Metal Chassis

[Toys4Boys]

Wondering why Bottlehead doesn't offer a more traditional chassis option, such as metal with front facing selectors? I love the wood but for an integrated amp or a pre-amp and to fit it into my rack the front facing controls is a big plus!

[Paul Birkeland]

It is much, much harder to build a point-to-point component into a traditional metal chassis.  Accessing solder joints can be a real challenge, and you may end up needing to take the whole thing apart to get access to joints you've missed.  It's also very convenient that for most of our kits, you can build them with the chassis plate flipped over in the wood base.

Of course since it's DIY, you aren't absolutely required to use our chassis if you don't want to.

[Toys4Boys]

Thanks Paul, figured you guys had a good reason, still

[EricS]

I copied the Bottlehead philosophy of building my 300B tube amp (a Paul Joppa update of Joe Roberts update of a venerable Western Electric 91A design) on a single metal plate and I’m very appreciative that I did.  There were countless times that I just turned the top plate upside down in the wooden chassis so I could make some live measurements and perform some tweaks.  It made things super simple to work on and all of the parts and solder joints were readily accessible.  A few images are here: https://forum.bottlehead.com/index.php?topic=11749.msg118752#msg118752

Images of the upside down plate on the test base are on the next page.