This is the story from a reader, Richard Lee.  All photos and diagrams were supplied by Richard.  As the editor, I have added a couple of small comments, which are in bold, and marked Ed. (As in editor :-).

The text is pretty much verbatim, other than reformatting to match my general page layout.

I obtained a used Sherwood turntable for mere $30 U.S.  I could have bought a phono preamp for some $100-150, but that would have been NO FUN.  I knew about ESP (Elliott Sound Products) site since I was obsessed with trying to bi-amp my system.  (Yes, it is bi-amped with Rod's power-supply design + Marchand XM-1s.  More on that later, maybe.  Rod's crossover required too many precision capacitors and it turned out much simpler to just buy XM-1 kits from Marchand.) (Pity.  Ed.)

Parts
I had some trouble getting the parts.  Digikey's 1% metal-film resistors (Yageo) don't come in values I needed for the phono-preamp.  Thankfully, Mouser Electronics had them.  Bi-polar electrolytics were available from both vendors.  I had some left-over Burr-Brown 2604s so I decided to use them instead of NE5532.  All the other parts were obtained from Halted Surplus store.  It's a local store to me, so it was convenient.  Also, since it is a surplus store, things tend to be REALLY cheap.  For example, the casing was only $4.95!

(The OPA2604 is an excellent opamp, and is highly recommended.  Ed.)

Building
Power Supply
The power supply was actually the harder part.  Fitting those 4700uF caps is a pain!  My first power supply turned out to be a big mess.  I got it to work and I am using it in the phono-preamp, but it really is a mess.  My second power-supply for the crossovers came out just about infinite times better looking.  Practice is definitely a good thing here.

Preamp
See Project 06 for the circuit diagram and all details for the phono preamp. Ed)

As you can see in the picture, I used a generic prototyping board with a fairly standard pattern.  4-3-3-4 holes with interlaced connections.  I got pretty good at putting the stuff onto this type of board.  I used only 7 lines of the board with the only repeating pad being the GND.  It only requires 2 jumpers.  One for connecting two GND plains and one to go from 1st op-amp output to 2nd op-amp input.  I can't help that one, now can I?

Bypass Capacitors (BP on the picture) aren't really drawn as a pair, but you get the idea.  Actually, I only used one 10uF capacitor for bypassing instead of one 10uF & 100nF.  I don't have any problems with it.  I used one op-amp for each channel instead of using two halves on each channel.  The other channel is perfect mirror image of the drawing.  In fact, if I rotate the board 180 degrees, it looks the same way as before.

Other things to note
I came up with a clever and CHEAP way of mounting the boards to the case.  I bought a box of standard screws and a box of nuts and used 1 screw + 3 nuts for each hole.  See picture.  Neat, eh?

For connections, power is permanent.  Inputs are jacks attached to the box.  Those 3/4" holes were hard to drill right.  Outputs are internally soldered cables.  They're Monster Cable something or other.  Interlink 400 or something like that.  I got them free with the CD player and I didn't need them, so I cut one side and hardwired it to the preamp.

This is the second power supply I made for the crossovers.  It is made with only the best components.  WAAAY overkill, but I'm only making one, so the cost wasn't a big issue.  Regulators are Motorola 7815ACT and 7915ACT.  (ACT ones are the ones with tighter tolerances.)  100nF caps are Panasonic polypropylene 2%.  Rectifiers are "ultra-fast" something or other.  TOTALLY unnecessary, I know, but Digikey has $25 minimum order or they charge extra 5 dollars for handling.  The hardest part was the two 4700uF 36V caps.  Big suckers they are.  There are no 10uF nor 100uF caps here.

Crossovers themselves have 100uF caps at their power inputs and the sample power-supply in the XM-1 instruction manual didn't have them, so I figured it wouldn't cause me any problems.  Heat-sinks are not touching each other although it wouldn't matter since they're insulated.  When I play loud music, they do get pretty warm.

Here we have one of the XM-1 crossovers.  The input cable is Belden 89207 twin-axial cable with double shielding.  Nice looking cable.  Other cables are all left-over Kimber 4TC speaker cables unwinded.  Obviously, all the interconnects are home-made.  I'm using Burr-Brown OPA2134's in the XM-1s.  You might be able to see the two 100uF caps near the power input.  (Hey - what is this foreign crossover doing in my pages? Ed.)

Magnepan MG1.6QRs have internal crossovers unlike MG3.6 and MG20, which have external boxes.  I had to cut open a slit and bypass the built-in crossovers.  You can see the stitching from the operation.  No more warranty, but it was worth it!  I had to reverse the low input polarity because it was reversed due to 2nd order crossover's 180 degree phase shift.  High-pass was 1st order.

You can see the rear of one of my Bryston amps and the connections.  Nothing fancy.  I love my Brystons most among my equipment.  Well, maybe I love my phono-preamp more ^_^ but nothing else really gives me 20 years unlimited warranty.

This information was compiled and submitted by Richard, who has biamped his system, built my power supply and phono preamp, and will (hopefully) build a few more things as well.  This information is provided as a service to others who might be contemplating building stuff, but were put off by the lack of PCBs or whatever.

Richard has shown that it is not only possible, but quite easy to do, as the photos and diagrams show.  I do think he is a brave man to attack a pair of Magnapans, but if you want it badly enough, I guess anything is possible.

Brands and references to brands or suppliers are as supplied by Richard.  This is not an endorsement from me, nor a criticism.  I have simply used Richard's text.  Any comments should be sent to ESP, and will be forwarded to the author for return comment / reply.