Hello everyone. I recently completed my 1176 Revision A (Blue Stripe) that I acquired from the awesome Hairball audio, Mnats and Mouser. For those of you who are interested in building one of these beauties please, take my advice and read all the guides carefully. What I have decided to do, is place all the resources I can think of in this one location, partially for my own reasons and partially for anyone who needs one location for all the info. So have a look. If there is anything else please comment and I will try and add it.
Hard to find parts.
Hard to find parts and case are available from Hairball audio. They do kits for the Rev A, Rev D, Rev F and Rev G. They also do a version for Gyraf's 1176 that transforms the Gyraf DIY version into a Rev F or G with reproduction transformers and t-pad attenuators..Hairball kits are available here.
Hairball audio kits
Original Gyraf DIY documents can be found here.
http://gyraf.dk
The PCB.
Unless your real handy with making your own PCB's, you might want to get your boards from the amazing Mnats. Mako's boards are of extremely high quality and he will provide you with a PCB for all revisions including the G1176 from Gyraf.
Mnats shop can be found here.
http://mnats.net/board_sales.html
Once you have decided what revision you want to make (More info here) then you need to get hold fo the correct Hairball kit and the correct parts for the revision. Hairball audio kindly put together these BOM's from mouser electronics. I have purchased on of these and it really is a good idea to get it all in one box. Sourcing parts from here there and everywhere can get confusing, expensive and time consuming. The parts from mouser cost roughly $100 for everything.
Bill of Materials
You can find the correct BOM for the revision you are building here.http://www.hairballaudio.com/shop/bom.php
Build Guides
Now this is helpful. Hairball are now putting together a detailed build guide fro their clones. At this point in time there is a partial guide focusing on the power supply and the case.
Power supply. And stuffing the PCB.
Take mine and everyone else's advice. Build the power section of the PCB first! This can saves hours of trouble shooting later.
Hairball power supply build guide can be found below. This guide will take you through the process of building the case, fitting the transformers and power/ratio switch. It will take you as far as testing the power rails.
Hairball build guide
http://www.hairballaudio.com/shop/fetguide.php
Mnats wiring guide is also very helpful. And it can be found here.
http://mnats.net/1176_reva-d_hairball_wiring_power.html
Apart from that you will more than likely find a lot more help on the GroupDiy forum's official 1176 threads.
Rev A
Rev D
Please remember that GroupDiy survives on donations. So if you get help from anyone there. Donate a few dollars, keep the site alive. Its a valuable resource for all of us and it would be a shame to see it disappear.
Donate to Group DIY!! You know it makes sense.
Please also note! When you buy parts from these guys, they do not offer tech support. You can imagine the influx of people with badly built compressors that need help. And I really dont blame them for refusing to support their parts. At the end of the day, you are the one building this device, if it doesn't work, then its your own fault. No one will hold your hand through any of the builds you decide to do. If you do have issues, the people at GroupDiy are really friendly (Well, mostly) and with a bit of patience your questions will be answered.
My opinion of the Hairball 1176 kits.
I must just say that as someone who has wanted to build my own recording and mixing processors for a long time. Starting these projects for me was a decision that I contemplated for quite a while. Money is easy to burn when you are a noob with a soldering iron. And as someone who is not trained as an electrical engineer, I found the learning curve to be very steep when building these devices. There is a lot to know and learn, most of this knowledge you will acquire through trial and error sometimes through finical loss (I like to call that school fees) . One thing I can say is assumption is truly the mother of all fuckups, and should be avoided at all costs. The only mistakes I made during the 1176 build was ones I did not double check on the build guide. So make sure that you know 100% where something goes before you solder it in place. ( I have another project that I rushed and it is now sitting under my desk in a pile unfinished with lifting traces. not cool!) So take your time!!!! We all have to learn the hard way to some extent.
The Hairball 1176 kits are by far the best DIY pro audio kits I have ever seen. Although I havent seen that many, I can say that these kits come highly recommended. The quality of the case is superb and the parts that arrive from Mouser (If you buy the BOM) are just amazing. Really, this build has been a huge amount of fun. I have learned an enormous amount about electronics and compression, and I now own a compressor that sounds better than anything I have ever owned before. (And that is the truth!)
The Hairball 1176 sounds fantastic. It really does. I havent had the opportunity to A-B myself yet, but from what I can hear and gather, the Hairball versions sound every bit as good as the originals. (perhaps even better)
Here is an A-B video I found on Youtube.
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