O2 - Toolin' up and preppin'

This is a work in progress, this article is by no means complete yet!

I started off by measuring all resistors and noting their value. That way I would not have to do it when soldering.

The volume control I got had a small protrusion that might prevent you from properly mounting your front panels later, so do yourself a favor and remove it before you forget to. It can easily be clipped off with a pair of flush diagonal cutters.

Since I wanted to be able to change the gain resistors without soldering I got some sockets along with a variety of gain resistors. I separated these sockets so that they be ready for mounting.
This is a "nice-to-have" feature, if you already know in your heart that you will never be swapping gain resistors I would personally just solder those resistors directly.

Time for a battle plan! I arranged the parts in the order I would solder them onto the PCB. Normally one would start with the lowest profile components and work their way through to the highest components. My soldering plan was this:
  • 1: All resistors EXCEPT R17, R19, R21, R23 (since these will be mounted in sockets, remember)
  • 2: Rectifier and Schottky diodes
  • 3: Low-profile capacitors
  • 4: Sockets
  • 5: Higher-profile capacitors
  • 6: Input jacks, LED, pushbuttons and volume control
  • 7: MOSFETS and voltage regulators (I do realize they are not shown in the above picture. This is because thay were in an anti-static bag and... aww HECK, I forgot about them when I took the picture).
I was now ready to start soldering.