I'd love to hear about your progress and wish you a lucky hand.Ī little advice: keep a multimeter handy and check each and every component befor you use it on the board.

If you finish that and it is functioning, too, you can make the next step to the 400 $ pres. Not too expensive and always useful to have. Maybe you go to the next radio shack and buy a cheap assembly kit (fun or useful) with 50+ components. The circuit boards were all multilayered and had to be soldered through. the last time we changed 120 double axis potentiometer on an analog console. I tell you, even I would do some practicing, if I had to work on a difficult soldering job after a long time. * if you do payed work for as long as it had taken to build this pre, you should earn a fair chunk of a little Neve, already. Most DIY-boxes got replaced, as soon as it was possible and some of them were a pita from the start. How can I say that? I am into electronics for 34 years, now, and tried a lot. I think, you have more fun and safer working with a bought one, even if it takes safing up money. There are kits out there for good standart pre amps, but then, those don't cost that much ready build in the shop.

If you actually find a construction plan and layout/schematics for a really good pre amp you still don't know if its sound characteristic is what you are after and there will be no warranty, either.

Even shape and material of the casings (inside) have been carefully designed to optain the best possible performance. The quality and design of those kind of pres go down to the choice of 1st class components some of which can't be bought in a shop and can't be simply replaced with an equivalent. By the time you have a working Neve 1073, SSL or API class pre amp, you have gray hair and it has cost you almost as much as the original box*.

Neve 1073 preamp price