7/28/2008

Jonathan Snipes Custom Eurorack Case

I received an e-mail from Jonathan Snipes of Captain Ahab and after I asked if I could share this with the world, he agreed. I'm sending out a word of caution before you read this: Understand that you're potentially blowing out your power supply and all of your modules. If you try modding your power supply, we will not be held accountable for you being an idiot. But we will give you a high five (and miss) if you succeed. Enjoy your week! We'll be broadcasting a live show with Richard Devine on Sunday. We'll announce the time later.

Here are some pictures of the Eurorack modular case I built into a Pelican 1520 suitcase with the help of their panel mount insert. Everything is gorilla glued in place - mounted everything to sheets of plexiglass glued into the bottom. Rather ugly I know, but functional. I think eventually I'll add a panel along the bottom (under the modules) for multiples & attenuators. I'd feel a lot better if the IEC input & power switch were secured by more than just gorilla glue too :-) Worked out pretty well, I think. The coolest part of course being the switch I added to the power supply to switch between 115/230v (sort of visible in the second picture) ... very cool, and pretty easy - just used a DPDT switch (already labeled properly!) and followed this diagram on the Doepfer website: Here

So, yeah - cheaper than a Doepfer portable case, switchable voltage, more durable, AND if I get another panel mount insert, I bet I can mount thinner modules (Cwejman, Harvestman) in the lid, doubling the amount of modules I can cram in here. HOORAY. The last photo is of my mobile studio set up in my hotel room in Bulgaria. Shockingly, I received little to no hassle trying to get this through airport security. Only had to open it once. Weird. - Jonathan


The switch for the voltage switching was super easy ... all you need is a DPDT switch, preferably one that's labeled 115/230 and that's difficult to switch ('cause you can really blow up everything if it switches accidentally, or you plug a 115 power supply into 230, etc etc). The picture below is of the power supply defaulted by Doepfer.


This last picture below is of Jonathan's modification.


1 comment:

felix said...

Awesome! I'm glad to see that someone was able to do this with a Pelican case with minimal modification (gorilla glue, brilliant!).

I hope to make a smaller system the same way in the future, this provides a perfect blueprint!

THANKS!