I got everything to start !

Today I received my last shipment (PCBs + Rack Front Face from Serpent Audio). Last week I received my Mouser order, my Modushop rack and my DIYPartsSupply Vu Meter.

The Modushop Rack has a mount-hole for the IEC but it doesn't fit my IEC part so I'll have to find a way to adapt it to fit correctly.

Soon I'll start to work and the kit and post pictures.

Taxes

It seems I underestimated the costs of Mouser. What was unclear for me was that their site is in fr.mouser.com so I thought maybe they had an european service. As it's not the case, VAT was not included in the price I gave before, and also the custom taxes. I'll give the final number once I receive the shipment. EDIT :

Final order price was 350€ So final total price is 553€, everything included except some wire, solder and tools ...

Just ordered the empty rack, cost : 70.79€
Vumeter ordered : 30€
 If my numbers are correct, the total cost for the project is gonna be :
Serpent Audio : 110€
Modushop Rack : 71€
DIYPartsSupply : 30€
Mouser : 292€

So, wire and solder aside the project would cost me exactly 503€ for the quad version. This is if I don't have too much surprises, but I guess there always are some surprises !!

Just received an email of Serpentaudio indicating my order is shipped. So it only took 2 days to be shipped (which is great considering the timezone difference)

SB 4000 DIY start

Hi !

After building my first preamps using Sound Skulptor ( http://www.soundskulptor.com/ ) marvellous Preamps kits MP73 and MP12, I decided to follow that road and I'm now ordering all needed to build the SB4000 compressor with QUAD VCA mod.

I've ordered PCBs and front face + quad PCBs at http://serpentaudio.com/ and I'm currently compiling the BOM and double-checking everything before buying all parts. The serpentaudio order cost me 110€, including shipping by standard way. It means I'm gonna have to wait maybe some weeks before receiving those.

I'm planning to buy the VUmeter on http://diypartssupply.com, the empty rack enclosure at http://www.modushop.biz/ (in 280mm, I want to be sure to have a lot of space in the rack to have room to make clean wiring and to isolate the transformer as much as possible).

Everything else is coming from http://www.mouser.com (I tried on Farnell but it seemed a little bit more expensive and to have lots of stuff missing, and I prefer to buy as much at possible from a unique supplier).

I've registered some little stuff which don't appear on the official BOM but are necessary (I found the info in the support thread on groupdiy forum). So far those extras are :

- Capacitors C12, C13, C129, C139 150nF 50V 5%

- Capacitors C117, C131, C138 220nF 50V 5%

- XLR 5 / 6 are best replaced by 2 TS jack entries for Send / Return

- Pins and Sockets to mount quad boards on the main board (ex : Mouser ref 0326-2-19-01-06-27-10-0 and 3117-2-00-21-00-00-08-0)

Hope I didn't make any mistakes when compiling original BOM with Quad VCA BOM into my own personal BOM.

This DIY project seems to have a lot of documentation, clean PCBs and a lot of people to help building it, I hope it won't be a too big gap from my previous builds.

I'll let you know when I go any further ! Waiting for the PCBs for now.