5E3 Lunchbox Head Continued

I’ve been dragging my feet to get started with my 5E3 head build. I finally put in a few orders with Valvestorm and Mouser to get the last few jacks and tube sockets needed for my 5E3 lunchbox amp. I had about an hour to get as much of the tedious drilling done.

Preparing the chassis with my layout.

I committed to my layout and started drilling into the Hammond aluminum chassis. I immediately drilled the board mounting holes to make sure that I did not blow my measurements of the turret board. The board appeared to be laid out in metric units, while my layout was drafted in imperial units. My previous mounting hole layout was off by 1/32” for one of the turret board holes. I was fortunate to have a good fit when I committed to drilling.

Checking the turret board’s fit.

I moved onto punching the octal tube sockets with my Greenlee 1-3/16” hole punch, which went smoothly. By the end of the hour, I had drilled the pilot holes to punch the preamp tube sockets.

Punching the rectifier and power tube sockets.

I plan on finishing the preamp tube socket work next time. The top of the chassis has roughly the same amount of work as the front and rear panels combined. I am not looking forward to the Powercon drilling, since my punch (1-3/16”) is slightly bigger than the recommended connector hole diameter (1-1/8”). The holes for the mounting screws can get a bit too close to the connector hole, as it did on my Plexi build.

Edit - 10/22/21 - I haven't had access to an environment conducive to drilling for a while. I finished drilling the top and the rear sides of the chassis today. I was rushing through the process and made one of the output transformer mounting holes too large, which will have to be remedied with some additional washers. Drilling by hand went smoothly for the most part. The PowerCon chassis hole didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, but will be usable.

Top of drilled chassis,

Drilled hole for PowerCon connector.

I will need about half an hour to drill the front panel. Then the fun part comes with component mounting, and later the anxiety-inducing step of soldering.

To be continued.

Line 6 HX Stomp Battery Power with Mission 529M

I recently downsized my HX Stomp pedalboard, after establishing my workflow with the unit. I went to a battery powered solution for both portability and convenience. The goal was to be able to quickly set up the Stomp for playing or for mobile recording without having to think about finding an outlet nearby. Another desire was to take advantage of the Stomp's small size to play through it as much as possible.

HX Stomp with battery concealed underneath.

The Fix Pedalboards FP-7X Pedal Riser (6.75" x 5.125" x1.5") is approximately the size of the HX Stomp. I was able to comfortably fit an Anker 10,000 mAH battery, a Mission Engineering 529M power converter, and a USB coupler underneath the Stomp. 

HX Stomp with Pedal Riser.

The 5V 3A current rating of the Anker Powercore 10000 PD Redux is sufficient for the HX Stomp through USB PD, and provides about 3 hours of power. 

The 5VDC out of the PD output of the battery is converted to 9VDC using the Mission Engineering 529M. I went with the Mission 529M due to the Ionic Audio 5V to 9V converter being unavailable for purchase for an extended amount of time.

Battery cabling under Riser.

The 2.1mm center negative output of the 529M needed a combination of Truetone CYR (reverse polarity) and CL6 (2.1mm to 2.5mm, reverse polarity) adapters to interface with the 2.5mm center negative input of the HX Stomp.

A USB coupler is used to reduce wear and tear on the HX Stomp's USB port.

I keep the HX Stomp in an Apache 2800 case from Harbor Freight.

I hear less background noise through my headphones when the Stomp is running on batteries. Whatever noise I was getting previously was likely due to dirty power, desktop fans, sharing a power strip with multiple pieces of equipment, etc. I don’t know if it comes through on recorded DIs, but it is a much more pleasing experience to be monitoring my signal with less noise.

Edit - 11/1/21 - I was successfully able to power my Steinberg UR44 audio interface using the Mission 529M set on 12V. The UR44 requires center positive DC, which was achieved through a polarity inverting cable. The UR44 is not buss powered through USB2, but the 529M along with the Anker battery should provided hours of operation with phantom power engaged.

Going forward, I plan on doing remote acoustic recording with the UR44 and DI recording with the HX Stomp into my iPad Pro. I can do both without the need for an AC outlet nearby.