The present & the future...

[Reid Malenfant]

Good luck with that, Mark. It's usually fun once you get it back together again.

I do need it Yes it'll be great - when it gets back together

Cheers Martin, i'll probably need it

Well i'm in the middle of my worst nightmare

This would actually be funny if it wasn't so serious I need to plug all the mains cables into one of the PF40s before i carry on stuffing bits in the rack, the only problem is i don't know precisely where everything is going quite yet so i have no idea how long to make each mains lead & what socket to plug it into. That all depends on whether the equipment uses an SMPS or linear power supply

Looks like a load of measuring of equipment & rack & shelves/paving slabs is in order & some close as possible guestimation

Now you might understand why i said i don't change things around that often

I reckon i'll get the thing sorted by the end of the week, maybe....

E2A:- After a load of thought & lots of measurement i think i can finally move forward Looks like i'm actually not going to have room for one bit of kit though The sacrificial cow will be the CD recorder... I'll only ever need it to record from an analogue source & i won't be doing that too often, so i'll connect a set of RCAs to the record out of the MP1 & feed them out of the rack & insulate them ready for use. Handily the Belkin PF40 has a socket on the front panel behind a cover so when i need to record anything i can plumb into that supply

Looks like it's all systems go, i have all the measurements i need to cut the mains cable, where everything will fit & what socket each bit of kit will need to connect to. May be operational in 4 or 5 days now as there is still a ton of work to do, but at least i know what the hell i'm doing now

[MartinT]

You need one of these:
http://www.brother.co.uk/g3.cfm/s_pa...ct/PT1290DTZU1

There's nothing like properly labelling your cables so that you know what the hell you did six months from now.

[Ali Tait]

You might want to short out that unused pair of i/c's Mark. You may get hum otherwise.

[Reid Malenfant]

You need one of these:
http://www.brother.co.uk/g3.cfm/s_pa...ct/PT1290DTZU1

There's nothing like properly labelling your cables so that you know what the hell you did six months from now.

I'd tend to agree with that Martin, what i have got is a load of stickers that were supplied with the PF40s with different labels on them. I guess i could use those Good thinking that man, though in certain respects it makes little difference due to the nature of my rack. You see the problem is if i want to extract something or get to the back of a piece of equipment i literally have to remove everything above it to do so Now while this appears to be a bad idea it actually prevents me from box swapping very often Not only that it forces me to be much more careful about cable routing as i have to install every cable when each bit of kit goes in & route them in the correct general direction to where ever they are going.

It's a pita but it keeps the grey cells occupied

You might want to short out that unused pair of i/c's Mark. You may get hum otherwise.

Possibly a good point Ali, i think i have a way round this without shorting them out, i'll just screen them with a modified dual phono back to back connector


Mean while it's back to making loads of MG DSP 2.5 mains cables

[Reid Malenfant]

Mean while it's back to making loads of MG DSP 2.5 mains cables

Having finally finished making all these cables up i have even more respect for Mark Grant & his cables & pricing In all honesty the only part of putting these cables together that might possibly be mechanised is removal of the outer clear insulated jacket & possibly the insulation on the three mains conductors themselves

The whole of the rest of the operation could only be done by hand imo. From seperating the screen to finding the drain wire, cutting back the foil screen & then the thin plastic insulator as well as actually fitting the mutiple heatshrink sleeving & finally the plugs themselves must all be done by hand

To get anywhere at a reasonable speed required me to set up a mini production line where i did a task or two to each cable & once all where done i moved onto the next work to be done & repeated this on all cables once again

Thankfully that is over & done with, if you happen to read this Mr Grant i think your mains cables are very reasonably priced

Next up is cut a load of Phono plugs off of 3 sets of component video cables & fit XLR connectors, once that's done i can actually get everything into the rack & set up yay.gif

Back with pictures in the not too distant future

[Alex_UK]

Can't fault your dedication to the cause, Mark. You mad fool!

I'm sure it will all be worth it in the end, I'm obviously not afflicted enough yet, I couldn't even begin to comprehend getting into what you are doing, so

Good luck with the rest of it - and don't forget I will know where you live in less than a month, so I will be expecting an invite back again to hear your creation!

[Reid Malenfant]

Good luck with the rest of it - and don't forget I will know where you live in less than a month, so I will be expecting an invite back again to hear your creation!

Cheers Alex, you are more than welcome to stop by either on the way to Scalford or on the way back fella. I was going to suggest such a diversion anyway as it kind of woudn't really make sense being here & not coming in for a listen

I look forward to it, now just to get it all back together & working

[Alex_UK]

Cheers Alex, you are more than welcome to stop by either on the way to Scalford or on the way back fella. I was going to suggest such a diversion anyway as it kind of woudn't really make sense being here & not coming in for a listen

I look forward to it, now just to get it all back together & working

I'll be picking you up too early for a listening sesh, so let's see how pissed you get on Marco's Amex card first - I might leave you there to share his room if it looks like you'll pebble-dash my upholstery on the way home!

[Reid Malenfant]

I don't get sick on beer Alex, i drink every evening remember

Good idea, on the way back would be better

[Reid Malenfant]

Finally some pictures As i have completed altering the component video cables i guess i can actually start getting more stuff into the rack at long last Shouldn't be long now, though i'm not without music so no rush & i'd prefer to get it right first time

First up here is the rack devoid of life That is except for a P600 Pwer Plant holding it to the floor, all 110lbs of it


For those that might be interested i took a picture of one of the pillars. This one is the central rear pillar, as you can possibly see it's a sandwich of MDF glued & screwed together. The whole reason for this is simply so i can position the shelves anywhere i want & then lock them in place. Each shelf has 4 bolts & most importantly square nuts that slot into the rectangular slot at the top of the pillar. Once the nuts are inside that slot they move up & down freely, the outer slotted section is too narrow to allow the nut to escape so they lock in place once the bolt is tightened


A couple of ventilation fans that were used when the Harman Kardon AVR5500 was in use. The air is blown along from the centre to the outside & than directed back towards the centre nearer the outer edge of the rack & exits via a load of round holes on the front & rear of the rack. This helped reduce fan noise to non existant levels


Here we have some of the shelves. To get them all exactly the same size i made a jig to assemble them, i also had to make sure that the rack was built to very close tolerances. Plenty of open space for ventilation of equipment.. I placed 4 x 1/2" thick felt pads near the corners of each shelf & then a concrete slab on those, works a treat..


Here you can see the all important square nuts that drop into the slots on the pillars


This is where i'm at right now


Here is a rather big pile of cable, i'll actually be using more than this


The now modified component video cables fitted with XLR connectors on one end. These will connect from the two Behringer 4 way mono crossovers to the power amps on the other side of the room. I used 3 x 10M sets to make an 8 way set of cables & as i stripped one cable off i realised i had the perfect cable to connect from the ARC MP1 to the centre channel power amp


Some homemade Mark Grant DSP 2.5 cables..


More Mark Grant, this time his G1000HD BNC to BNC for the word clock connection between dCS Purcell & Delius


Two sets of balanced Atlas Navigator cables, so glad i got two pairs as i'd be stuffed if i hadn't. These will connect from the dCS kit to the ARC MP1 & from the MP1 to the Behringer crossovers.. Not sure about the purple colour


Finally a cable i got from USA, this will connect the phono stage (when i have built it) to the MP1. I used this when running the dCS stuff a while ago, nice neutral sounding cable




I guess i'll be back with more pics once installation is complete, ATB