DIY Stereo System…

It took a little longer than I would have liked to finish this system up, but it has been brutally hot here recently, so the garage has been like a sauna!  The paint took ages to dry because of the humidity, but it’s finally all completed.  I mentioned all the components last time, so here they are all assembled together.  I basically made a box that the tuner could slide in to, but a little bit taller than the tuner so that I could add the amp.  The finish is the same as was done for the speakers, but I didn’t take as much care to make it quite as spotless.  It came out pretty well anyway, so I’m perfectly happy with it.

The little amp is mounted inside the box with the controls stuck out the front panel.  I had thought about mounting the knobs and switch to different places on the top panel, but they were all surface mounted to the board inside the amp.  I didn’t really feel like unsoldering everything and adding extension wires, so I just used the front panel of the amp for a template and cut those holes out of the front wood panel.  It turned out pretty nice actually and the volume knob still glows blue.  I may look into adding blue lights to the tuner to match, instead of the old yellow-ish glow that it puts out.

All in all I’m super satisfied with the sound that it is putting out.  Those 3″ little woofers are really great, it sounds like a full home theater system.  I’m constantly looking around thinking that someone added a sub without me realizing it!  The vintage tuner is also really cool.  That huge tuner knob in the front is so smooth.  I wish new electronics were made up to these specs!

This project started out as just a way for me to get some music back into the garage while I did my rolling ball sculpturing, but it’s really piqued my interest in DIY audio systems.  I may just have to make a system to replace the cheap PC speakers I have on my desktop computer!