Working on the EP101 Echoplex, But Then Changing Direction

Hello,
I’m someone who checks the weekly weather forecast every single day so I won’t mess up the timing of switching seasonal clothes this year.

I think I wrote about this around the same time last year as well, but I always lose when it comes to timing my wardrobe change for this season.
Lose to what? Not to anyone in particular, but the moment I put my Heattech away deep in the dresser and send my heavy coat to the cleaners, it suddenly turns freezing cold like midwinter for four or five days…
That indescribable sense of melancholy and defeat is something else.

Even when I ask people around me, they just give the perfectly reasonable answer: “Just check the weather forecast properly.”
Up until last year, I ignored that advice, trusted only my intuition, and failed spectacularly.
Truly foolish.

But this year, I’m different.
Lately, the days are getting warmer, daylight is lasting longer, pollen is in the air, and cherry blossoms are starting to bloom—you can almost hear the whispers of spring.
I find myself drawn to that beautiful voice, thinking, “Oh, this feels nice,” but that’s exactly the problem.
Combined with the desire for it to get warmer quickly, it throws off my judgment.
You must not listen to the voice of spring.

This year, I intend to fully utilize the weapon that is the weather forecast, stay sharp, execute the wardrobe change at the perfect timing, and welcome the best spring ever!!
…Anyway, that was a completely trivial story that I got unnecessarily passionate about.

Now then, I originally wanted to continue from where I left off with the painting last time, but due to various reasons, I ended up stripping off the paint I had applied previously.
Well, the reason is simply that I wasn’t quite satisfied with it.
So for this blog, I could have just repainted it, but I wasn’t really in the mood, so I’ve decided to leave it for a while while thinking about how I want to paint it next.

That leaves me with nothing to write about for this post, but as it happens, I have another effects unit I’m working on that has progressed to the painting stage, so I’ll write about that process instead.
This time, I’ll be using a chassis that has already gone through drilling, surfacing, and leveling.

First, I’ll spray the entire surface with white.
Here’s how it looks after spraying. At this stage, I’ve applied enough paint to give the surface a glossy finish.

Next, I’ll apply masking for the design.

I ended up making the masking slightly larger than intended, and since I aligned it based on the right side, I’m a bit concerned about the left side—but as long as I spray it in a way that looks good overall, it should be fine.

I sprayed black.
This time, I applied it so the surface has a slightly matte, smooth finish.

Next, I’ll remove the masking.
This time, it’s a bones-and-bass design.
If you’re into rock, you’ll recognize it instantly—like, “oh, I know that person!”
After the design, I’m moving on to adding the lettering.
I’m applying masking and carefully covering everything so that only the areas where I want color will be painted.

This time, I spray red, and it looks like this.

When spraying the red, there’s a pattern underneath, so the base consists of a mix of white and black.
If I applied the red directly, the underlying colors would affect how the red appears, making it look different depending on the base.
So, I’ll first spray a layer of white, and then apply the red on top. And here it is after removing the masking.

After this, it would normally be finished through the steps of top coating → leveling → polishing, but due to time constraints, I’ll stop the work here for now.

What do you think?
This time, I started by stripping off the paint from the previous project—almost as if erasing the last blog entirely—but luckily I had another project on hand, and the work went smoothly, which was nice.

As for the chassis with the removed paint, I haven’t decided yet what kind of finish to give it, so I’m not sure how it will turn out, but I do plan to repaint it in the near future.

Next time, I’ll probably cover the wiring work for the one I worked on this time.
Thank you for reading until the end.
See you again on the Sound House staff blog.
Bye.