Soft Case for ZED 14 Mixer

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Equipment these days seldom comes with cases or covers, and aftermarket or accessory items are very expensive. Leaving the equipment unprotected is out of the question, so I decided to take a stab at making my own. We happen to have a small format Allen and Heath ZED 14 mixer that we didn't have a dust cover or a case for, so I picked this as a good candidate for my first attempt.

It is made from the same material commonly used by the OEM factories to make the covers for guitar amplifiers and other equipment. I found it at WalMart in the fabric department for $4/yard and bought two yards of it. I used half of it for this project. The soft case shown above cost me about five dollars to make. My wife was kind enough to show me how to use her high-dollar Husqvarna sewing machine, and I found the material easy to work with.

The material is similar to Cordura nylon with a rubberized feeling PVC coating on the back. I used a spool of black polyester thread that cost a dollar, and a stitch that is a zig-zag with two straight, parallel stitches that connect the points of the zig-zag pattern. I have no idea what the stitch is called, I chose it because it matched what was used on the cover for a Fender guitar amplifier that I own.

First, I made an inner dust cover out of terrycloth... three old hand towels that happened to be the right width and plenty long. I cut one of them up to make the two triangular side panels. This gave me a chance to prototype the outer case/cover and practice with the sewing machine before risking disaster. The nice thing is, it gives some extra padding and protection from scratching the mixer when inserting and removing it from the outer shell.

On the outer shell, I used a 2-inch strip at the narrow (bottom) end because I figured out that although I didn't need to do that with the terrycloth inner cover, it would be needed when using the stiffer material I used for the outer shell.

I left the top and bottom pieces long and they act as two flaps to close the inner cover, as can be seen in the pictures on the following page.

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