What’s on *YOUR* workbench?

well, state of the bench as of last night:
Over the weekend drilled, painted 4x enclosures, and completed the fuzz foundry deluxe with labels. Assembling the Sequel tonight.



This coming weekend starts the “clean out the storage building” side quest.. been a while, and I’d REALLY like to start using my reloading bench again. I have some friends a couple hours south of me who found a range that is set up for metallic silhouette shooting.. gotta get back into the groove of that thing. Used to compete for a solid 10 years and kinda got burned out for a while.
 

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giovanni said:
Yesterday I finally replaced the barrel jack on my G&L ASAT Z3. Thankfully I had bought the replacement months ago before G&L closed down so I didn’t have to track down the part. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to test it out, but given that it’s just 4 solder joints it’s probably OK. Last famous words, you may hear me swear tonight.
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Love my ‘94 ASAT Special.
 

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I’m embarrassed to show my screw up from this past weekend. Trying to redeem myself by building the hybrid fuzz driver with the aldrin fuzz board thanks to @Chuck D. Bones conversion spreadsheet. However I just realized my enclosure I intended to use for this is the wrong drill template. I know-wrong sockets but I made them work. I was getting ready to add the pots.

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JTEX said:
A very early attempt at a 3-band bass EQ with bands 2 and 3 optional. Because who needs mids and highs? If for some unexplainable reason you want one or the other, just plug in some extra pots. At least that's the idea...
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I have the dark glass preamp/eq (forget what they call it) in my bass and I have to say, the sweepable low mids is rad. Adds a ton of flexibility tonally.
 
Erik S said:
My piano bench was feeling a little strange last night so I gave it a diagnostic butt wiggle and it deposited me on the floor.

Cobbled up some new brackets out of aluminum, sheet rubber, and conduit strap.
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I have a similar piano bench that has not given up the ghost yet. It’s my orchestra gig seat. One of the many things I play is tuba, and so many gigs and rehearsal spaces have the worst chairs, so the collapsible piano bench works great.
 
A breakout box and a beer.

I’m a high school band director and our drumline front ensemble has several marimbas, vibraphones, keyboards and more that run mic and audio lines to the mixer. Apparently at the competition on Saturday, the box took a hit and ripped the tab out to remove the cable. And then someone plugged a cable in. As I suspected, the jacks are soldered to a PCB. I was able to take it all apart and get the XLR cable out using one of my wife’s cake decorating offset spatulas, but I doubt it’s worth it to try to replace the two damaged jacks. I did a cursory search but haven’t found the exact soldered jacks.

At least the other 6 channels are usable. I will say I relearned a good life lesson taking this apart. I grew up with the garage being a workshop and having access to every tool imaginable. Having good tools that do the job right is paramount to doing a good job. After I got married I had some gift cards to Sears and used them to buy the giant set of every screwdriver and wrench imaginable. Tools you wonder when you would ever need them. Well, I finally used another tonight. In taking the box apart I needed to remove the ribbon cable connector held in place by tiny hex head screws. I dug through the roll-away and found the never-opened bag of metric midget wrenches. The 5mm did the trick. I’ve had those tools for 25 years and just cracked the bag open. Thanks dad for instilling in me the smarts to be prepared with good tools.

As for the beer, it’s a homebrewed IPA. And if you really need to know, it’s more of an old-school West Coast, non-hazy, with a touch of Aromatic and Crystal malts, hopped with Centennial, Idaho 7, and Experimental 26. That last bit was probably for the Homebrewing forum, but I’m sure somebody here will find that useful. Cheers everyone.
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Last week messed with the guitar which get’s played most. This 80s Aria got more things done on pickups. Put one half of an excess ceramic humbucker as dummy coil under hb sized P90. Flipped neck HB. Added new wiring and overly complicated star grounding just for an experiment. And ended up quite humfree setup, but still there’s some microphonic behaviour there. PUs are waxpotted, so now my main suspects are +40 year old vol and tone potentiometers. Has anyone experience and opinion about that?

