NAD Some Assembly Required - Build Complete

  • Thread starter Thread starter MadAsAHatter
  • Start date Start date
MadAsAHatter
MadAsAHatter
Well-known member
I received my Amp Maker N5X kit yesterday. It's a 5 watt Class A "British" amp. From the reviews and clips I found it sounds like mostly Marshall-ish with a bit of VOX chime. The kit came with everything needed to complete the amp and super detailed instructions. This will be my first go at building an amp. I read through all the instructions before I bought it and it seems like it's within my skill set. Still... wish me luck.

1688860208752.png
 
next year
if it is still sitting there
send it to me
also, I love the ss style transformer
 
A little more progress. Today I populated the power supply board. This will be where I pause until next weekend.

I did learn one thing today. I completely suck at reading resistor coding. Being all jumbled in a bag, it took me a bit to figure out which ones were which. I put them all on a meter to be sure. In the end I got them all sorted correctly.

1689524377237.png
 
I have a buddy who was thinking of getting into a project just like this. I'll check those out and see if it would fit his needs!
 
Had a little extra time yesterday afternoon so I mounted the power supply board to the chassis and started wiring the transformer and VCB knob to it. Now I need to wire the mains, indicator light, and MOSFET then the power supply section will be ready for initial testing. From there, the next step in the instructions is wiring & testing the heater supply.

1689687072144.png
 
I finished up wiring the power supply yesterday and had a successful initial test. I measured voltages at the test points. They were a little lower than the value ranges listed but within about 5% so I think that would be okay. Everything was working as it should until the mains fuse blew. I'm 90% sure I accidentally caused a short when I went to retest. I had already added some of the heater supply wires; the green twisted ones. I had taped off the exposed ends so they wouldn't contact anything, but at some point during the testing the tape fell off. I think one of the wires bumped the chassis and caused a short that blew the fuse. I didn't have any extra fuses on hand so had to order some. They should arrive today and I can continue testing.

If it was just the short as I think and not something else I can move on to wiring the preamp board. Here's how it stands now.

1689758610776.png


1689758640665.png
 
Be super careful powering up before you’ve got the PT fully wired up, you can smoke your transformer by shorting a secondary. I wouldn’t recommend ever doing it until you’ve got every wire on the PT connected or heat shrinked.
 
Yeah, that was my dumb ass fault for not making sure those exposed ends were fully capped off and isolated. I knew I should have heat shrinked them proper. I took the lazy way saying that should be good enough for a quick test and put a piece of electrical tape around the wires instead. Then the tape fell off :bash:

Count that as lesson learned and hope the fuse blew before anything was fried. I'll be able to check it all out when I get home this afternoon.
 
going together nicely.

still don't know how you're gonna use the candles to mount the power tubes tho? :D
 
Good news, no damage to the PT and crisis averted. Did a test on all the leads to make sure nothing was shorted. All was good there. Put in a new fuse, plugged it in and tested the mains. I got the correct voltage reading. Did the rest of the measurement and all was good to go. I had the same measurements as before.

Since there were no issues I moved on to finishing the heater supply wiring and a quick test with tubes in. I plugged in a 12AX7 into V1 and since I plan on using an EL34 plugged one into V3. V2 is for if you run it with an EL84, but you can't use both and EL34 & EL84 at the same time. Anyway, did a voltage test on V1. Plugged it into the wall and flipped it on. Both tubes started to glow. A voltage test on V1 showed 5.89 volts.

Like I mentioned before, all my tested voltages are a little lower than what's stated in the manual, but not by much. So I think everything is fine as is, but I'm going to email Barry @ ampmaker just to be 100% sure before moving on. Once I confirm with him that all is good I can move on to populating the preamp turret board.

1689805236227.png
 
rsm said:
still don't know how you're gonna use the candles to mount the power tubes tho? :D
Click to expand...

The one spot that doesn't have a tube socket installed.... that's where the candle will go. There's some special wiring that comes towards the end of the build to flow the wax directly to the tone stack. The candles I have will work okay, but they're new production paraffin wax. I need to find some good NOS prehistoric beeswax candles. They're the ones that really accentuate those haunting mids.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
 
Back
Top