My main amp of choice right now is the B&K Ex-442. I have upgraded the main filtering caps to brand new ones and even upgraded the rectifier Bridges to support higher inrush currents better (yes, I keep the old parts).
But one thing always bothered me, and that was the power circuit PCB board that sit on top of the filter capacitors, there is two of them, one for each channel as this is a dual-mono block in one box design with a shared toroidal transformer.
Also, these are the types of moments that really lead to new opportunities, because this is not the first example! Like creating a 3D baffle for the EPOS ES-14 because the original tweeters fried.
So this got me back into the game of CAD design, I used to make these by hand when I was a kid, so I never used any software.
The software of choice, I wanted that to be open-source / and it if is good enough, I will use it, I am tired of jumping through corporate hoops for Corporate products with their licensing and any possible change to what they offer, even free community versions.
Anyways with that I used KiCAD, and yes there was some learning curve, honestly there isn’t many good videos on YouTube for beginners, or at least I couldn’t find any. So in this case, I actually used AI to help me… and by that I mean, you know: How do you do this, how this and that and how to you change that, after about 7-10 questions and try and error, I had all the knowledge to do this.
there is also a YouTube video of Part I – Unboxing…
Next week I am going to install into my Amp to do a final Part 2 and do a side to side comparison with the old one while it is still installed, stayed tuned!
Yes, these will be available, just waiting for confirmation install and then I will add to the Store, Contact me, if you want to get on the waiting list!
Cheers! Ray.