
The number one tool you need is a soldering iron. Compare it with learning to play guitar on a Walmart guitar that makes your fingers bleed and lose motivation after a couple of weeks instead of spending a bit more money and playing guitar for the rest of your life. I remember switching from a cheap $30 soldering iron to a $175 Weller and the difference was night and day. I do advise you to go for quality over quantity as this will make your builds much easier. There is a handful of tools you need to get started building your own DIY audio gear. What tools do I need for building audio kits? Compared to unobtainable vintage gear you can sometimes save 5x to 10x as much. With commercial products, you not only pay for assembly but also for research cost and of course brand value.īy building your own gear, you save a huge amount of money. Soldering and assembling audio equipment takes a lot of time.

One of the biggest cost factors of audio gear is labor. Why build my own gear?īesides the huge learning experience and the possibilities of repairing and modding your own gear later down the line, building your own gear also saves a ton of money. This eventually allows you to repair your own broken equipment, saving even more money in the long run. The more kits you build, the more you learn about electronics as well. You do need some basic tools to build these kits but consider this a one-time investment. Electrical components need to be soldered to the PCB with a soldering iron, which takes some practice but can be learned by everyone.Īll audio kits come with detailed instructions and photos, making them easier to assemble than your average Ikea closet. The designs are made to sound as close to the original as possible, sometimes even using original components.

You buy a complete kit with a PCB (Printed Circuit Board), all the components required to complete the build, and a case. These kits are basically the audio variant of Lego. There are numerous websites that offer DIY audio kits. And it’s not difficult to build either! How to get started with DIY audio gear What if I told you that you don’t need to sell your house to acquire some of the most wanted vintage audio equipment? Thanks to a community of audio engineers around the world it’s now possible to create your own affordable vintage gear. Even though the quality of plugins keeps getting better, sometimes owning an analog hardware device just adds some mojo that you can’t get out of a piece of software. One quick glance at the price of an original version, however, makes you glad we have access to plugins now.

Every music producer or audio engineer dreams of one day owning a vintage LA2A, 1176 1073, or any other classic unit.
