26 May 2012
MXR Blue Box C11 & Volume mod
Hey Hey!
Been a while since I posted anything but here is something I've been playing with... an MXR Blue Box!
This pedal is crazy. It sounds like something between Super Mario's boops and some other fuzzy thing... go try one out!
I like it but it suffers from a couple of issues. Mainly a large volume drop when you kick it in, even with the output maxed out.
I came across this blog: http://ravtones.blogspot.de/
Check it out. I did the C11 mod and added a switch to go back to stock. I do like the stock tone but as is mentioned in that blog the C11 mod alone doesn't increase the volume enough. Tony here is a fan of the SHO, so after chatting to him about it I decided to give this boost mod a go.
For me, unity now seems to be around 11 o'clock on the output dial, and this thing gets LOUD! Getting the little bit of vero is in a bit fiddly. I used to offcuts of resistor legs to mount it on the board, and it's also sat on a pair of transistors that needed to be bent over. I've noticed some bleed from this pedal but I think that was there originally anyway.
8 May 2012
Swirley Shirley MkI
Well i've got this knocked together in a temporary state.
The neck is a temporary one that I got on ebay for £18! Complete bargain. It has a great playability and as an added bonus has a brass nut. It has had a repair behind the headstock that has been done very well and also is a 54mm heel rather than the required 55.5mm.
The bridge is also a cheapo from eBay that is surprisingly good and will do the job until the Kahler 2710 arrives.
Back onto the pickups. They are all entwistles being HVX in the bridge. The single coil is the XS62 and the neck is the HVX neck. They are all very nice they are very 80s sounding but are not quite 100% what I want as i prefer more high end presence and and a faster more precise low end.
I do have plans on trying other pickups in this guitar from both Bulldog pickups & The Creamery.
I will get some clips done for the next post regarding this when the guitar is in MKII.
Now here's a few pictures
The neck is a temporary one that I got on ebay for £18! Complete bargain. It has a great playability and as an added bonus has a brass nut. It has had a repair behind the headstock that has been done very well and also is a 54mm heel rather than the required 55.5mm.
The bridge is also a cheapo from eBay that is surprisingly good and will do the job until the Kahler 2710 arrives.
Back onto the pickups. They are all entwistles being HVX in the bridge. The single coil is the XS62 and the neck is the HVX neck. They are all very nice they are very 80s sounding but are not quite 100% what I want as i prefer more high end presence and and a faster more precise low end.
I do have plans on trying other pickups in this guitar from both Bulldog pickups & The Creamery.
I will get some clips done for the next post regarding this when the guitar is in MKII.
Now here's a few pictures
Here's a quick shot of me playing it. you can see the gaps at the side of the neck.
This photo shows how well the clear coating turned out.
Ignore the twisted B & E strings here I had to take the neck off to adjust the truss rod and didn't realise before taking the photo.
This one shows just how amazingly vibrant the DR neons are and as a bonus they sound and feel amazing too.
30 March 2012
Laney Build Clips
YO YO
So I've been on the nightshift stopping the Gremlins from getting wet and eating after midnight before climbing up inside your TV's.
One night before I went off to work I decided to record a clip of the amp. I haven't mastered this art yet, so I took a picture of what I ended up with. An SM58 slung over my cab, going into a cheap iUSB audio in/out for my mac, and I recorded directly into garageband with zero effects. The photo shows the settings used for the later half of the clip. You can hear me playing sloppy (sloppier than usual anyway) throughout. Mainly because at the start I'm messing with my guitar volume and then other nonsense while worrying about being late for work.
Guitar I used was my Japanese Charvel Pro Mod.
So I've been on the nightshift stopping the Gremlins from getting wet and eating after midnight before climbing up inside your TV's.
One night before I went off to work I decided to record a clip of the amp. I haven't mastered this art yet, so I took a picture of what I ended up with. An SM58 slung over my cab, going into a cheap iUSB audio in/out for my mac, and I recorded directly into garageband with zero effects. The photo shows the settings used for the later half of the clip. You can hear me playing sloppy (sloppier than usual anyway) throughout. Mainly because at the start I'm messing with my guitar volume and then other nonsense while worrying about being late for work.
Guitar I used was my Japanese Charvel Pro Mod.
29 March 2012
Let me introduce you to Swirley Shirley!
Here is a little something that I am going to be putting together over the next few months.
