13th May 2025. Gave the first coat of black paint to the Dome, Neck Rings and one Hemisphere today.

Thank you for the advice, I'll be sure to check out the painting section you mentioned... I'm sure it'll be a huge help for the glossy parts...

Thanks guys, once I retire (meant to be end of this August) I have more free time and would like to learn a bit of analog electronics again. Believe it or not I have a Honors degree in electrical and electronic engineering and did all the transistor theory etc. a very long time ago when I was young. It will be worth a revisit so I can teach my boy at the same time.   Oh I nearly forgot one funny thing I noticed just a bit earlier when playing with a tone generator app is that one of the amps rotary encoder has a switch so you can push it in but the other one doesn't. They look identical but then that is AliExpress for you haha That said I do like the size of those amps as they sit nicely on the sides of the shoulder tucked away rather than a big box stuck some where.

The small amp is missing the LED display. With big home theatre amps have a LED display to show the volume setting to go with the infinite adjustment to the rotary encoder dial. Say minus 40dB to minus 20dB to 0dB setting. The finite adjustment to the B linear potentiometer is easier to follow. Say 25% to 50% to 100% setting. This is why I don't like the rotary encoder dials. It is just guess work, trying to work out the percentage of volume level when you have a dial that just endlessly goes round and round.