Yesterday I put together Ramsey’s UAM4 amplifier kit.

The amp is for my thesis project (see below). It’s an amazing amplifer. The board below is only 2.5 inches (!!), yet is able to produce 40watts mono or 20 watts stereo. It’s a partly surface mount unit, but not terribly difficult to put together. Just take your time, drink lots of water, stretch, and breath. Since it is a surface mount kit, you have to have tweezers, a magnifying glass, good solder, a small tip, some solder wick, and flux (this last one is a must). Don’t drink coffee either (jitters). Some of the capacitors are amazingly small, like I could fit dozens on my thumbnail. Luckily, the manufacturer supplies extra parts because sometimes the little pieces fly out of the tweezers and you can forget about finding them if they go far. I inserted my finger into the one of the pics below for scale.

This was my first surface mount work, and I have to thank p-comp allstars Todd Holoubek and Michale Chladil for their help.

Here’s the amp in action playing the Boredoms in stereo through two tactile transducers:

Last Modified: Monday, April 28th, 2008 @ 22:15