Using 3mm MDF board to make Turret Boards for guitar amps.

[Simon Barden]

Don’t forget that valve amps and radios had been around for several decades before Leo started building his musical instrument amps, so construction techniques were already well established. What wasn’t around were the huge range of plastics we have today. So he’d have used the standard materials available at the time, but better ones now exist.

Fibreboard will absorb liquids and so can become contaminated. Glass fibre won’t absorb liquids to any noticeable degree, so any contamination should stay on the surface and can be cleaned off.

[DrNomis_44]

So, there's two reasons why I have elected to go with either eyelet boards, or turret boards for my Soldano-50 50 Watt amp head build project, firstly, although I could go with etching a PCB, I'm not really geared-up to etch PCBs, secondly, from an ease-of-servicing point of view, eyelet boards and turret boards make replacing faulty parts easier, you just de-solder the faulty part and solder the replacement one in and you're done, with PCBs you're constantly flipping the board upside-down to desolder parts from it, the copper foil can sometimes de-laminate due to over-heating.

It doesn't really have anything to do with any of the supposed mojo-qualities people attach to eyelet boards or turret boards.

[DrNomis_44]

Don’t forget that valve amps and radios had been around for several decades before Leo started building his musical instrument amps, so construction techniques were already well established. What wasn’t around were the huge range of plastics we have today. So he’d have used the standard materials available at the time, but better ones now exist.

Fibreboard will absorb liquids and so can become contaminated. Glass fibre won’t absorb liquids to any noticeable degree, so any contamination should stay on the surface and can be cleaned off.

Yep, that's true, before eyelet boards and turret boards were used, the various passive components were soldered point-to-point style between the valves, while that method did work, it tended to look a bit messy.

[Simon Barden]

It works for very simple circuits, but once you get to a larger valve count, it becomes very hard to physically construct the circuit.

[Marcel]

Thought I'd throw my 2 cents in here,

In my 45y playing in electronics it seems there is a definite trend to avoid the use of any material that can in its useful lifetime absorb moisture as an insulating material/substrate. I'd dare say MDF does absorb moisture quite well regardless if it has been painted or not, so is probably the reason it is not seen as an insulating material anywhere in electronics.

While when dry it may insulate quite well, it is when damp or in high humidity that the insulation properties are often lost.... Also, materials used in electronics typically need to be able to withstand the heat of normal soldering practice without damage, and wood products in general do not.

Plus, wood products are usually flamable.... It may look spectacular but a guitar amp bursting into flames mid performance is not what most musicians want.

[DrNomis_44]

Thought I'd throw my 2 cents in here,

In my 45y playing in electronics it seems there is a definite trend to avoid the use of any material that can in its useful lifetime absorb moisture as an insulating material/substrate. I'd dare say MDF does absorb moisture quite well regardless if it has been painted or not, so is probably the reason it is not seen as an insulating material anywhere in electronics.

While when dry it may insulate quite well, it is when damp or in high humidity that the insulation properties are often lost.... Also, materials used in electronics typically need to be able to withstand the heat of normal soldering practice without damage, and wood products in general do not.

Plus, wood products are usually flamable.... It may look spectacular but a guitar amp bursting into flames mid performance is not what most musicians want.

So really, I should just buy some sheets of blank FR4 Fiberglass and forget about using MDF entirely then.

[Simon Barden]

Yes.

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