Just finished!!!!!!

[Jupiter4studio]

Hey guys. Here's some pics of the Seventh Circle pre's I just finished. This was the first real DIY project that I've taken on and I had a blast. On top of that, they sound amazing!!!!!! 4 - N72's and 4 - A12's.


Starting...

Resistors

Some Caps and switches

Nice and heavy

Input... this one was a bitch!!!!!

Finished N72

4 N72's on the left and 4 A12's on the right


Let me know what you think. After the time it took to do these I don't know what to do with myself now that they are done. Gonna have to find another project. A producer friend of mine came by my studio to test them with me and he fell in love. Maybe after Christmas I'll be building some for him.

Steve

[tele_player]

Excellent! They all worked immediately? Congratulations!

One comment. In the second photo, I can see quite a variety of soldering quality on the resistors. More practice is needed - I don't know if this was one of your first ones, or the last one. Too much or too little solder, and blobs instead of the perfect cone - this is how you get cold solder joints which need to be touched up.

This is not a negative criticism - just a comment from an old tech.

[Jupiter4studio]

Excellent! They all worked immediately? Congratulations!

One comment. In the second photo, I can see quite a variety of soldering quality on the resistors. More practice is needed - I don't know if this was one of your first ones, or the last one. Too much or too little solder, and blobs instead of the perfect cone - this is how you get cold solder joints which need to be touched up.

This is not a negative criticism - just a comment from an old tech.

This was the first N72. I took pics when I was assembling it and then got too involved with the rest to get the camera out again. I can assure you that my soldering got better as I went along. Thanks for the critique, much appreaciated. No offense taken.

Steve

[cletus]

Awesome! I'm totally stoked to see you have completed a whole rack full of pre's as your first DIY project! My post " SCA Pre's for First Time DIYer" has not gotten a reply yet but in it I was asking wether or not there were any first time success stories. I'm glad to see there are! I can't wait to get started on some kits myself. I've soldered cables before but nothing on a circuit board. I have to wait until i get a few more mics cuz I can't justify having a bunch of pre's w/o mics to match. I already have two API 512c's so I'll be getting a couple of A12's to use with them for drums, 4 N72's, and 2 J99's! How long did it take you to finish an A12 and an N72? Congratulations bro!
PEACE!!!!

[Jupiter4studio]

Awesome! I'm totally stoked to see you have completed a whole rack full of pre's as your first DIY project! My post " SCA Pre's for First Time DIYer" has not gotten a reply yet but in it I was asking wether or not there were any first time success stories. I'm glad to see there are! I can't wait to get started on some kits myself. I've soldered cables before but nothing on a circuit board. I have to wait until i get a few more mics cuz I can't justify having a bunch of pre's w/o mics to match. I already have two API 512c's so I'll be getting a couple of A12's to use with them for drums, 4 N72's, and 2 J99's! How long did it take you to finish an A12 and an N72? Congratulations bro!
PEACE!!!!

I've done some soldering as well, but nothing major. I ordered 2 N72's to start out with. When they came and I saw all the parts in the kit I will admit, I was a little intimidated but I took a deep breath and started to part out the resistors and caps. I took my time with everything and it came out fine. Those first 2 took me about 3 days to finish. When I tested them I was sold. EVERYTHING sounded better through them. Before the N72's, the best pre's I had were 4 ch. of the Sytek with the Burr Browns and 4 ch. of HHB Radius40. Not that there's anything wrong with either of those but the n72 was SO MUCH BETTER in every way. I did a bunch of test recording on different sources with all 3 pres. Kick, snare, overheads, clean guitar w/roland jc120, od guitar w/fender hotrod delux, heavy gain guitar w/marshall jcm200 and boogie dual rec and in every case the n72 won and won big. I knew that i needed to finish this rack. So I oredered 2 more n72's and 4 a12's.
When the new kits came I started off with the a12's. The first one took me about 4 hours to do and by the time I did the 4 th it was down to 2 hours. The final 2 n72's took about 5 or 6 hours each. The biggest thing I can recommend is to stay organized. And don't rush. Make sure you follow the directions and use the tools for the job at hand. Buy a good wire stripper. I didn't think it was a big deal, I always stripped wire before with either a blade or my teeth but when you're stripping wire on the transformer you only really get one chance so do it right and buy a stripper. Hand test all the resistors. This takes time but don't trust your eyes on the color coding.
I say get the kits now if you have the $$$$$$$. Whatever mics you have will sound better and what ever mics you get in the future will sound great. The first test I did with each on was just talking into it with a 57 and headphones. It sounded huge just on my lousy talking voice. I plugged it into my other pre's to see the difference and I couldn't believe it.

Steve