I just made my first P2P board a few weeks ago for a Bluesbreaker Reissue I converted to a P2P board and adapted a Fender blackface opto-coupled tremolo circuit to. I used the Vintage Red Swirl board material and the MetroAmp brand board terminals.
First off...the store description states that they're made for a 1/8" hole. Found out the hard way that 1/8" is too big for them. Contacted MetroAmp, and Fido informed me that they actually use a 3mm drill bit for these. Good thing I tried it on a piece of test material before I did it on the actual board.
The beauty of these terminals is that they're pre-flared on one end and they're a press fit into a 3mm hole. Any drill press should be able to press them into the board.
Now for a press tool of sorts, I found what worked best is a 3/32" Ryobi "Speed Loader" bit. The bit will pass right through the turret while the "speed load" part of the bit will press against the flared end of the turret. By having the bit through the center of the turret, this will keep the turret straight and prevent it from cocking side to side as it gets pressed in.
Now before you go pressing these things in, I will add that the area around the hole will need to be supported properly to prevent board deflection/damaging the board. The support must have a hollow center to allow the 3/32" drill bit to pass through it. I used a small hole saw for this.
Once you have all of your turret holes drilled -
1) Place the hole saw on the drill press table with the teeth facing down/on the press table
2) Install the 3/32" Ryobi Speed Load drill bit into the drill press chuck
3) Place the board onto the base of the hole saw with the turret mounting hole over the center of the hole saw
4) Place a turret onto the 3/32" bit
5) Hold the turret on the bit while you drop it through the hole in the board until the bit is through the hole in the board
6) Keep dropping the bit until the bit has pressed the turret into the hole and the flared end of the turret is fully up against the bottom side of the board
Here is a pic of said board.
Trick for installing MetroAmp brand board terminals
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- flemingmras
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Trick for installing MetroAmp brand board terminals
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- Mars Hall
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Re: Trick for installing MetroAmp brand board terminals
So hows is that tremelo sounding now, or is the build completed yet?
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Re: Trick for installing MetroAmp brand board terminals
@flemingmras;
which fender tremolo layout did you use in your BB? I'm currently reworking my second bb reissue but I can't find a 2g347 or j174 fet to get the tremolo to work.
Can you post pictures of your complete board? Help would be much appreciated!
Happy xmas,
Jair Yess
which fender tremolo layout did you use in your BB? I'm currently reworking my second bb reissue but I can't find a 2g347 or j174 fet to get the tremolo to work.
Can you post pictures of your complete board? Help would be much appreciated!
Happy xmas,
Jair Yess
New School, Old School, hell I don't go to school!!
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'72 JMP 1959
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- flemingmras
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Re: Trick for installing MetroAmp brand board terminals
That's not a layout that I freely distribute as an "open source" layout. I actually sell the boards with the layout for the BBRI w/Fender Trem. The amp circuit itself is the exact same layout as the regular P2P Bluesbreaker Reissue layout. My goal with this was to get a Fender AB763 Opto-Tremolo into this amp while making minimal changes to the stock P2P tremolo layout, which means that the "layout" I used is my own custom layout that I came up with to get the Fender Tremolo to work in the BBRI. Again, the amp circuitry is the same, but there are some small changes I had to make to the trem circuit layout due to the design of the Fender LFO circuit (Low Frequency Oscillator).MarshallGeek wrote:@flemingmras;
which fender tremolo layout did you use in your BB? I'm currently reworking my second bb reissue but I can't find a 2g347 or j174 fet to get the tremolo to work.
Can you post pictures of your complete board? Help would be much appreciated!
Happy xmas,
Jair Yess
Also, the Speed and Intensity pots are different. The Speed pot is a 3M and the Intensity pot is a 50K. Both pots are "reverse audio taper", and as far as I know CTS is the only brand that makes those pots in those values. The pot holes in the chassis will have to be widened by 1/16" to accomodate the CTS pots. Hopefully soon I'm going to get with Alpha Pots to see if they can make me the exact same pots that came in the BBRI stock, but in those two values so that I'll have some that are "drop in replacements".
Hopefully in the next week or two I'll have the layouts drawn up and will be able to release this BBRI kit. I'll have to do some "pre-orders" for it (made to order kits) first off, but I will have the kits available as both a complete kit, or as just the board with the Fender tremolo parts (i.e. Speed/Intensity pots, set screw knobs, optocoupler, as well as the trem circuit component values) for those of you who already have the parts kits.
There's just that fine line between stupid and clever - Nigel Tufnel