Trying to figure out if it’s worth $50 for a piece of plastic or if I can DIY something better myself…
They don’t snap on, but the lip wraps around the hardware, so if you tried to slide it sideways, it wouldn’t go anywhere, but if you tipped the unit upside down, the lid would fall off. I guess they’re kinda like plastic hats.
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I have a PL-2s and planning to buy a PL-2. It is a lot for a piece of plastic, but it’s at least a good piece of plastic. I think for transport, a Velcro strap around it would suffice.
it’s an unsatisfying purchase for a piece of plastic, but not as unsatisfying as car insurance.
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This is where Amazon points and points from music stores come in real handy. It doesn’t sting as much with the practical purchases.
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They slightly snap if you add a bit of stage tape on the edges.
I was also planning to DIY it, but it is very difficult to make precise edges, and sturdy enough for carrying around. And the PL-2 material is really bomb proof, so I bought it at the end and also other lids for all my elektrons.
How did you plan to do it yourself, wood, 3d print?
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It varies. Ive had some that require some serious force to put on and some that just sit ontop. It’s not even a matter of which product, Ive had two of the mk2 analog series decksavers for both my rytm and a4 and theyre like opposite ends.
The PL-2 lids fit pretty snuggly, but as others suggested, it’s bot a super tight fit. For my OT and MD it makes a sort of satisfying thunk into place.
The A4 mk2 version however, just sort of loosely sits on top, which I don’t love.
I have 4 lids. 2 of them are snug enough to stay on, even when upside down. Other 2 aren’t very snug. I think its luck of the draw, really.
I think to DIY you would pretty much have to heat-form acrylic, and between the effort and cost of materials it wouldn’t really be worth it for the money you’d save. If you were going to do more than one then it might be, but for a one-off having to build a mold, get the acrylic, bake it, form it, probably have a few come out wrong before yo got the process down - it’s absolutely doable and would be a cool DIY learnign project but not really that great as a cost saving thing.
In a pinch you could mount the plastic sheet in a wooden frame and use a heat gun to soften it so you could press it down over your form (making a form is a whole other thing), but the simplest way to actually have it predictably come out well is probably this:
Yeah, thermoforming project sounds fun, would love to try a machine like that.
Decksavers are made out of Polycarbonates not Acrylic, which might be more difficult to work with, but they are way tougher
For heat forming plastic over a mold with a heat gun or oven, you would need to stretch it quite a lot on the corners, and the corner detail might came out wrinkled. It is much easier to do 2d bends than 3d bends.
constructing a separate frame (wood or forex) and then glueing a (translucent) plane sheet of material on would be the easiest way, but the corners would be sharper.
So yeah, I think the official lids are worth the money, even if it does not look so
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Ah, I didn’t know that but I did notice they seem less rigid than acrylic.
I have one for the OT and one for the OTO BAM. The OT is snug but wouldn’t stay on if you turned it upside down. The BAM is so tight it almost snaps into place.