This weekend I started work on my Jaycar (mk 1) Theremin kit.
I haven't assembled an electronics kit for 20 years, although way back when I was taught how by my father, who was an electronics technician once upon a time. I was surprised how much came back to me, actually. But, I took the precaution of starting on the kit while visiting my friend Gene, who is an electronics technician and repairman for a living, and had kindly agreed to be my advisor on the project.
Some initial impressions:
* The manual comes with a guide to identifying the various parts that are included with the kit. Not all the parts are shown. Some parts I had to ask Gene about, some I had to guess at. ("This must be the part that goes in that spot, it's the only thing that's the right shape...") One part just seemed to make no sense, we eventually guessed it must be the jack for the external power supply.
* The resistors are, as normal, labeled with color bands, and the manual provides a handy chart to look up the pattern of colors. It fails to tell you in which order the colors are read, although that's not a big deal because I don't think they work in reverse. Also, a problem I've always had with resistors is staring at them and wondering "is that red, orange, or brown?" Ultimately I did the obvious ones first ("hmm, it says there are six of this kind with brown black black black brown, and there are only six of one kind and it looks like brown black black black brown, so that must be it...") and then figured out the rest by process of elimination.
* I *tried* to use a 15w soldering iron, but really, the solder needed 30w.
* The solder really likes to follow the circuit traces on that board. Despite careful soldering, and despite that Gene says I actually did a pretty good job, this created a lot of spots that looked like solder bridges, but aren't really. I had to keep referring to the picture of the board in the manual to make sure that spots that looked like a solder bridge were actually okay.
* They don't explain well how to read the circuit board to figure out what part goes where, and I think a few of their markings may not have been entirely standard for U.S. norms. Some guessing was involved, even with Gene's professional help, although it wasn't too bad.
* The capacitors had another lookup table, by which you could look up what was written on the capacitor in one column (it didn't say which, and it would only match part of the very long numbers written on some of the capacitors) and then something in one of the other columns (it didn't say which) would be what was printed on the circuit board. This was helpful, but insufficiently obvious.
All in all, I think the kit is a very nice and relatively easy kit for anyone who has any experience assembling circuit boards and is willing to take a few tiny leaps of faith, but would be very bewildering for a beginner on their own.
So, on that first evening of work I soldered all the parts onto the board. I haven't made any attempt to install it in its case yet. Next time I visit Gene I'm going to rather loosely install it in its case, just for testing purposes, and then as soon as it's working I'm going to sit down with Gene and we're going to discuss modding the board and making a much nicer wood case for it.
In an unrelated note, some months ago I bought a (used) Moog Concertmate MG-1 (http://www.vintagesynth.com/moog/mg1.shtml) synth on ebay, broken. The seller was blunt that it didn't turn on. It consequently was selling for about 1/4 what similar units were selling for in working order and poor cosmetic condition. I figured, "doesn't turn on" is probably either really bad or really trivial, and I'd take a bet on it. So, I dropped that off with Gene while I was visiting him about the Jaycar. Good news: he called me on monday to tell me he'd opened the synth, and that inside it's in pristine condition, all original equipment, e
I haven't assembled an electronics kit for 20 years, although way back when I was taught how by my father, who was an electronics technician once upon a time. I was surprised how much came back to me, actually. But, I took the precaution of starting on the kit while visiting my friend Gene, who is an electronics technician and repairman for a living, and had kindly agreed to be my advisor on the project.
Some initial impressions:
* The manual comes with a guide to identifying the various parts that are included with the kit. Not all the parts are shown. Some parts I had to ask Gene about, some I had to guess at. ("This must be the part that goes in that spot, it's the only thing that's the right shape...") One part just seemed to make no sense, we eventually guessed it must be the jack for the external power supply.
* The resistors are, as normal, labeled with color bands, and the manual provides a handy chart to look up the pattern of colors. It fails to tell you in which order the colors are read, although that's not a big deal because I don't think they work in reverse. Also, a problem I've always had with resistors is staring at them and wondering "is that red, orange, or brown?" Ultimately I did the obvious ones first ("hmm, it says there are six of this kind with brown black black black brown, and there are only six of one kind and it looks like brown black black black brown, so that must be it...") and then figured out the rest by process of elimination.
* I *tried* to use a 15w soldering iron, but really, the solder needed 30w.
* The solder really likes to follow the circuit traces on that board. Despite careful soldering, and despite that Gene says I actually did a pretty good job, this created a lot of spots that looked like solder bridges, but aren't really. I had to keep referring to the picture of the board in the manual to make sure that spots that looked like a solder bridge were actually okay.
* They don't explain well how to read the circuit board to figure out what part goes where, and I think a few of their markings may not have been entirely standard for U.S. norms. Some guessing was involved, even with Gene's professional help, although it wasn't too bad.
* The capacitors had another lookup table, by which you could look up what was written on the capacitor in one column (it didn't say which, and it would only match part of the very long numbers written on some of the capacitors) and then something in one of the other columns (it didn't say which) would be what was printed on the circuit board. This was helpful, but insufficiently obvious.
All in all, I think the kit is a very nice and relatively easy kit for anyone who has any experience assembling circuit boards and is willing to take a few tiny leaps of faith, but would be very bewildering for a beginner on their own.
So, on that first evening of work I soldered all the parts onto the board. I haven't made any attempt to install it in its case yet. Next time I visit Gene I'm going to rather loosely install it in its case, just for testing purposes, and then as soon as it's working I'm going to sit down with Gene and we're going to discuss modding the board and making a much nicer wood case for it.
In an unrelated note, some months ago I bought a (used) Moog Concertmate MG-1 (http://www.vintagesynth.com/moog/mg1.shtml) synth on ebay, broken. The seller was blunt that it didn't turn on. It consequently was selling for about 1/4 what similar units were selling for in working order and poor cosmetic condition. I figured, "doesn't turn on" is probably either really bad or really trivial, and I'd take a bet on it. So, I dropped that off with Gene while I was visiting him about the Jaycar. Good news: he called me on monday to tell me he'd opened the synth, and that inside it's in pristine condition, all original equipment, e
