AVA100 Tools and Skills

To build one of these amps you will require three things aside from the actual parts, a Place, some Tools, and some Skills.

Place

These designs are aimed at kitchen table building. A fully equipped electronics workshop only helps. In a shared space it is most important to confine and clean up component lead off-cuts, wire strippings, and solder splash.

In one such situation I first built a portable workshop as a lidded box a bit like a guitar case out of thin gundge-board (particle-board) and built an 8-bit computer in it.

Contains:

Tools - Soldering iron, Screwdrivers, Drill, Wire cutting and stripping Skills - Soldering, Screwdrivers, Drilling, Wire cutting and stripping

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Tools

Soldering iron

A soldering iron of about 20-30W is sufficient. A roll of rosin-cored electronic solder. Some form of soldering iron holder or stand, and somewhere for a damp pad for wiping the iron tip before each application.

Drill and Bits

A hand drill and twist drill bits for small bolt holes, pot mounting, and input sockets and fuseholder mounting, suitable for very light sheet steel.

Side-cutters and/or pliers

A central tool are your cutters. You can make-do with a small pair of pliers with cutter. Next it is helpful to have a specific set of light wire cutters called side-cutters.

Philip's head screwdriver

One Philip's Head (aka “cross-head”) screwdriver. Generally these heads are driven better by a head or bit larger than you would think.

Plain screwdriver

A plain or flat-blade screwdriver.

Cheap yellow DVM or similar multimeter

And of course some sort of loudspeaker system and signal source for the amp testing phase.

With all of these tools you can never have too many. I have quite a large number of all of the above in every size and configuration I can find.

Electronics is quite light duty on tools, so a visit to your local $2 shops will make a flying start on a micro-workshop - just remember that they are light-duty and many will burr or bust if you try and overdo it. $2 shop drill bits may last for one amp build (maybe) but not much longer.

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Skills

Soldering Screwdrivers Drilling Wire cutting and stripping

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