Midi-Greedy Mixing Desk

I wanted to build a mixing desk with integrated speakers that meets my own expectations in size and quality. A mixing desk always ready-to-use whenever i am in the mood for being creative or simply feel like listening to my favorite music, but not simply on the stereo. So that’s why i built my midi-greedy mixing desk.

In this description, i am showing you how far i built this mixing desk until today. There is still a sub-construction to be built, so that my mixing desk doesn’t have to be placed on my desk, but can stand on its own feet :-)

Tools:

Circular hand saw, jigsaw, router, cordless screwdriver, grinding machine.

Material:

Chipboard (2 cm / 0.79 in), MDF (0.2 cm / 0.08 in), base coat, varnish, sandpaper (coarse and fine), buttons, potis, fader, cable, class-D amplifier, stereo speakers, arduino, conductor board, multiplexer.

First, i cut the base plate. I used the size of 160 x 50 cm (about 63 x 19.7 in), which you can adapt for your needs, of course. As i wanted to use the space as my work plate, i made the cut-outs for the depth of the base plate very late (see step 9).

In the next step, i bonded the back plate to the side plates. I shortened the two leftover sideparts from step 2 a bit and glued them together with the back plate. I used them to stabilise my construction and to fit in the front plates for my speakers. When sawing the back plate, look out for the angles i used in step 2. Otherwise, the base and top plate might not be in flush afterwards.

Sawing the front parts for my speakers was a bit tricky. Which worked fine for me was to saw longer parts that fitted the angles of base and top plate, then i held them in front of the longer and shorter side parts from steps 3 and 4 and marked where to saw for the perfect fit.

This is the step where i used a router for the first time in my life. Fortunately, i tested the router with some unused shelves before i really started using it for my midi-greedy. By that, i found that for me the easiest way to cut out the holes for my speakers was to first cut the recesses and afterwards cut the whole circle.

Finally, the top plate is placed. Because of the used angles, i had to make three parts out of the top plate to make them fit perfectly. To make sure that these are airtight later on, i first glued the top plates to the side plates for the speakers.By using a core bit, i cut out the holes for the electric connection for my speakers on the inner sides.

I filled the fissures with wood putty and let it dry.

After the wood putty dried, i began sanding the whole workpiece. I started with coarse sandpaper and a sander. Later on, i used fine sandpaper manually. Now you get a good impression of how midi-greedy will look like in the end.

At last, i cut the base plate to its designated size. Additionally, i cut out holes for the front panel and at the sides to install carry handles later on.

Again, i sanded the whole workpiece until its surface was really smooth. Now i applied the first layer of base coat. After the first layer dried completely, i sanded the surface an applied the second layer of base coat. I repeated this step four times. Unfortunately, it was by now i realized that i forgot the cutout for the front panel. One of these things... you should definitely plan and do before (!) installing and gluing parts... Doing this in hindsight is fairly difficult and unfortunately looks quite poor.

After applying 5 layers of base coat in step 11, i applied 5 layers of varnish. As in step 11: Apply varnish, sand until the surface is smooth, apply varnish, sand again and so on.

I would have loved to cut out the front panel out of aluminium or iron sheet. Due to the tools i had at hand, i had to use 2 mm (0.08 in) MDF. I marked all buttons, potis and fader. For the holes, i used a drilling machine. To cut the slots, is used a Dremel. In the end, i spray painted the front panel with black colour.

In this last step, i assembled all components onto the front panel and soldered all parts to an arduino. How this works, is explained in many really good tutorials on the internet.

Update: Because many of you asked for a detailed description of this step, i will write the schematics down and add these steps to this instructable as soon as possible.

Now we are ready to enjoy the music!