Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: MOTM

Appealing to the wisdom of those that have gone before me into regions which
I will soon enter...

I've successfully built two MOTM modules: the 101 noise source/s&h and the
420 filter. (I've also finished a 820 lag processor, but haven't tested it
yet.) Both worked as soon as I powered them up, no problems at all.

Next on the assembly list is a pair of 300 VCOs. Having read through the
instructions and looked at the rather dense PC board, I'm feeling faintly
intimidated. Mostly I'm wondering how heat-sensitive some of these arcane
components are. When I was a youngster putting together Radio Shack kits, I
was taught to use a heat sink when soldering any semiconductors. In my old
age I've become more cavalier, and also I now have a decent Weller soldering
iron, so I just solder stuff quickly with a light hand, not bothering with
the heat sink. (Besides, how do you put a heat sink on a 16-pin DIP?) So far
I seem to have gotten away with this. Should I be sensible and use a heat
sink when I'm soldering some of the more unusual parts in the 300s? Or is
this being overcautious? I'd feel even more stupid if I broke a lead on
something by grabbing it too forcefully with a heat sink.

In more general terms, are there any other words of sage advice about
assembling these monsters? I've stuffed a few PC boards in my day, including
some microprocessor-based data-collection equipment (with those nasty square
MCU sockets with concentric sets of pins), but these 300s may be about the
densest boards I've worked on.

I'm considering Larry's tuning modification, but I figure that I should
probably get at least one of them working in stock form first.

Thanks much--
--Adam

P.S. Paul: congrats on the new toy.