Amp Design Selected, Time to Assemble the Parts!

Well, after a solid month of reading, googling, and talking to people smarter than me, I have selected an amp design.

http://www.ax84.com/home.html

The ax84 is a common beginner's tube amp project and one I am excited to start on. I knew a few weeks ago I wanted a smaller wattage, single-ended, class A amp. These are the most simple designs and I NEED simple. Haha.

I'm tempted to buy the kit, but have decided to at least research the cost of assembling the parts separately. My professor has told me I could get some sheet metal from the machine shop on campus to build a chassis. The tubes and transformers can be bought from local electronics providers. I already own plenty of resistors and capacitors. I plan to put together a parts list tomorrow and determine what all I have.

I plan to build the amp as designed to ensure I can build an operational piece of equipment. But I need to integrate an arduino somehow. Tone control seems the simplest and most rewarding mod.

Here are a few thoughts I have going forward with this idea:

I need filters that are voltage controlled as the arduino outputs voltages. The current filters are controlled with variable resistors, I'll probably need to pull that entire stage out and replace with my arduino circuit. This may be very challenging as impedance matching and a host of other commonsense circuit design necessities become apparent. I imagine PSPICE simulation of this circuit will be helpful. SPICE and I have a rocky past, so this very well may be the most frustrating part of this project.

Well, here is the circuit I'll be soldering together within a couple of weeks!

Notice similarity this schematic has with my black box sketch from last week. Glad I learned something this summer!

I'm out for today,
-Mark