Monolith Project Assembly Instructions

The Monolith amplifier consists of two circuit boards: Power Board (large board) Amplifier board (small board)

Each board has a bill of materials provided. All parts are available from Mouser. You can cut and paste the BOM with part number and quantity into the Mouser online order form at http://www.mouser.com/Tools/part-list-import.aspx. If you set up a mouser account, you can put the project into your project manager and have a record or your order to reference. The Monolith offers two options to build either a transformer coupled amp or capacitor coupled amp. The capacitor (cap) coupled amp will cost less to build and sound great. This option needs to use balanced input only for balanced output. The transformer amp offers optimum sound and gives you the ability to have SE input and balanced input. For cap coupled amps refer to the picture diagram on second page of instructions. The transformer is not used, and the coupling capacitors go across the transformer pads as shown. You will repeat this for both left and right channels. Notice R12, and R5 are not used, but their pads are used for the 100k resistors to ground, the grounds being the two center pads between the coupling capacitors. The four capacitors should be good quality. Values between .47uF, and 2.2uF are fine. For transformer coupled amplifiers the CineMag transformers plug right into the board. Red dot on the transformer goes to the octagonal pad closest to In+. For either project, start the board stuffing with the smaller components first, resistors, and then move up to the larger parts. Lastly solder the four heat sinks to the board, then put in the amplifiers, put thermal compound between the device and heat sink then secure with bolt, and nut. Once they are securely in place solder all 11 pads. If you need soldering help, there are many youtubes that instruct on soldering properly.

Watch component polarity and make sure Q1, Q2, which are complimentary pairs, are put into the correct holes, with the proper orientation and the heat sinks snapped on before use. You have the option on the amplifier board to reverse polarity, not identified on the boards silk screen. For reverse polarity, when you wire the board to your headphone XLR reverse R+, R- , and L+, L-; this will keep the input polarity the same as the output. If you go by the nomenclature the output will be 180 degrees out of polarity with the input. The power supply, power transformer, and amplifier board, can be built into the same enclosure. For chassis selection, a good place to purchase one is Pacific Radio at pacrad.com or off Ebay. Good luck, and enjoy what you created! If you have any technical questions contact me at cuthus@charter.net

Sample cap coupled amp build layout.