I will continue my journey assembling the Mini Regulator. Now it’s the time for easiest part, the resistors and capacitors. To be honest, it’s not that easy – I mean, not as easy as I thought before 😉

After around 1hour, I finish my job. Ta daaa… as below 🙂

I start to learn that DIY is not a matter of good sound, but also “eye catching” appearance. Well, I start it now. I “polish” the heatsink so it shines a little bit (rather than “dull” appearance). Then, I continue with picking colorful components. To be honest, it’s a little bit overkill to use Black Gate NX Series in this application. But I love the color combination and I believe you to. So? Just put it all down there.

The components are combination between Black Gate FK, Black Gate K, Black Gate NX, Black Gate N, and some resistors from Kiwame on most parts and one red one from PRP. Those Kiwames are carbon film, while PRP should be metal film. I pick PRP (despite of its red color) because this position is to set the maximum current of this regulator. Since PRP should be the regeneration of Holco, the most famous precision metal film resistor, so I do really can count on him. Oh, I also use old “dull color” green LED. This “dull color” LED should produce less noise than the newer “bright” LED.

Another shoot of the Mini Regulator. I bought the PCB around 3 years ago and just use it now 😉 Beautiful color combination, eh? So, again, I have to believe that good sound should be mixed with perfect appearance also. All the pins are covered with soft teflon cover, to make sure they will not short each other. Good and neat job are my requirements.

The opamp used is OPA134. I will try OPA627 later. With maximum current less than 150mA, I think the OPA627 should be quite stable here. Beside the OPA134 (on the right) you can see two Kiwames soldered to one in series. Why did I do that? Because I need 3.8 KOhm value, while I believe, quite rare to find resistor in such value. So I put 2.7 KOhm and 1.1 KOhm in series.

Beautiful color building, I mean, components.

Due to place limitation (I was so greedy to use all 2W resistors by Kiwame), then I need to relocate one resistor to the bottom of the PCB. Don’t worry, he is completely safe there. The 2SC5200 is mounted on the heatsink with thermal tape, to make sure it will not short to the ground (although the PCB is completely separated from the heatsink – the spacer doesn’t connected to the PCB’s ground). Safety is also one of my concern in assembling any electronic parts.

How does it sound? It’s too late tonight. I will test it tomorrow, connected to my Hammond transformer.

Don’t forget, all soldered with WBT Silver Solder and Goot 25W soldering iron. My best combination so far!