Stainless Steel Dynaco ST-70/ST-120 NEW POLISHED COVER PHOTO...

There are a few pictures at the link below of a stainless steel Dynaco Amp cover I had made, not the mirrored finish Stainless, but a more satin finish. Looks good with Bob's Amp.
It acts as a nice cover when you need it, i set it up so it has two tabs that I can just slide into place and pull it off if I want to (no screws required.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60175282@N07/8438227019/in/photostream/

One photo below ..



http://www.flickr.com/photos/60175282@N07/8594515405/in/photostr

very nice! cost less than $70? If so, you could sell hundreds of them . . .

They would be 90 each, plus shipping based on current material cost.

Where do you get one?

It would be interesting to see how much it would be total to get one of these at 90.00 and then the amount to have it chrome plated.

I had this one made in my sheet metal shop, we had some Stainless Steel perforated material from a previous job. Based on my experience with plating I would expect it to be a add of 200 or so. Just a guess. Not sure how well the Stainless accepts plating, have never done any plated stainless parts.

Ahh.. sure

I have a Bob Latino ST120 amp... Stainless Steel shinny chassis... It would be cool to have the cage with the same shine.

Hi,
I once owned a small plating shop back in the late 70's. Mostly motorcycle &
antique auto restoration type of work. Chrome plating of stainless steel back then
not perfected and it would easily peel-off the base metal. There is currently a
plating process called "flash plating" where the chromium is deposited directly on
to the stainless steel...there is no copper or nickel pre-plating. Accordingly, the
base metal (stainless steel) must be pre-polished to a mirror finish prior to the
chromium plating. Polishing of the perforated metal is a difficult task and the
resulting costs of both polishing & plating could easily exceed $200. Finding a
shop that does this type of specialty plating on a one piece basis will be a
challenge.

I would just have the covers electro-polished.

Kevin

PS: I guess you know I stock covers that will fit Bob's VTA ST-70 & ST-120. I also
now have the newer style Dynaco labels for the covers.

I had never heard of electro-polishing 'till this morning. Cool.

Kevin,

I have a cage from you that I got about 2 years ago. Excellent quality and I'd buy again. This thread is pretty neat and a chrome shine would be cool... I'm sure I won't act on it. I run my cage on when I don't run a GZ37 tube that is too tall

What would it cost to fabricate cover made of stainless to match vta chassis and skip the chrome plating?

i custom run of perforated metal in a mirror finish stainless would be very costly. minimum required order and frt would run cost for material into the thousands. plus I would be concerned about the condition after perforating as a mirrored finish really shows scratches and minor dents. I was going to play around with trying to polish the cover that I made to see if i could get it close.

Here is a link to the polished cover.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60175282@N07/8594515405/in/photostr

Wholey Scheyat! I want one!

Serious, PM me if you are interested in building another with some sort of mark up for you time... I'd be interested in hearing the price.

Killer looking cage regardless!

The polished look is killer

Bob Latino,

You should buy 10 of these and sell them as options for your ST70s and ST120s! Man that looks sharp

Having photos of your amps with these cages would give the ST amps a nice modern POP that would sell. IMHO. I think of your ST70 and ST120 amps as a classic car hot rodded in principal. This to me has that look too. A chromed out classic

msupr wrote:Here is a link to the polished cover.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60175282@N07/8594515405/in/photostr

Super nice!

Very nice looking cover. But if it is the stock height I think it is too close to the top (hottest part) of a KT120.
Make it a bit taller (1/2") for the KT-120 and I'm interetsted. Looks beautiful otherwise. congrats on a job well done.

The 1/2" would be interesting... You could sneak a GZ33 Mullard under that too.

PS - I like the open rear too... Let the heat out more

I did not have a real cover to compare the height to. I tried to scale a picture of it. I really do not think heat will be a issue because the back is wide open on this cover, heat should have a much easier path dissipate with a wide open back vs a closed back. The only issue i see is clearance, of the different tube types that may be used in these type of amps. My first thought when I put the top on was toaster

The original dynakit cover is 120mm high

oh yes! the worlds best and finest sounding toaster! yum!

The top of any tube dissapates the most heat and the metal cage in such close proximity would also get very hot and is basically a heat sink. I put a stock cage over my amp and it was within 1/16"from the top of the KT120 tubes and may actually touch them on some amps. This is not good for the tubes period. Kt88 and others are less tall and work fine but if you put an EL34 in there and measure what Dynaco considered a safe distance to the gage on a smaller tube with less heat you will see what I mean. At $50 per KT120 I would not invite problems with mine.
IMHO I think that there should be enough room at the top to allow plenty of air exchange so the tubes do not overheat.
Baddog

baddog1946 wrote:The top of any tube dissapates the most heat and the metal cage in such close proximity would also get very hot and is basically a heat sink. I put a stock cage over my amp and it was within 1/16"from the top of the KT120 tubes and may actually touch them on some amps. This is not good for the tubes period. Kt88 and others are less tall and work fine but if you put an EL34 in there and measure what Dynaco considered a safe distance to the gage on a smaller tube with less heat you will see what I mean. At $50 per KT120 I would not invite problems with mine.
IMHO I think that there should be enough room at the top to allow plenty of air exchange so the tubes do not overheat.
Baddog

You also want ample space between the tube tops and cover to cope with transports and / or shipping.
If the cover flexes and touches the tube it might easily break the glass.

But i must admit that the stainless looks very nice ! And yes, bob should have them as extras!

I don't get it. Unless one has small children or curious pets, there is no reason to cover beautiful glowing tubes. Cages raise heat levels and block the view.