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Summary of Contents for MMM MINITAUR
- Page 1 MINITAUR EURORACK CONVERSION KIT DIY GUIDE also includes expander.
- Page 2 How something fits and is secured in its normal operating destination is all handled in the original design. Moog engineered the Minitaur to fit in its own custom enclosure. You are now purposefully removing it from its comfy enclosure and are now re-purposing it into a different use.
- Page 3 What’s What’s in the in the Kit? Kit? - Panel - Colored Wires Tools you need: - X-acto Knife - Power Board - Power Cable with NEW blade! - Soldering Iron - Stand Offs w/screws - Adhesive Block - Rosin core solder - Wire cutters - Vinyl 'shorting' stickers - 6 Mono Jacks...
- Page 4 Step#1 Step#1 Remove plastic nuts from jacks on back. While you are here, also remove the tiny screws holding the MIDI connector. Take a piece of tape and slide under the knob and use a screwdriver to slightly lift the knob. This will give you space to use your fingers and gently remove the knob.
- Page 5 Step#2 Step#2 Remove all chassis screws. Both sides and the top have screws. Once inside, observe the ribbon cable connecting both circuit boards. Remove the silicone gel from the corners of the cable. You should be able to do this with your fingers.
- Page 6 Step#3 Step#3 Using a deep well socket or CAREFULLY using pliers, remove the nuts and washers from the front panel. Please use sockets if at all possible! Removing now is no big deal if you scratch the old shell, but scratching your new front panel will not make you happy! Again use tape if you don't want...
- Page 7 Minitaur to will have no issue, so please keep that in mind while performing the next steps! If you plan to never sell your Minitaur, then NO WORRIES. Just custom fit to your rack dimensions and you are good to go.
- Page 8 Before Before Step#5 Step#5 First we will focus on the bottom, the circuit board. The first thing we can do is sand down a couple of millimeters. The pic above shows the un-altered board. The bottom pic is after sanding. You can sand down VERY close and still not touch the bottom trace.
- Page 9 Step#6 Step#6 Here is where a belt sander can come in really handy!! Even so, if you go this route, GO SLOW!!!!! You can go too fast and permanently damage your circuit board. Ok, so you don't have a belt sander handy, did you notice your kit included some sand paper? Yes, believe it or not you can actually do this by hand! Takes about 35 minutes of focused work, but I have done this.
- Page 10 If you have test fit your front panel and circuit board and find you have plenty of room and don't need to do this step, then by all means, skip it! However, if you ever plan to sell your Minitaur to someone else, please realize they might have a 'tighter' rail set up than you and might experience problems with their fit.
- Page 11 Step#8 Step#8 Ok, let's move to the back circuit board. If you have a desoldering gun/iron please remove all quarter inch jacks and MIDI socket. Now you can skip to step 12. If you don't have a desoldering gun/iron please go to the next step.
- Page 12 Step#9 Step#9 First we need to add the 'shorting' vinyl stickers. When no plug is inserted into the jack the metal fingers reach over and make connection to the other side. We will be removing these 'shorts' and then reattach them to our new jacks.
- Page 13 Step#10 Step#10 Using a new Xacto blade carefully rock back and forth cutting the threads off the front of each jack. GO SLOW and for God's sake don't cut your hand off! Starting the cut is the hardest, but once you are through the rest is easier.
- Page 14 Step#11 Step#11 The MIDI jack itself can stay, but the top part sits up too high and we want to be as 'skiff friendly' as possible, so the top plastic part of the jack needs to be clipped down. Carefully remove the metal shroud, by bending it back and forth until it snaps off.
- Page 15 Step#12 Step#12 Take your new front panel and attach the front circuit board. I designed all of potentiometer holes and jack holes with extra room around them. This is done so you can get the best overall fit. Each of these seem to be just so slightly different, so I hope to have given all of us enough fudge factor.
- Page 16 Step#13 Step#13 Onto the soldering! Probably easier to solder the red and white wires to the headphone jack before inserting it. Also don't forget to add solder to the ground post too! You will need it in a minute. Solder each color wire exactly as you see in the above pic.
- Page 17 Step#14 Step#14 Align the jacks and then tighten them down. If some are out of alignment, then gently nudge them back into place and tighten them down. This is easier to do now that you have the copper ground wire holding all of them.
- Page 18 Step#15 Step#15 Find both aluminum standoff's and score one of the ends on both. Make sure to score them several times from different directions. Using the supplied screws, mount them into the only two mounting holes on the back circuit board, so that the scored ends of the standoff's are pointing away from the circuit board, as pictured above.
- Page 19 Step#16 Step#16 We are now going to glue the standoff's in place. To do this we need to keep checking the alignment of the circuit boards. We can use the top right corner to check this. With the circuit boards resting in place we can use a Sharpie or marker and roughly mark the position of where the standoff's are.
- Page 20 Step#17 Step#17 Unscrew the screws and place the bottom circuit board to the side. Now prep the other ends of the red and white wires and solder them to the headphone jack as pictured. Place the bottom circuit board just above the top circuit board, as pictured below.
- Page 21 Step#18 Step#18 Time to solder the wires from the jacks. If you work from the corner and measure each wire and trim accordingly before you prep the wire with solder, you can use a little electrical tape and make a nice neat bundle out of them. These pics show the jacks removed.
- Page 22 Step#19 Step#19 Carefully remove the serial number sticker from the bottom shell. The sticker is a metal foil, so please don't apply to the circuit board. Apply it at the top on the panel as pictured below. Sometimes the stciker will get ruined trying to remove it.
- Page 23 About the power cable! About the power cable! This might even confuse the more experienced eurorack modular enthusiast! I did not need the -12V line for this mod, so I eliminated it. However now it may seem confusing on how to plug in your power cable without the usual red wire indicator.
- Page 24 The Expander The Expander What’s What’s in the in the Kit? Kit? - Panel Tools you need: - X-acto Knife - USB cable - Phillips Screw Driver - 6 pin ribbon cable - Soldering Iron - Rosin core solder - 2 pin ribbon cable - Wire cutters - MIDI Jack - Electrical Tape...
- Page 25 Step#1 Step#1 Take the MIDI connector and snap it into the panel. It is keyed and will only go in one way! Locate the black screws and also mount the USB pigtail to the panel. Take the 6 wire ribbon cable and prep one end of it as pictured to the left.
- Page 26 Step#2 Step#2 If you have a pair of 'helping hands' this step is much easier. If not you can tape the connector to an edge of a table. Remove the ends of insulation and solder them. Then add solder to the ends of the header connector.
- Page 27 The end with the two wires needs to be soldered to the MIDI connector pins as pictured. Don't worry about orientation as we will deal with that later. Make sure the solder joints are nice and strong. Loose connections here will make interfacing your Minitaur problematic.
- Page 28 Step#4 Step#4 In this picture the green and black wires have not been soldered yet! Only the red and white wires Black Green Green have been. White White It is important to get the wires in the correct order for the USB connector! Starting from where we left off from the MIDI wires, solder the first wire to the bottom right post of the USB connector.
- Page 29 Now you can test your MIDI connection. Plug in a keyboard or some sort of reliable MIDI source, and turn on your Minitaur. If your MIDI connection works, then mark the header with a paint marker. Mark the side of both ends. If your connection does not work, pull the connection and reverse the wires.
- Page 30 Step#6 Step#6 Now double check your USB cable and connect accordingly. You will notice that the last black wire connects to nothing. That is ok, it is the shield of the USB connector. I see no reason to introduce any digital noise into your signal via your metal rack. Please mark the red connector side with the red connector side wire that you just soldered.
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