Aleph 3 Design

Aleph 3
Design

Since this amp was never meant to win a beauty contest, it's design was meant to be simple, yet effective. I had many parts leftover and surplus from other projects, so I decided although a budget amp, it would have an ample power supply. Given the size of the power supply and the necessary heatsinks, I decided to go with a chassis size that is roughly 6" x 17" x 12". These were meant to be monoblocks because of the speaker arrangement in my room. I also use very short speaker cables. For this reason, the binding posts are on the far side. The back of the two monoblocks are mirror images, not duplicates. This allows for shorter speaker cables.

Since budget was a concern, I decided to use polycarbonate as a building material. It is strong, lightweight, easy to work with and cheap. This would hold the cap bank and the heatsinks in place. Most of the other parts were salvage. I had a pair of 12" x 12" x 3" heatsinks that I was not using. Instead of using them as a part of the chassis, I decided to use a bandsaw to cut them in half, and use one piece per pair of FETS. This allowed for a decent amount of heatsinking, a symmetrical design, and no need for buying heatsinks.