Fingolfen
Well-known member
- Build Rating
I'd built an IVP in the past, but I honestly was never happy with the enclosure. I'd gotten a request for one, so I decided to go all out this time!
As I mentioned in my previous build, the IVP is one of the few builds that gets a full 5/5 difficulty rating on the AionFX scale. There are a lot of components, and while it can be tedious in parts, I've found builds where I have match and/or bias transistors to be a bit more difficult in many ways. That being said, I pretty much followed the exact same pattern I used last time. All of the resistors are new 1% metal film. There is a mix of new film and MLCC capacitors. All of the electrolytic capacitors are new Nichicon, and there are a total of seven integrated circuits - all socketed. There are also a few inductors and other unique bits in the power portion of the build as the circuit uses a +/-15V power supply.
For this particular build, I tried to get all of the hook-up wiring either under or around the edges of the enclosure. I had trouble getting the 9VDC input line underneath the board, so I decided to just run it across the top. I did that on my previous build and it hasn't caused any issues. The rest of the ground lines and audio input / output lines run around the edges of the enclosure. The jack connections are all insulated with heat shrink tubing as well.
For the enclosure I decided to come up with something new, fun, and (of course) dinosaur related! The Parasaurolophus is believed to have been the loudest dinosaur, and there are some really good simulations of their call on YouTube.
The clean preamp channel of the IVP is amazing. The Tube drive has a neat sound, but I'm not sure it really invokes a tube amp as much as I'd like. Dialing it in can also be a bit of a challenge as there are four different stages where the gain can be adjusted on the preamp, and if you go too far on all of them, you can get straight into squeal territory. Fortunately the AionFX documentation has a really good instructions on setting the EQ in a range that makes sense and lets you really adjust the EQ and gain without going into clipping (unless that's what you're after).
Original blog article - with more dino info! https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2023/11/an-updated-ivp-preamp-with-really-loud.html
As I mentioned in my previous build, the IVP is one of the few builds that gets a full 5/5 difficulty rating on the AionFX scale. There are a lot of components, and while it can be tedious in parts, I've found builds where I have match and/or bias transistors to be a bit more difficult in many ways. That being said, I pretty much followed the exact same pattern I used last time. All of the resistors are new 1% metal film. There is a mix of new film and MLCC capacitors. All of the electrolytic capacitors are new Nichicon, and there are a total of seven integrated circuits - all socketed. There are also a few inductors and other unique bits in the power portion of the build as the circuit uses a +/-15V power supply.
For this particular build, I tried to get all of the hook-up wiring either under or around the edges of the enclosure. I had trouble getting the 9VDC input line underneath the board, so I decided to just run it across the top. I did that on my previous build and it hasn't caused any issues. The rest of the ground lines and audio input / output lines run around the edges of the enclosure. The jack connections are all insulated with heat shrink tubing as well.
For the enclosure I decided to come up with something new, fun, and (of course) dinosaur related! The Parasaurolophus is believed to have been the loudest dinosaur, and there are some really good simulations of their call on YouTube.
The clean preamp channel of the IVP is amazing. The Tube drive has a neat sound, but I'm not sure it really invokes a tube amp as much as I'd like. Dialing it in can also be a bit of a challenge as there are four different stages where the gain can be adjusted on the preamp, and if you go too far on all of them, you can get straight into squeal territory. Fortunately the AionFX documentation has a really good instructions on setting the EQ in a range that makes sense and lets you really adjust the EQ and gain without going into clipping (unless that's what you're after).
Original blog article - with more dino info! https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2023/11/an-updated-ivp-preamp-with-really-loud.html
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