I got the body from Out of this swirled. I looked at it on the website for a good while and then just bought it as I noticed they are closing down and I didn't want to miss out.
This is going to be a more rock oriented guitar as my others are very metal so this will be a nice change.
Its American Red Alder and I am planning to pair it with a Kramer classic replacement neck with the following headstock.
I got the body from Out of this swirled. I looked at it on the website for a good while and then just bought it as I noticed they are closing down and I didn't want to miss out.
This is going to be a more rock oriented guitar as my others are very metal so this will be a nice change.
Its American Red Alder and I am planning to pair it with a Kramer classic replacement neck with the following headstock.
The neck will be flame maple rather than the birdseye thats pictured.
I will probably grab a set of custom Bulldogs for this also as there isn't really much else on the market that appeals to me or is good value for money.
I have also decided to load this with a Kahler trem which is going to be another new experience for me as i've strictly used hardtails & FR type trems in the past.
I am just about to pack the body up to send it off for clear coating and hopefully I will have decided on the neck spec and have it on the way by the time I get the body back.
InMadOut Transformers - SLO Clone
This post is a follow on from the heavily modded SLO post which can be found here.
I had a few reasons for choosing these transformers. The main one being that I am building this amp around a dual KT88 Power section and these transformers are perfectly specced for the application.
These were made to order and had a very short lead time of around 10 days which is another fantastic reason to use these.
There was a bit of the impregnation resin on one of the endbells which I cleaned off but it also took a bit of the black paint off too so i'm possibly going to dissasemble these and spray them matte black.
The power transformer is an absolute beast!
So now all that i'm waiting on for this build is the chassis & a headshell that I am getting custom made.
Hopefully there will be more posts soon.
I had a few reasons for choosing these transformers. The main one being that I am building this amp around a dual KT88 Power section and these transformers are perfectly specced for the application.
These were made to order and had a very short lead time of around 10 days which is another fantastic reason to use these.
There was a bit of the impregnation resin on one of the endbells which I cleaned off but it also took a bit of the black paint off too so i'm possibly going to dissasemble these and spray them matte black.
The power transformer is an absolute beast!
So now all that i'm waiting on for this build is the chassis & a headshell that I am getting custom made.
Hopefully there will be more posts soon.
22 March 2012
Last of the Laney Issues...
So last issue in the Laney has been solved. It needed the use of an oscilloscope but it got fixed in the end. Cheers to JPF Amps in London for help fault finding this last bit. The problem was that when the Middle pot was turned to 0 (wiper to ground) a rather noisy hum came through the speakers. Quite loud. This turned out to be caused by the impedance of the wire to the Master Volume wiper forming a resonant circuit with the grid capacitance of the gain stage it was fed into.
The solution was a grid stopper. Grid stoppers are awesome. They protect against various nastiness in amplifiers. The SLO uses large value ones around 470Kohm, but they can be as little as 10Kohm. I went for 15K here at the suggestion of Frank at JPF. Problem solved.
Here is an artists impression of a grid stopper preventing bad things happening to the grid of a gain stage.
The original pots I used turned out to be shockingly poor. I used the Bourns pots available from Tubetown.de. TubeTown sell a lot of great stuff and are super reliable and helpful. The Bourns pots are also kind of expensive, but the Alphas are more robust. I prefer CTS in general but they seem hard to locate in certain values. In the end I went right over the top and got hold of some Clarostat mil-spec conductive plastic 2Watt pots. This meant I had to redo the tone stack board... here is version 2!
You can see an extra hole I popped in before I realised I could get away doing it neatly with just 2 turrets and some bus wire. The wiring needs to be tidied up, and some grid stoppers added, and then hopefully this will come gigging with me! Fingers crossed!
The solution was a grid stopper. Grid stoppers are awesome. They protect against various nastiness in amplifiers. The SLO uses large value ones around 470Kohm, but they can be as little as 10Kohm. I went for 15K here at the suggestion of Frank at JPF. Problem solved.
Here is an artists impression of a grid stopper preventing bad things happening to the grid of a gain stage.
The original pots I used turned out to be shockingly poor. I used the Bourns pots available from Tubetown.de. TubeTown sell a lot of great stuff and are super reliable and helpful. The Bourns pots are also kind of expensive, but the Alphas are more robust. I prefer CTS in general but they seem hard to locate in certain values. In the end I went right over the top and got hold of some Clarostat mil-spec conductive plastic 2Watt pots. This meant I had to redo the tone stack board... here is version 2!
