unconventional
Well-known member
Chicken knob tutorial / face plates and proper module seating.
Well the Randall chicken heads arrived, black. They don't sit proper on the shaft as I expected as there's nowhere for the knob to actually sit as the inner side of it has no place to rest flat. Meaning the back is not flat, the hole and any supporting flat spot is about 1/8" deep. So if you put it on all the way, it's going to just be flush with the preamp or power amp front and it not going to turn smoothe.
If you back it out a tad, it's not going to be centered properly on the 1/4" pot shaft. So, what I did was this. I'm a frign nitpicker about this stuff. On the pots, there is a small amount of thread sticking out past the nut. I used like 1/8" thick nylon washers that are 1/4" in the center. Now they don't fit right over the threads that are sticking out, so you have to use pliars and twist them on flat as they work to grab that part of the thread. Or you can ream out the center of the washer with a 1/4" drill bit. I tried the drill method, but if your doing 28 knobs, that's time consuming. I chose the brute force method where I twisted the washers onto the threads with pliars till they sat flat. I then had a surface to rest the knobs against flat and was happy.
If you don't do something like this, your going to have cockeyed knobs. I don't much like cockeyed knobs.
I also notice that the circuit boards of the modules don't allow for the face plate to sit flush against the chassis. I had about an 1/8" gap on one of my modules and this got to me. I spend $1500 on a preamp with modules, I want it perfect. Got me? So what I did was this. First I noticed that I had about 3 screws missing from the inside of the chassis where the circuit board plugs into. The blue slots are supposed to have 2 screws, one on the left of the plug and one on the right. So I had to take one out and get a match at the hardware. So that tightened things up a bit, but still some major gappage.
So I did the unspeakable and it worked out like a charm. If you look at the circuit board of the modules, you'll notice that on a lot of them there is a considerable amount of overhang of material before the copper contacts. I ran this gingerly along a belt sander and removed about close to an 1/8" on one of the modules that didn't seat flush. After that, hand sand the edges so they are not sharp and bend any of the connecter pins inside the chassis. I didn't have any contact cleaner, so I cleaned up the contacts with rubbing alchohol after and now everything is seated tight and happy.
Here's a look.
Unfortunately I have white chicken knobs coming next week too. So all of these will be off and I'll see how those look. Then I'm contemplating getting some of the cream Egnater type smaller knobs and trying that out. Black is nice, but the is not much contrast between the black modules / chassis and the knobs.
Here's some pics of my rig. That's not a Randall cab BTW, but I'm sure they don't mind me advertising for them. I'm probably going to get another one of these lopo cabs as well and a 4x12 also. If this rig holds up, I'm probably going to get another identical rack like this one, preamp and power amp as a backup.
Kevin
Well the Randall chicken heads arrived, black. They don't sit proper on the shaft as I expected as there's nowhere for the knob to actually sit as the inner side of it has no place to rest flat. Meaning the back is not flat, the hole and any supporting flat spot is about 1/8" deep. So if you put it on all the way, it's going to just be flush with the preamp or power amp front and it not going to turn smoothe.
If you back it out a tad, it's not going to be centered properly on the 1/4" pot shaft. So, what I did was this. I'm a frign nitpicker about this stuff. On the pots, there is a small amount of thread sticking out past the nut. I used like 1/8" thick nylon washers that are 1/4" in the center. Now they don't fit right over the threads that are sticking out, so you have to use pliars and twist them on flat as they work to grab that part of the thread. Or you can ream out the center of the washer with a 1/4" drill bit. I tried the drill method, but if your doing 28 knobs, that's time consuming. I chose the brute force method where I twisted the washers onto the threads with pliars till they sat flat. I then had a surface to rest the knobs against flat and was happy.
If you don't do something like this, your going to have cockeyed knobs. I don't much like cockeyed knobs.
I also notice that the circuit boards of the modules don't allow for the face plate to sit flush against the chassis. I had about an 1/8" gap on one of my modules and this got to me. I spend $1500 on a preamp with modules, I want it perfect. Got me? So what I did was this. First I noticed that I had about 3 screws missing from the inside of the chassis where the circuit board plugs into. The blue slots are supposed to have 2 screws, one on the left of the plug and one on the right. So I had to take one out and get a match at the hardware. So that tightened things up a bit, but still some major gappage.
So I did the unspeakable and it worked out like a charm. If you look at the circuit board of the modules, you'll notice that on a lot of them there is a considerable amount of overhang of material before the copper contacts. I ran this gingerly along a belt sander and removed about close to an 1/8" on one of the modules that didn't seat flush. After that, hand sand the edges so they are not sharp and bend any of the connecter pins inside the chassis. I didn't have any contact cleaner, so I cleaned up the contacts with rubbing alchohol after and now everything is seated tight and happy.
Here's a look.
Unfortunately I have white chicken knobs coming next week too. So all of these will be off and I'll see how those look. Then I'm contemplating getting some of the cream Egnater type smaller knobs and trying that out. Black is nice, but the is not much contrast between the black modules / chassis and the knobs.
Here's some pics of my rig. That's not a Randall cab BTW, but I'm sure they don't mind me advertising for them. I'm probably going to get another one of these lopo cabs as well and a 4x12 also. If this rig holds up, I'm probably going to get another identical rack like this one, preamp and power amp as a backup.
Kevin
