On a sunny autumn day we arrived at the venue for a two day workshop, that actually ran for three days.
The venue was made available by the St Francis Presbyterian Church. Thank you to all who made this possible!
There were three participants this time.
Alwyn was completing an Mars Performer kit that he has started at home, Hasren was building a Mars Preamp kit with tone controls and Jacques was building the Mars AB763 guitar amplifier.
Day 1 was taken up by everybody familiarising themselves with the projects at hand, and sorting out components and layout.
Day2 was spent soldering assembling the kits as planned.
The hifi amplifier was first to be completed, and the power up was begun cautiously.
The preamplifier was next to be completed. Hasren took his preamp home to test it on his hifi.
Me and Jacques stayed behind after hours to talk guitar amps and finish the assembly of the AB763.
Thami, the security at the church, accommodated us graciously. By 10pm we finished off for the day and went our ways till the next morning.
Day 3 started with a visit to the Pretoria Communica branch to get some capacitors, resistors and multi turn pots. Alwyn started his day by mounting his new multi turn bias pots while me and Hasren looked over his preamplifier to work out why it buzzes.
The guitar amplifier started up, and after a few adjustments and earth connections were corrected, the guitar sounded clear.
Alwyn left first to begin his long drive home.
Next all attention was focused on the preamplifier. After an hour or two of tube swopping and fault finding, she was ready to go home.
That concluded the workshop. Thanks to all participants and supporting family and friends. May we do it again soon!