You can see an extra hole I popped in before I realised I could get away doing it neatly with just 2 turrets and some bus wire. The wiring needs to be tidied up, and some grid stoppers added, and then hopefully this will come gigging with me! Fingers crossed!
7 March 2012
5150 / 6505 IEC Installation
Here are a few good reasons why an IEC socket is a good thing...
LOOK AT THAT! The mains chord has actually pulled out of the grommet that is meant to hold it in place. The grommet no longer actually holds the cable steady enough at all. The strain of anything pulling on the chord is being taken by the LIVE wire soldered to the fuse holder, and the SAFETY EARTH soldered to the chassis.
The yellow/green wire (Earth) should be longer than the Live and Neutral wires so that in the event of any cores of the mains cable breaking inside the chassis (Say for example some Goomba comes and yanks that cable so hard it breaks at the solder connection, probably at the live wire) the safety earth will always be the last thing attached or at least be the last core to break off.
The other issue I have with the 6505 at least... is this plug adapter.
It's HUGE and you HAVE to use it because under there is a 2 Pin European style plug with no fuse, that you can't remove from the amp because the mains cable is fixed. This makes it really annoying to carry your amp around and even if you use a flight case, you always have this brick attached to your amp.
Most techs are probably gonna charge you a bunch of doubloons to fit an IEC but it's a quickish job and will save you a lot of hassle and potential death.
Step 1: Get rid of the grommet and cut the mains lead leaving enough wire on the fuse holder, voltage switch and earth to go back to the IEC. (Not really major surgery!)
Step 2: Best way to make a hole for the IEC is with a sheet metal punch. These are expensive, but if you can borrow one (like me) then its cool. A tech should probably have one for doing stuff like this. I removed the fuse holder because it was in the way simply by unsoldering the wire going to the mains switch from the back of it. You line up the cutting side of the punch and then assemble it again, and use a wrench to tighten that big nut which in turn pulls the cutting part through the metal. BEAST!
Step 3: Get your IEC socket, mark the holes for mounting it, drill em out.
Step 4: Install the IEC and wire it up making sure you get the wires back on the correct pins! This IEC would have stuck out a tiny bit at the top and bottom of the chassis where the metal curves around. For this reason it was mounted at a slight angle so it could be fixed in a solid fashion with no bits sticking out to snag on anything.
And thats it! Throw that massive old mains plug away and get a nice kettle lead. Stop worrying about the Live wire breaking because a Goomba yanked on it. Don't let a tech tell you that doing this is a major operation. Actually... to be fair... if you try and do this with a drill and a file instead of a punch, it IS a major operation and you'll get metal filings in your amp... so screw that!
LOOK AT THAT! The mains chord has actually pulled out of the grommet that is meant to hold it in place. The grommet no longer actually holds the cable steady enough at all. The strain of anything pulling on the chord is being taken by the LIVE wire soldered to the fuse holder, and the SAFETY EARTH soldered to the chassis.
The yellow/green wire (Earth) should be longer than the Live and Neutral wires so that in the event of any cores of the mains cable breaking inside the chassis (Say for example some Goomba comes and yanks that cable so hard it breaks at the solder connection, probably at the live wire) the safety earth will always be the last thing attached or at least be the last core to break off.
The other issue I have with the 6505 at least... is this plug adapter.
It's HUGE and you HAVE to use it because under there is a 2 Pin European style plug with no fuse, that you can't remove from the amp because the mains cable is fixed. This makes it really annoying to carry your amp around and even if you use a flight case, you always have this brick attached to your amp.
Most techs are probably gonna charge you a bunch of doubloons to fit an IEC but it's a quickish job and will save you a lot of hassle and potential death.
Step 1: Get rid of the grommet and cut the mains lead leaving enough wire on the fuse holder, voltage switch and earth to go back to the IEC. (Not really major surgery!)
Step 2: Best way to make a hole for the IEC is with a sheet metal punch. These are expensive, but if you can borrow one (like me) then its cool. A tech should probably have one for doing stuff like this. I removed the fuse holder because it was in the way simply by unsoldering the wire going to the mains switch from the back of it. You line up the cutting side of the punch and then assemble it again, and use a wrench to tighten that big nut which in turn pulls the cutting part through the metal. BEAST!
