3. Mounting Parts to the Front Panel
This section assumes you’ve already stamped, drilled, chiseled, nibbled or sledge-
hammered a slab of material into a front panel. Or, perhaps, you’ve even ordered from a
panel supply house a panel you’ve designed on your computer. In any event, you’ve got
it in your mitts and you’re ready to build.
Preparation
Set Some Landmarks
By now, you’ve probably realized that there are a
lot
of components on the
electro-music
Klee Sequencer front panel. Really, the only time during the build when you’ll be
looking at your panel from the pretty, labeled front side is when you’re orienting the parts
and calibrating the thing. The rest of the time, you’ll be looking at the ugly, hidden part
behind the panel. This is the side that tells you nothing and can potentially lead you into
the deadly trap of Wiring Things Wrong. Why? Because, after a while, you’ll begin to
confuse which pot is which or which switch is what as you wire the thing up. Instead of
constantly looking at the front of the panel to make sure you really are soldering wire
where you want to, it’s a good idea to use a permanent marker or use some other labeling
method to mark the part positions on the rear of the panel. So, do it now, before you
forget. Remember, the world of the back of the panel is a bizarre universe where
everything is backwards – left is right, right is wrong, clockwise is anticlockwise and up
is often down. Mark the stage numbers, mark the label of the switch, mark the positions
of the switch (“Merge On”, “Invert B”, etc.). You’ll be glad you did, says the Voice of
Experience.
Orienting, Testing and Mounting the Parts
Some parts, particularly the SPST ON-OFF switches must be mounted with a particular
orientation to match how you have your panel labeled. It’s your Klee, so it doesn’t
matter to you, the operator, if the Gate Bus Merge 1 Switch will be flipped “up” to be in
the Merge position, or flipped down to be in the Merge position, as long as it agrees with
your front panel labeling. But, it matters to the switch.
The parts most sensitive to orientation, as mentioned, are the SPST ON-OFF switches,
and there are a lot of them. The pattern switches, the merge switches, the enable
switches, the Gate Bus 1 Load switch, and the mode switches are all of this variety. The
gate bus switches don’t really care at this point which way you mount them – the
orientation of if they flip up or down is in how you wire the things up later. The same
goes for the Invert B Switch.
So, break out your SPST ON-OFF switches and take a look at them. On the rear of each
switch are two terminals. These terminals are either shorted (closed) or open
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