Building a quickie in a different physical layout

royewest · 1975

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Offline royewest

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on: March 24, 2023, 07:16:52 PM
Dear Quickie Fans,

I moved to a new home office arrangement and was rummaging about in my closet as I was thinking how to set up music and discovered that I still have a Quickie kit that I never built, including the PJCCS. I have a Quickie that I did build that I'm using and loving in the new setup (runs into a S.E.X. amp which powers credenza Zu Druids at plenty wonderful volume for baroque delights and acoustic jazz), but I will confess that staring at the batteries is not compelling. I have had fun in the past building things like DACs and headphone amps into unusual enclosures (a Duplo lego brick with a lego Bob the Builder sitting on top wearing a set of tiny headphones, a very tight aluminum enclosure, &c.). So I was thinking of finding an attractive enclosure that I could build into where the tubes would be on top but the batteries would be hidden inside, and I might place the switches and RCA plugs on the back or sides or...

So the question: if I mess around with the distances on the point-to-point wiring, do I need to worry? I'm not talking anything crazy here, but you can imagine a couple centimeters of point-to-point connections extending to, say, 6 or 8 centimeters, mostly for the power and switches and plugs. I get that I might need to insulate some of the wires if they risk hitting each other, but are the wiring lengths critical for things like resistance or noise or "impedence" (whatever that is -- Dammit, Jim, I'm a writer, not an electrical engineer.)

Thanks in advance for any advice.

__Roy
Berkeley, USA



Offline Paul Joppa

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Reply #1 on: March 24, 2023, 08:18:59 PM
Length per se is not that critical. You don't have to deal with an in-box power transformer's magnetic hum field, but the real world is full of radio transmitters and magnetic fields. I would at least twist the wire pairs from each battery to the circuit, if they are long.

You could put an IEC inlet on the box connected to nothing inside and surprise your friends by pulling the plug while it keeps running ... or add a small AC power supply at a later date.  :^)

The original prototype had the batteries hidden inside, for just that reason. But I never got around to putting in the IEC.  :^)

Paul Joppa


Offline royewest

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Reply #2 on: March 25, 2023, 01:19:07 PM
The IEC is funny. Thanks for the clarifications, Paul



Offline mcandmar

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Reply #3 on: March 26, 2023, 11:36:50 PM
One of my favorite builds was converting my Quickie into a Hammond chassis, i call it the BabyBottle.   ....i got a bit carried away and it ended up as an AC powered headphone amplifier, but its still a Quickie, sort of :)

M.McCandless


Offline royewest

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Reply #4 on: March 27, 2023, 07:58:21 PM
One of my favorite builds was converting my Quickie into a Hammond chassis, i call it the BabyBottle.   ....i got a bit carried away and it ended up as an AC powered headphone amplifier, but its still a Quickie, sort of :)

That's fabulous!