Eyewool International

Slow Progress on the New Synth Case

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My excuse is vacation and having young children. That's why I've ignored my weekly reminder to write something here for a month.

Since February, I've roped my good friend Matt into helping me build a replacement / upgrade for my Blackhole 7U60HP case. Matt's good at woodworking and about seven years ago helped me build my beautiful and treasured baritone telecaster, so I figured, how hard could building a box be? Harder than I expected but manageable.

But first, why am I replacing the Blackhole? It is, objectively, beautifully built, sturdy, and right about the perfect size for my purposes. However:

  1. The power enters at the bottom of the right side of the case when I'm set up to perform. Not a dealbreaker, but annoying given how I usually lay out my performance set up.
  2. It's powered by a DC brick. Again, not a dealbreaker, but I'd prefer a 120VAC IEC cable because then it's one less thing I have to worry about losing or breaking. I've got a million of those IEC cables and I bet you do too.
  3. The 1U row is in the middle. I thought I'd like that, but I've determined I want it on the bottom like a sicko.
  4. I'd like to have a case with dedicated balanced output jacks that a module can route to, instead of relying my 3.5mm to 1/4" cables and the Befaco STMix I modified to output at line level.
  5. I'd like to have a little more HP without going all the way up to 84HP, which is more or less the standard next step up.
  6. I'm an electrical engineer and I wanted the opportunity to over-engineer the shit out of the power supply.
  7. My Blackhole case is blue and it it should be orange.

So here we are, me slowly collecting parts for the box, including my custom extra-filtered bus board and a Doepfer linear power supply instead of the switching one that's in my Blackhole, me lonely sanding in my garage hoping the box ends up square.

The hardest part so far has been getting the joinery right. We went with drawer-like dados / slots which should make it strong as hell, but also made it hard to get it all lined up properly. As you can see above, I got mostly there, but don't look too close. I'll clean it up I swear.

I've got a lot planned for this thing. When it's done, or closer to done, I'll write up a full spec listing for it, but I've got boards on order for a custom output mixer to interface with balanced 1/4" jacks on the top that I'm excited about. I'm equally excited about the extra-extra-filtered medical grade power inlet module I bought.