Thanks. Will ANY gap/opening in the box at all reduce its effectiveness? If not, I'll just fabricate a cover for the chassis I have. If it has to be totally sealed, I'll see what I can do otherwise.

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BrentD wrote:

Thanks. Will ANY gap/opening in the box at all reduce its effectiveness? If not, I'll just fabricate a cover for the chassis I have. If it has to be totally sealed, I'll see what I can do otherwise.

Holes do not affect the working of the chassis, which is a Farraday cage really.

Thanks again, Frank. I didn't think so, but figured I'd ask people with more experience.

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BrentD wrote:

Ok, she's done! I have a bit of hum coming from the pan but it's not the board! Everything is shielded and grounded - I found a video on YT where a guy sprays his pan's RCA jacks with Deoxit and it helps a ton. I'm using an old Accutronics tank so I'll try that before I do anything more serious. The front panel took several tries to get right! If anyone is interested I can share build photos, too.

I love this gear. It's great. Thanks to the Surfy Industry folks for putting it together.

That is beautiful! Absolutely gorgeous. I'd love to see build photos!

Will do! I'll get something with better lighting in the next couple of days.

Also, I need to find an appropriate handle! I built one that looks like a torii, but I thought it might be a little too much. I'm thinking a brown leather one. The cabinet is covered in linen.

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Last edited: Apr 17, 2017 10:41:29

This project got me sentimental for my old RI. I drove over an hour each way this afternoon (and took the time off of work) to play the closest RI I could find. It did not follow me home because it did not sound better than the Surfy Bear.

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SpaceTimC wrote:

Gilette wrote:

There's no other scenario I can imagine that can explain your problem, apart from reversed polarity of the power supply.

WELL. What I learned is... ya gotta set your multimeter to the proper setting in order to correctly determine polarity. And, yes, once I swapped the wires on the DC jack, I got glorious wet drippy reverb from my fully-functioning Surfy Bear FET Reverb!!!

I built the unit into the lid of the toolbox. The pan sits in the lift-out tray, and I now have storage underneath for cables and pedals and stuffs.

Thanks to everyone who helped out and exhibited great patience with this idiot.

I installed my Surfy Bear in a similar way with the circuit and controls inside the lid of a steel tool box. I had already lost the tray so I put the pan on the floor with some cork lining and Velcro to secure it.
Recently I tripped on my guitar cord to send a massive jolt to the unit that loosened up the pan's little transformers instantly, making the reverb sound all fuzzy. I switched the old Gibbs pan with another Accutronics that I had thought was no good and I was back in business in a matter of minutes, after flying some Velcro tabs on the flanges.
I'm going to try to resurrect the Gibbs pan by shimming and epoxying the transformers. It has worked before.

Squink Out!

^ About the hum: I haven't solved it yet, but it seems to clearly be the pan. It goes away when the mix control is turned down. It's really not bad, I'm just super picky and I've been fighting EMI in my house for a long time (old neighborhood, different eras of wiring, etc.). I use Area pickups to get rid of the hum in my Strat, but without those I might not hear the reverb hum over the pickup hum.

At the place where I played the Fender tank today, my experience is that it's a much quieter building in terms of interference. Even then, I got some hum from the Fender unit with the mixer control turned up.

In short, there's hum but I don't think it's unusual for a 6G15-style unit. Often it's the pan, not the board. And finally, it's really not too bad.

I'm still going to try to tame it, though!

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I had problems with hum until I got the right power supply. I've discovered you can find boxes of them to search through at the local thrift store, they're only $1 each so getting several to try isn't a wallet-breaker.

Here's how the pan looks from the rear, at least during test-fit.

Here's my ugly homemade chassis. I practiced on galvanized steel but did the final one on sheet aluminum. I bent it in a vice by tapping it with a hammer. Ain't pretty but it works. Note: to shield the board I bent another section that basically covers the back, sides, and bottom. It screws onto this one to completely encase the guts.

For the panel I was thinking I might edit the Surfy Bear sticker into white and blue and call it "The Wave," but in any case I wasn't sure I wanted to do a one-time use of the sticker. So I bought a piece of Lexan and cut/drilled it to match the chassis. Once I cut the appropriate holes in the sticker it could go under the Lexan and would be shiny and clean, as would a paper replacement later. I also had this brilliant idea to put LEDs on the side and light it up like Hughes & Kettner does. I gave up on the lights because I didn't want to go down the eBay LED rabbit-hole.

Note: The on and off labels are wrong, but I don't care. I wanted the power plug on the end. NBD for me, and I have OCD. I'll fix it if I print my own panel down the road.

Here's the linen I used to cover the cabinet. Once the cab was dry, I put wood filler on it and sanded it down. Then I used Mod Podge to decoupage the linen onto the cab. I gave it a light sanding afterwards because the little fuzzies picked up the glue and got hard, making the cab feel like sandpaper. I plan on adding a couple coats of matte Polycrylic, but I'm not in a rush.

Here's the cab as-covered.

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Last edited: Apr 17, 2017 20:53:44