Mounting the Circuit Board - Tweed 5E7 Clone

I give up.

Try as I might, I can't seem to solder directly to a chassis!

I wanted to solder the AC mains ground to the chassis near the point where the line enters the chassis.  Armed with a Weller 8200 soldering gun on the 140 watt setting, I was unable to melt solder on the chassis.  I let it heat up for about 6 minutes - and it was very hot to the touch, still no dice.

So I drilled a hole and mounted a ground lug for it.  It will function the same, but I did want to solder it.  I suppose I'm not using enough heat - I may experiment with using a gun and an iron both next time.  Maybe.

We can now drop the circuit board in and starting wiring it all up.  The first thing I need to do (before I forget), is put the bottom, insulating, board into place.

There are 2 holes in each board that I'll use for mounting. 

Before I can screw the board down (as opposed to screwing it up, I suppose...), I have to solder the main B+ lead, the bias lead, and the choke leads onto the board.  This has to be done now since I want them to come up from the bottom. 

In the picture on the left, I'm holding these leads before I trimmed and soldered them into place.

Here's the board in place.  Nice labels, huh?  What a mess.  The good news is it will go away soon.

I've seen other folks' build pictures on the interweb and quite a few people don't label the 'flying' leads that come off the board.  I couldn't work that way - I have to label them.  Too many leads, and too many of them originate from places other than the edge of the board, so it's not always obvious where they come from.

I mentioned there are only 2 screws to hold the board down.  Here's one of them.  I decided to go with black screws rather than silver (nickel).  I think it looks pretty cool. 

These kinds of details are why boutique amp builders (ahem) can charge so much money for their amps.