Bottlehead Forum
Bottlehead Kits => BeePre => Topic started by: caffeinator on February 18, 2013, 04:58:46 AM
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Has anyone else noticed the 9-pin sockets seem a very tight fit in the chassis holes?
I was starting mechanical assembly last night and one socket required some pushing to get through, while the other wouldn't go in at all. I can enlarge the holes a smidge to accommodate, but just wondered if this is a common issue.
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I had to do just that on a ST-70 rebuild about 20 years ago. Luckily I was on a construction project at that time and I got a reamer from the Electricians (a conduit reamer). With a buddy holding the chassis I slowly, carefully brought the hole to the needed diameter.
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We seem to be experiencing a tolerance variation in the nine pin sockets we have been sourcing. A rat tail file will usually take the hole size up the few thou needed without messing up the look of the hole. We will enlarge the cutouts on future panel runs to allow for this.
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We did also notice quite some variation on the four pin sockets we last purchased. We were actually able to send a number of them back after we discovered it was an issue.
On the 4-pin sockets, it turned out that the bottom ceramic disc was out of round, and had been cast as an ellipse that would no longer fit through the chassis plate.
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My quick and dirty fix was to mount them from underneath with the retaining ring underneath as well - they seem to fit okay, though I have yet to run the fasteners up tight to see if they will snug up satisfactorily.
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I had to enlarge the socket holes
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Caff' how does it look, mounting the sockets from underneath?
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It looks good from the top, but the bottom isn't perfect - the fasteners don't land squarely on a flat surface - they contact the retaining ring first. They will snug up, though, and retain the ground tab and terminal strip. Hopefully the pictures will illustrate that.
I may end up finding my tapered reamer and enlarging the holes instead, just to be sure things snug up well and maintain good ground connections.
It seems my 4-pin socket holes are kind of tight, too. Guess I'll have to search the garage for those reamers after all...
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Had the same issue on one of my paramounts. Some 180 grit sandpaper and about 5 minutes and it fit like a champ.
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Well, it looks better than I thought. That's good, and besides the tubes cover the area to some extent anyway.
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My nine pin was tight - used some sandpaper on the hole.
I found some time to work on this build yesterday and today as other work let up.
The build has been going great! The instructions are to the point and consistent.
The wire measurements are very good. The components are nice quality - heatsinks,
jacks, tarnsformers.
I like the voltage check part way through. Don't know if there is more than one.
Even if it was *only* for saftey, it was nice to know that I hadn't messed something up
so far.
I didn't remember that the parts weren't sorted by boards before, but it was very nice
nevertheless.
There seem to be more helpful statemets to prevent mistakes, e.g., "the stripe on the capacitors
should all be facing left." And I like the one about the heatsink pins - "don't worry about
getting these joints perfect, its only for strength."
-Dave
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Thanks for the sandpaper suggestion - I was able to get the 4-pins in with some rather determined sanding...I'm icing my forearm with a cold beverage just as a precaution.
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I should not have made it sound so easy with sandpaper.
A file might be better.