.
After the two sides of the sanding sponge i will already use 1000 sanding paper, wet.
Thereafter a polish is applied. If you have it there, use some car polish, they often are very good on guitar laquer. And the ghetto stuff for a fast polish without polish is, tataaaa, toothpaste. Especially the stuff for extra shiny teeth. Great tiny polishing particles most of the time....
I did not have a good time the last weeks, also due to cluster headache, which also triggered me into melancholia (which is kind of a thing because i am bipolar type 1). This project i started to get fast results and high reward factor and cheer me up a bit. Works pretty good i guess....