Step 3: Get your IEC socket, mark the holes for mounting it, drill em out.
Step 4: Install the IEC and wire it up making sure you get the wires back on the correct pins! This IEC would have stuck out a tiny bit at the top and bottom of the chassis where the metal curves around. For this reason it was mounted at a slight angle so it could be fixed in a solid fashion with no bits sticking out to snag on anything.
And thats it! Throw that massive old mains plug away and get a nice kettle lead. Stop worrying about the Live wire breaking because a Goomba yanked on it. Don't let a tech tell you that doing this is a major operation. Actually... to be fair... if you try and do this with a drill and a file instead of a punch, it IS a major operation and you'll get metal filings in your amp... so screw that!
3 March 2012
Last Witness
So... I've been messing about with the Last Witness 6505.
You can check out Last Witness by CLICKING HERE
The first cool thing about this amp, is the 'Witness' on the front.
My man Sykes brought this to me for an Adjustable Bias mod. Here is the 'before' shot. That little resistor is going to get sliced out of there, and then we'll bang in a trimpot and another fixed resistor. The trim pot allows the bias voltage to be adjustable, while the fixed resistor acts as a safety device. These amps are biased notoriously cold and this is a pretty common mod.
This is it. Job done. The trim pot and resistor are joined in a way that stops a total break in the circuit should the wiper in the pot become disconnected. This means that the bias voltage won't vanish and your valves won't fry. It's a bit awkward to get in there, but you just need to be careful and use insulated tools, and watch your fingers. That big black tube is a high power resistor, and it has the plate voltage across it... which will make your hair stand on end if you touch it!
Now... another thing we found with this amp, was a bad valve. This valve has in turn blow one of the 100ohm screen grid resistors. After finding this some more surgery was needed.
100ohm is pretty low in value for a screen grid resistor, and since we've got the bias mod, changing to a more usual value of 470ohm for 6L6 valve types was definitely a good idea. We could even go up to 1Kohm but 470ohm should be cool. I also spotted the amp was running set for 220/230v, I'm guessing the switch was knocked at some point. If you stick ~240v into an amp set for 220v, you're going to get higher than expected voltages inside the amp. When you consider that some mains in the UK can be 250v (the legal maximum) you can imagine the problems this might lead to! Well maybe you can't... but be honest... doesn't look good does it? So putting the switch back to 240v and using 470ohm screen grid resistors with the adjustable bias, means this amp should be running a bit smoother and sounding like mini atom bombs are going off all over the strings on the axe whacked into it! Peace
You can check out Last Witness by CLICKING HERE
The first cool thing about this amp, is the 'Witness' on the front.
My man Sykes brought this to me for an Adjustable Bias mod. Here is the 'before' shot. That little resistor is going to get sliced out of there, and then we'll bang in a trimpot and another fixed resistor. The trim pot allows the bias voltage to be adjustable, while the fixed resistor acts as a safety device. These amps are biased notoriously cold and this is a pretty common mod.
This is it. Job done. The trim pot and resistor are joined in a way that stops a total break in the circuit should the wiper in the pot become disconnected. This means that the bias voltage won't vanish and your valves won't fry. It's a bit awkward to get in there, but you just need to be careful and use insulated tools, and watch your fingers. That big black tube is a high power resistor, and it has the plate voltage across it... which will make your hair stand on end if you touch it!
Now... another thing we found with this amp, was a bad valve. This valve has in turn blow one of the 100ohm screen grid resistors. After finding this some more surgery was needed.
100ohm is pretty low in value for a screen grid resistor, and since we've got the bias mod, changing to a more usual value of 470ohm for 6L6 valve types was definitely a good idea. We could even go up to 1Kohm but 470ohm should be cool. I also spotted the amp was running set for 220/230v, I'm guessing the switch was knocked at some point. If you stick ~240v into an amp set for 220v, you're going to get higher than expected voltages inside the amp. When you consider that some mains in the UK can be 250v (the legal maximum) you can imagine the problems this might lead to! Well maybe you can't... but be honest... doesn't look good does it? So putting the switch back to 240v and using 470ohm screen grid resistors with the adjustable bias, means this amp should be running a bit smoother and sounding like mini atom bombs are going off all over the strings on the axe whacked into it! Peace
2 March 2012
Laney... Down to the Ground
So.. here are some more photos.
