A DIY solder fume extractor

OK, what's this got to do with guitars and stuff? Well I've made a couple of DIY effect pedals in the past, and it's something I've been intending to do again once I'd got a bit more free time. This time I've decided I won't be inhaling those nasty fumes from my soldering activities!

I was looking at my ever increasing scrap heap of old parts when I had an idea to convert an old computer power supply into a solder fume extractor. The idea being to remove all the internals (salvaging useful parts of course) leaving just the fan, then hook up a DC power source add a switch and pack the space inside with filter material.

Pretty easy project really. One thing to note was I had to reverse the fan because it was blowing air out initially and I wanted the reverse.

It's amazing what stuff you find inside. Here are just a few of the salvaged parts

some of the salvaged parts

I added a DC jack where the power cord used to be.

DC jack for wallwart

A ON/OFF switch for convenience (I seem to have voided the warranty)

ON/OFF switch

The innards were packed with cooker-hood extracted fan filter material. you can just about see it if you look between the fan blades here.

filter material

And some rubber feet to keep noise/vibrations down a bit and to stop it scratching my desk.

rubber feet help with noise/vibration

The finished article!

the finished fume extractor

Comments

Vox Pathfinder 15 Tremolo Repair

Last year, I snapped up a Vox Pathfinder 15 (non-reverb) combo amplifier from ebay. The seller was a charity shop, and the amplifier was listed as "untested", so I was taking a bit of a gamble, but figured I'd have a good chance of being able to fix it it it wasn't working, and cosmetically, it looked almost mint. When it arrived, I plugged it in, and as you guessed, it was not working. Barely any sound, and what sound there was was horribly distorted. One thin I did notice was the the power on LED was not aligned correctly with the hole in the back panel, so I did quickly took it apart, and realigned the potentiometers and LED indicator, but didn't have a look in detail at the circuit. I put it back together, but the problem remained. My guess was that the problem was the famous "cambridgitis" (just google that term and you'll find all about it). Basically, a problem where the optocoupler that controls the tremolo circuit fails. A common failure...

Vox Pathfinder 10 and Pathfinder 15 Simulation

I've got a Vox Pathfinder 10 amplifier that I bought a couple of years ago, and I love it. It's a great little amplifier, but I don't care for the distortion channel, it just sounds harsh to my ears. There are quite simple modifications that can be done to this amplifier to remove the clipping LED's and increase the boost of the clean channel (check out Ben Craven's mods for details). I'd been considering doing some of these, but whilst researching the subject, I discovered that the currently out of production (as at Nov '18) Pathfinder 15/15R generally receives a lot more love than the Pathfinder 10. I found schematics for both the PF15 and the PF15R online, and saw that there were a lot of similarities between the PF10 and the PF15, particularly the earlier non-reverb PF15. The PF15R (with reverb) is quite a bit different after the first two opamp stages. I thought I'd model both the PF10 and PF15 pre-amp stages in LTspice to see how they compar...

Marshall Lead 12 Preamp Simulation

Having already modelled the preamp stage of the Vox Pathfinder 10, 15 and 15R respectively, and noted the similarities circuit-wise between the PF10 and the PF15, I discovered another much-loved practice amp with a similar preamp stage - the Marshall Lead 12. I should say, before going any further, that there are huge differences between the power amp stages. The PF10 uses a TDA2030A chip amp whereas the Lead 12 uses discrete components. The chip amp power stage on the PF10 shouldn't colour the tone much, but the discrete one in the Lead 12 most likely does contribute to the overall tone of the amplifier. A simulation of the preamp stage with the Treble, Bass and Mid controls at 50% and the Gain control at 0%-100% gave this Marshall Lead 12 Preamp Simulation Marshall Lead 12 preamp simulation, Gain 0%-100%, TMB @ 50% Vox Pathfinder 10 preamp simulation (overdrive engaged) Vov Pathfinder 10 preamp simulation, Gain 0%-100%, T+B @ 50% Comparing the two, ...

Things With Strings

Search This Blog