Twin D-500 Restore-a-Thon / Full-Comp WOPL upgrade (+ first a PL 400 S2 WOPLing / Proof of concept / Process debug )

The Powerful Difference said:
That's a great tip! This is *exactly* the kind of input I'm looking for!

To be honest I have vacillated between calling the repurposed room an electronics lab, project workspace, or mental health spa/sanatorium . :0)

Of course I'd like to make my electricity hero (Nikola Tesla) proud, but as always if I really go all out on the workspace the money will be stolen from the amp project(s). Then again, insufficient lab equipment = I go blind to what's going in the circuit under scrutiny way before I can 'grok' who is the victim vs. who is the perpetrator of whatever is missing the mark...

Ergo, my gut says invest in the lab 'til it hurts, and then the amp projects will be ground out, no problem, in a righteous audiophile mortar & pestle. ;0) I *do* know that the military gave me some truly amazing equipment (far up into the GHZ range) in order to test/fix the hearing of the threat warning systems...and this lession was not lost on yours truly. (Rock-solid, proved itself to be something I could trust no matter how counterintuitive the path it was leading me down. (!)

Old Nik may yawn at the voltages & currents I'll be working on, but I do hope to make the folks reading this proud.

Come on now, keep those cards & letters coming! Be thinking about the test equipment you have...and if you had to do it over, what would you replace it with?

****

1) Sometimes you're helping a neighbor get their rusted steed through one more safety inspection, and he's running the car on a bicycle budget...so of course you end up at the Tool Circus (aka Harbor Freight) in order to squeak by. (Assuming Advance Auto didn't have the freebie loaner that fit. Hey, I'm no snob, been there/done that. :0) ...But thankfully, not THIS time -- I've been saving up for this, no melting of credit cards in the offing. (Whew)

2) Then there's buying new equipment that fits into your modest budget -- thinking of the affordable WooHang stuff at the affordable end of the ebay o-scope search. (But instead of *buying* stuff in this category, I'd rather *invest* in carefully chosen stuff from category #3 below.)

3) Then there's buying the previously-enjoyed 'no-kidding' commercial test equipment for a bit more money. You may have to renew caps & stuff, but once you're finished you've got something that will give you a repeatable measurement + a lot less head scratching on any given day. (This is where I consider the Tek 465/475 to fit.)

4) Finally, there's the old purpose-built mil-spec test gear. Performance/price vs. price/performance when it was originally built, can be pure heaven to use in anger...but if/when it goes bad the repair parts were always low-volume bits...and now made of unobtanium. :-(

****

Again, thanks for the tip on the Starboard! I gotta do everything, so whether it's equipment or the workbench to put it on, I wanna hear what your Taj Mahal troubleshooting/analysis analog test equipment setup would be. (And know that the lighting will be set up to be at the "Unfair Advantage" level...I'm not getting any younger, and if I have to cheat in order to win -- so be it! :0)

Thanks for your time & attention to this matter --
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I put a lot of thought, blood, sweat and mistakes into my shop. Most of it turned out the way I envisioned but some things I just overthought. Fortunately lighting and electrical outlets were on the done right list. You can’t have enough of either.
 
Gepetto said:
If you use that surfacing on your bench, be sure to put a grounded anti-static mat on top of it if you are going to do electronics repair. That polyethylene will hold a static charge like nothing else, superb insulator.
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Honestly I did not consider that, fortunately I have never noticed any static charge.
Would it be possible to ground the entire bench top instead of using a mat ?
 
NeverSatisfied said:
Honestly I did not consider that, fortunately I have never noticed any static charge.
Would it be possible to ground the entire bench top instead of using a mat ?
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Unfortunately no Spencer. You need to put a dissipating mat on top of that excellent insulator and ground that to your safety ground.
 
The Powerful Difference said:
Great point! Back in the early '80s mother DEC managed to figure out that as they souped up the clock speeds & started shrinking the logic gates, that everyone touching these new, faster, spendy logic modules were either weakening or outright blowing the logic gates with uncontrolled static.

I actually remember when they switched from modules in cardboard containers to these new 'pink poly' bags. I also remember watching a video of this bald-headed dude talk about NASA clean rooms + uncontrolled static leading to a serious incident.

Guess what? Youtube delivers yet again! This is the very video I remember...and when my new lab coat had conductive fibers in it, + the newest machines all had anti-static wrist straps installed in every cabinet, I made sure to take advantage of it all. I wasn't so worried about the outright DOA parts...it was weakening a module & having it turn into a intermittent source of crashing the customer's business that had me spooked.

Great observation, Joe. This will certainly help anyone down the road who's following the bread crumbs we're leaving behind...
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We call those partially damaged devices “walking wounded”
 
Gepetto said:
Unfortunately no Spencer. You need to put a dissipating mat on top of that excellent insulator and ground that to your safety ground.
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Good to know, thanks for educating me. The shop was originally built for a variety of hobbies, gun smithing being primary and audio being further down on the list, that was until I got bit by the PL bug. Time to invest in a good anti static mat.
 
Are those Vidmar cabinets?
 
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NeverSatisfied said:
Good to know, thanks for educating me. The shop was originally built for a variety of hobbies, gun smithing being primary and audio being further down on the list, that was until I got bit by the PL bug. Time to invest in a good anti static mat.
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The guns probably won’t mind the static
 
Something I have noticed about LED lighting is that the supply and manufacturers vary all the time. So if you install one brand of lighting and have a problem two years down the line, the chance of finding an exact replacement is damn near impossible. Not a big deal for individual fixtures but when you have multiples like your under cabinet lights or my over bench lights, which all daisy chain together, it can be disastrous. My solution is to buy multiple extras and store them just in case one fails.
 
Mark is an 800 lb gorilla on Audiokarma, I'm sure he lost count of how many folks he's helped there.....and it was usually intense, very time consuming hand holding. He's a prince in my book..
 
I'm a fan of Derek on Vice Grip garage (search youtube).

Highly recommended for insider tips and tricks, such as this "one grit" sanding technique.

He makes a habit of buying cars sight unseen and driving them home several hundred miles... "Were gonna pretend we didn't see that. It's fine."
 
Derailed train of thought unfortunately. But, it doesn’t stop.

Started resurrection of another scrap heap today. Pioneer SX-880 that looks as if it was the main system at the local sewerage treatment plant. Knobs we’re in ultrasonic alcohol for two hours and are still nasty. They’re soaking (without Sonics) overnight now.
 
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