Originally this amp was made using a system of ground 'nodes' strung together to the bus running through the middle of the preamp board.
After I proved the amp would switch on and work, I decided to convert this to something closer to a star system, but one that still included nodes based on the ground connections of the filter capacitors. The valve wizard website has a great PDF on grounding. Imagine being called 'Merlin'? Pretty cool eh? I have a friend who has the surname Wizard. I say friend, I don't like him that much but he has a cool surname (He's alright actually... I guess).
Comparing the two photos you can see the divided ground bus. Eventually individual wires connect the filter caps to a 'star' ground.
The input jack has a small cap to ground attached to it, which creates a low resistance path to ground for radio goblins carried along the shield of the instrument cable.
Put short... this is all that 'special sauce' that stops the hum gremlins getting wet or being fed after midnight.
Some of those wires in the photos are still temporary, and will get fixed when the pots are upgraded to Clarostat 2Watt Conductive Plastic mil spec types. This keeps the other kinds of Gremlins as cute Mogwais.
Originally this amp was made using a system of ground 'nodes' strung together to the bus running through the middle of the preamp board.
After I proved the amp would switch on and work, I decided to convert this to something closer to a star system, but one that still included nodes based on the ground connections of the filter capacitors. The valve wizard website has a great PDF on grounding. Imagine being called 'Merlin'? Pretty cool eh? I have a friend who has the surname Wizard. I say friend, I don't like him that much but he has a cool surname (He's alright actually... I guess).
Comparing the two photos you can see the divided ground bus. Eventually individual wires connect the filter caps to a 'star' ground.
The input jack has a small cap to ground attached to it, which creates a low resistance path to ground for radio goblins carried along the shield of the instrument cable.
Put short... this is all that 'special sauce' that stops the hum gremlins getting wet or being fed after midnight.
Some of those wires in the photos are still temporary, and will get fixed when the pots are upgraded to Clarostat 2Watt Conductive Plastic mil spec types. This keeps the other kinds of Gremlins as cute Mogwais.
28 February 2012
Laney... The Saga Continues
Hey,
So tonight (though things are in reality way more along than the last post... and I'm just doing some non-linear Tarantino style blogging) I decided to make a small change based on a page from this slice of literature...
Building Valve Amplifiers by Morgan Jones
On page eleventeen or whatever... there is a note about using a nice heavy bit of wire for the IEC Ground connection to avoid unwanted noise by offering a really nice path to ground for the chassis. I remembered how the wire I originally used was from a section of green/yellow wire I cut off the Power Transformer shield. The stranded core was actually kind of small, compared to what you get down a good 3 core mains cable.
So... I found a bit of mains flex I have lying around and just sliced out the earth wire. I compared the cores between this wire and the old ground wire and the new one is way bigger. I installed it, and hopefully even if it doesn't make an audible difference, it's still a good tip as well as good practice.
So tonight (though things are in reality way more along than the last post... and I'm just doing some non-linear Tarantino style blogging) I decided to make a small change based on a page from this slice of literature...
Building Valve Amplifiers by Morgan Jones
On page eleventeen or whatever... there is a note about using a nice heavy bit of wire for the IEC Ground connection to avoid unwanted noise by offering a really nice path to ground for the chassis. I remembered how the wire I originally used was from a section of green/yellow wire I cut off the Power Transformer shield. The stranded core was actually kind of small, compared to what you get down a good 3 core mains cable.
So... I found a bit of mains flex I have lying around and just sliced out the earth wire. I compared the cores between this wire and the old ground wire and the new one is way bigger. I installed it, and hopefully even if it doesn't make an audible difference, it's still a good tip as well as good practice.
Laney Gut Project. End Days
YO.
So, It's been a while since I posted but I've been away doing this and that and working and all that good stuff. I say good, but that's questionable... alright it was mostly good.
Things with the amp have moved on a bit, so I'm going to try and catch up over the next few days with some retrospective bloggage. Below is the Power Supply board in its testing stage. The Yellow wires are just temporary for a ground connection for what requires one.
What you can see on that board (going front to back) is a good old full-wave rectifier made of UF5408 diodes. The original bias circuit. The faux centre tap and reference voltage source for the AC heaters. Then finally the basic DC heater circuit at the back.
