Pan-Da-Mixa’ Pt 2

Pushing hard to get through this mixa’ project. Lots of little and big details. Finally finished cutting out all the panels and powdercoating them and screenprinting them. Turning out sharp.

Nice to see the meter bridge turned out just like I wanted it to. I designed it right into the seem to give it a ‘traditional’ mixer look. That section was a bit tricky and required me to spilt the Vector rails laterally. That was fun to do with a routing table.

Rough fitting it into the cabinet where it will rest. I wanted the faders to be illuminated so I would not have to squint to see where they were all at. I now have to move a bunch of euro mixer modules out of my rack to make room for more modules 😀

Rough fitting this beast into its final home was fun. I was within 1/32″ of my spec over 30″ wide, so I am very happy. The more I design, build and create the more I find my tolerances tightening up. It’s a great feeling to slide some thing like this right into place.

So the eagle eyed person would recognize the 48 channel strips, but where’s the rest of it?

Yes, I am designing a couple of different sub-mixers now. The first up will be a Quadraphonic sub-mixer module. I have always dreamed about having a dedicated quadraphonic mixer, now I will build it right into my eurorack. Having built these 48 channels separately I can use the row right in front of them for a custom set of sub-mixers and crossfaders!

Lots more work, but now it really is getting fun as I have ‘most’ of the really boring wiring finished and tested. Turning out to be the best Christmas present I have ever received. More to come…

Pan-Da-Mixa’ Madness

If there is one area in Eurorack where I find YOU want to really have exactly what YOU want, it’s the mixer. We all seem to need slightly different things. The trick is, you really can’t have EVERYTHING you want. You could, but the mixer component count would be crazy. Heat, noise floor issues, ground plane tweaking and half a dozen other factors have to be considered. So I decided to build myself a custom compact-ish 48 channel mixer with just what I need, in order to keep the component count low, and to keep the troubleshooting down to a minimum. On to prototyping…

Were you one who’s entire life came to a halt in mid March, or were you able to keep most of your life on its semi-standard course?

Well, my wife and I found ourselves completely stopped in our tracks. What to do with all of this free time?

I started this project in November 2019 and didn’t expect to get this far for at least another year. And this has been a VERY challenging year so far.

Two solid months of work in the above pic! Anyone for some fresh noodles? I have never done this much point to point soldering in my whole life! So? Why use PTP for this?? you ask.

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