And maybe listing everything I’ve got on workbench (and stuffed under it) helps finishing those?
  • Tube amp (since summer 2025)
  • Haven’t even started owlexifrys stripboard Psi muff
  • Fama sent me some pcbs and have only started with Musket, which still is missing some caps and pot
There’s also things to do with house and mos importantly time is running out doing some air dried jerky. Let’s hope it gets below zero so I’ll be able to dry the meat!
 
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Musicjsmith said:
I did a cursory search but haven’t found the exact soldered jacks.
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That desoldering job doesn’t look like it would be fun, but I bet you could find those jacks. I tried searching “right angle pcb mount xlr combo jack” and got some stuff in the ballpark.

Does this ncj6fa-h look right?

www.markertek.com

NEUTRIK NCJ6FA-H 3 Pole XLR-F w/1/4 Inch Stereo Jack (Horizontal PCB)

XLR / jack hybrid chassis connector combining 3 pole XLR receptacle and 1/4' jack in the smallest available XLR housing.
www.markertek.com www.markertek.com
 
Musicjsmith said:
A breakout box and a beer.

I’m a high school band director and our drumline front ensemble has several marimbas, vibraphones, keyboards and more that run mic and audio lines to the mixer. Apparently at the competition on Saturday, the box took a hit and ripped the tab out to remove the cable. And then someone plugged a cable in. As I suspected, the jacks are soldered to a PCB. I was able to take it all apart and get the XLR cable out using one of my wife’s cake decorating offset spatulas, but I doubt it’s worth it to try to replace the two damaged jacks. I did a cursory search but haven’t found the exact soldered jacks.

At least the other 6 channels are usable. I will say I relearned a good life lesson taking this apart. I grew up with the garage being a workshop and having access to every tool imaginable. Having good tools that do the job right is paramount to doing a good job. After I got married I had some gift cards to Sears and used them to buy the giant set of every screwdriver and wrench imaginable. Tools you wonder when you would ever need them. Well, I finally used another tonight. In taking the box apart I needed to remove the ribbon cable connector held in place by tiny hex head screws. I dug through the roll-away and found the never-opened bag of metric midget wrenches. The 5mm did the trick. I’ve had those tools for 25 years and just cracked the bag open. Thanks dad for instilling in me the smarts to be prepared with good tools.

As for the beer, it’s a homebrewed IPA. And if you really need to know, it’s more of an old-school West Coast, non-hazy, with a touch of Aromatic and Crystal malts, hopped with Centennial, Idaho 7, and Experimental 26. That last bit was probably for the Homebrewing forum, but I’m sure somebody here will find that useful. Cheers everyone.
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Looks like chinesium rean copies
 
I miss brewing. I no longer have the space (or liver) to handle it but I really enjoyed it while I did. Made my own sparge and water setups out of picnic coolers and even had a grain grinder. I got good at producing as well as consuming 😵‍💫

Even had an article in BYO magazine.
 
Gordo said:
I miss brewing. I no longer have the space (or liver) to handle it but I really enjoyed it while I did. Made my own sparge and water setups out of picnic coolers and even had a grain grinder. I got good at producing as well as consuming 😵‍💫

Even had an article in BYO magazine.
Click to expand...
I got started with home brew in college, 2001 or so.. friend was into it, and I had a kegerator.. good god, it’s a miracle I have made it to 46. We did have fun with it, and honestly, I met a lot of really interesting folks. Talk about DIY community!
Glad that I changed my “chemical of choice” to a more green variety.
 
Punching holes for an Octarock!

Will be out of town for the weekend, so gonna at least shoot base coats of paint for this guy tonight, as well as the Valve Stem board that just arrived.
 

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Built up an EA tremolo for a friend on request, on veroboard. One cut wasn't complete which was pretty easy to find (depth pot wasn't working), and some transistor switching (yay sockets) to stop it from self-quenching at max rate (had to up the hFE on Q3, ended up with a BC550C) and it works fine.

The wiring is horrible, I realized afterwards that I probably should have mounted all the pots in the box, figured where the board would sit and then cut all the cables so they would be a good length, but as a positive, the rats nest of wiring keeps the board isolated from every direction so... not all bad I guess.
 
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