If you want to build a good VU meter bridge for your recording studio, the first thing you'll need is a good pair of VU meters. But lest you think it's as simple as throwing a few meters into a nice box and calling it a day, think again.
This project comes from us [Frank Olson], his projects typically incorporate wood as part of the mechanism, like his famous wooden ribbon microphone. While this construction does use wood to great effect, it is only used for the final enclosure of the project. Before that, [Frank] He salvaged a pair of nice-looking moving coil meters from an old tape recorder. He considered several ideas before deciding on a design. The NE5532 dual channel audio buffer module is used as a preamplifier, with each channel feeding into a bridge rectifier before going to the meter. Wisely, [Frank] chose to illuminate the meters with existing incandescent bulbs, so a small DC-DC power supply was added to provide the required 8 volts.
As for the enclosure, there it is [Frank]My experience working with veneers was helpful. He chose mahogany and carefully shaped all the pieces with a knife and glued them together with CA glue. At least we think it was CA. He uses a lot of things based on previous efforts. The tung oil finish is excellent, and the finished sculpt looks great. You can find out everything in the video below.
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