Alright, let’s talk about this emilie kit I put together recently. Been wanting to build one for a while, finally found the time and pulled the trigger.
Getting Started
The kit arrived in a pretty standard box. Nothing fancy. I dumped all the little bags out onto my workbench. You know how it is, resistors here, capacitors there, ICs, the main board, knobs, jacks… the usual suspects. First thing I did was grab the parts list and just eyeball everything, making sure it looked like all the bits were there. Didn’t do a full count right away, figured I’d catch anything missing as I went along. The PCB looked clean, solder mask seemed alright, no obvious problems.
Putting it Together
Okay, time for the fun part. Fired up my trusty soldering iron. I usually start with the flattest components first, makes life easier. So, resistors went in first. Bent the legs, popped them in, snipped the excess, soldered them down. Pretty straightforward stuff, though some of those color bands are getting harder to see these days. Then the diodes – had to double-check the orientation on those, don’t want to mess that up. Sockets for the ICs came next. I like using sockets, saves hassle if a chip turns out bad or I fry it somehow.
Then came the capacitors. Film caps, electrolytic ones. Again, gotta watch the polarity on the electrolytics. Popped those in. Transistors too, making sure they faced the right way according to the silkscreen on the board. It was a pretty methodical process, just working my way through the components, lowest profile to highest.
The jacks and pots were next. These usually need a bit more solder since they take mechanical stress. Mounted them onto the board, making sure they were flush and straight before soldering the pins. Didn’t want wobbly knobs or loose connections. Once all the components were on the main board, I gave it a once-over. Checked for bad solder joints, bridges, anything that looked dodgy. Cleaned off some of the flux residue too.
Then it was time to mount the board to the front panel. Lined everything up, screwed it in place. Attached the knobs to the pots. Felt pretty solid.
Powering Up and Testing
This is always the slightly nervous bit. Double-checked the power connection polarity. Plugged in the power supply. No smoke, no sparks – always a good sign! Some LEDs lit up as expected.
I didn’t do a super deep calibration right away, just some basic function checks. Hooked up an oscillator to the input, connected the output to my mixer. Turned some knobs. Yep, it was making sounds, changing the sound like it should. Filters seemed to be filtering, LFOs were LFO-ing. Good enough for a first test.
Final Thoughts
Overall, it was a decent build. Took me an evening, maybe a few hours total. The instructions were okay, mostly pictures and the board markings. Didn’t hit any major snags, just the usual fiddly bits with small components. It works, it makes noise, and I put it together myself, which is always satisfying. Now I just need to spend some time actually playing with it properly. Pretty happy with how it turned out.
