Empeg Docking Station

I got tired of plugging in wires every time I came into the house with the Empeg, so I made myself a docking station. It's interior is similar to Mark Lord's docks in that it does not use a metal dock, but MDF with strategic dadoes and cutouts. Some of the design was definately lifted from his, and now I appreciate the amount of labor that is going into producing his docks en masse. The outside is a box made of solid curly maple sides and stained cherry top and bottoms, with curly maple inlay. The docked ethernet is actually very easy to make, since the midpoint of the ethernet port on the Empeg is 1/2" off the bottom of the player. This means that you can rout a dado (groove) in a piece of 1/2" MDF, cut it in two and glue it back together, and you have a perfect hole in the interior for a RJ-45 head. I used a 1/2" router bit on the table to rout this groove (you just have to experiment with the depth), but you could also do it with a stacked dado set on the tablesaw.

I set up a gallery for the dock at riocar.org. Here is a pic of the finished product:

Looks great you just need a matching face.

Very nice!!!

Love some of the gags in the gallery captions... "Old and tired/New hotness", "Jeorb"...

My only question: I don't see (on a quick glance) a fan. I learned that a fan is critical in a home dock. Recently the fan in one of my docks stalled because it wasn't getting enough voltage, and the case of the player got literally burning hot. I altered the resistor values and now it's fine, but that was a bit of a scare.

I tested my player on my desk for a whole day with a MDF dock with NO vent holes drilled in it, and the temprature never got above 100F. In my car, the Empeg averages around 110F-115F. Maybe this is because it's my basement, and it's usually really cool down there (I wear a sweatshirt usually) but I don't think temperature is going to be a problem. I would say it might be because it's driving two drives, but I have two drives also, a 40g and the stock 10g.

Okie dokie.

Wow. Very very nice.

That is slick!! I love the inlay.

Update on the temp. I'm not sure what the difference is (maybe more mass around the Empeg) but after running the Empeg non-stop in the docking station for two consecutive days during my working hours (8 hour days) the Empeg seems to stabilize at 107 degrees F. For my initial test I used just the MDF sled (actually a early test prototype) for 4 hours, and it hit 100 degrees F and seemed to stay there. When I take the Empeg out of the docking station, it is warm but definately not hot, and most of the heat is on the bottom of the unit. My dock design just vents the two side vents out the back of the sled, I have no vent for the top.