Maybe this is the winter you build something!

@wolf_garcia ....There is no escape, only higher ground where you can put up the good fight.... ;)

"You'll never take me alive!"

It seems it's quite happy to take us 'not so much'..... 😏

Building is indeed fun. I’ve made my own power cables, IC’s and speaker cables that I’m now currently using, and have for some time now. My subs are DIY, though I had a pro cabinet maker assembling them for me, and he again had the 13-ply panels CNC cut from another party. The physical DIY part for me here only involved mounting the woofers and cables, but the "real" DIY aspect was the research and eventually honing in on the specific tapped horn design, its tune and proper driver complementation. That took me over a year. My music server is DIY as well (it’s relatively basic, really, and could be tweaked A LOT more to even sweeter sonics, but that’s to be done down the road), and though it may not be classified as DIY per se setting the filter values in the digital cross-over/DSP of my actively configured setup was quite hairy in the beginning and was (still is) very much a learning exercise. It’s hugely rewarding though, and not having the physical components like caps, coils and resistors of passive XO’s makes the tweaking process with a DSP quite easy. You can do several presets with different settings and compare them on the fly from the listening position until landing on the preferred preset. Some 25 years ago I build me (from a kit) a 42W class A power amplifier, and used it for over 10 years. Lovely amp, and at ~$1,000 at the time it was a steal. My very first pair of speakers, the Coral Flat 8 widebanders, were DIY as well. For under $100/pair in the early 80’s those had me smiling to music. 

Winter will be a busy one.

I have 3 Lencos Im going to be building heavy plinths for that involve a rather elaborate damping system an some significant mods to the TT’s.

Was just given an Ariston RD11S that I’m going to restore for fun.

Have all the parts and schematic for a single ended EL34 amp that I will be building, along with a 12AU7 preamp that I have most of the parts for as well as a schematic. Picked up a Push Pull EL34 power amp from an organ that I will be reimagining.

Built a Hiraga 30 Watt Super class A amp that needs some repair after the output transistors went “poof” on me.

And, I have 3 pairs of speakers I will be building. All three are in prototype enclosures for the time being as I’m fine tuning the crossovers and damping.

I’m ready for the winter months :)

 I have not yet, built a plinth for a TT, though it is enticing. Would need an accurate template, and since I lack a CNC machine, a router would likely be doing a lot of the work, at least down to an inch deep.