Initial testing showed that I wired the Illuminated DPDT switch backwards, so it would light up as soon as the chord was placed in the IEC socket. That got fixed right away. Schoolboy error.
The bias circuit is dishing out around -30v to -60v if I can remember correctly.
The DC heaters read 3.6vDC at the sockets of V1 & v2, which is also fine. This type of DC heater circuit has a reduced voltage and higher power strain on the wind used to power it, but this power transformer can cope with 2x 12AX7 filaments. The reference for the AC elevation ended up being about 40v, which is awesome.
Elevated AC heat reduces the chances of getting filament hum in the preamp since the AC voltage won't really swing 'negative' in a way that will interfere with the normal operation of the valve. It also prolongs the life of Cathode Followers by reducing the possibility of arcing. That's a pretty basic way to sum it up, so I really suggest researching those ideas a bit if you want to know more.
I used some pretty decent Rifa and Rubycon caps for the main filters. They are pretty large values and super low ESR. They are actually 'snap in' types, meaning they have small but robust pins on the bottom, rather than solder tags. Well... the pins on these ones are robust!
You can also see the INGO soldano style transformers in that photo, and the tone stack module from a previous post poking out the new front panel made by JPF Amplification (Who incidentally make some great amps with a vintage vibe).
So, It's been a while since I posted but I've been away doing this and that and working and all that good stuff. I say good, but that's questionable... alright it was mostly good.
Things with the amp have moved on a bit, so I'm going to try and catch up over the next few days with some retrospective bloggage. Below is the Power Supply board in its testing stage. The Yellow wires are just temporary for a ground connection for what requires one.
What you can see on that board (going front to back) is a good old full-wave rectifier made of UF5408 diodes. The original bias circuit. The faux centre tap and reference voltage source for the AC heaters. Then finally the basic DC heater circuit at the back.
Initial testing showed that I wired the Illuminated DPDT switch backwards, so it would light up as soon as the chord was placed in the IEC socket. That got fixed right away. Schoolboy error.
The bias circuit is dishing out around -30v to -60v if I can remember correctly.
The DC heaters read 3.6vDC at the sockets of V1 & v2, which is also fine. This type of DC heater circuit has a reduced voltage and higher power strain on the wind used to power it, but this power transformer can cope with 2x 12AX7 filaments. The reference for the AC elevation ended up being about 40v, which is awesome.
Elevated AC heat reduces the chances of getting filament hum in the preamp since the AC voltage won't really swing 'negative' in a way that will interfere with the normal operation of the valve. It also prolongs the life of Cathode Followers by reducing the possibility of arcing. That's a pretty basic way to sum it up, so I really suggest researching those ideas a bit if you want to know more.
I used some pretty decent Rifa and Rubycon caps for the main filters. They are pretty large values and super low ESR. They are actually 'snap in' types, meaning they have small but robust pins on the bottom, rather than solder tags. Well... the pins on these ones are robust!
You can also see the INGO soldano style transformers in that photo, and the tone stack module from a previous post poking out the new front panel made by JPF Amplification (Who incidentally make some great amps with a vintage vibe).
4 February 2012
Dave's Custom Amp - None More Black! Updated: Thursday 8th March 2012
THIS AMP IS NOW FINISHED!
Well here is a little something i'm putting together for a friend of a friend!
So far all the pcbs are populated and the chassis & headshell are in which I am going to prepare for the final build steps this weekend.
The transformers should hopefully be here in the middle of next week.
The spec is as follows
50w
Sprague Orange Drops
Vishay CCF60/ Koa Speer & Panasonic Resistors
Sprague Atom, F&T, Nichicon Muse Electrolytics
Onetics Hi Def Output Transformer
Onetics Custom Power Transformer
Onetics 5H Choke
SLO style Chassis & Headshell - none more black.
And here are a few pictures of whats been done so far.
Resistors Populated Vishay CCF60 1% MF for ultra quiet operation.
F&T Electrolytic Capacitors added
Sprague Atom Electrolytic Capacitor
Update: Friday 24th February
I managed to get a good amount done today, the amp is mainly wired up im just waiting on the preamp & power amp valve sockets as the ones I had didn't quite fit the chassis or they were the wrong pin orientation for how I wanted to do the wiring.
All that's left to do now is wire up all the heaters/valve sockets and wiring the actual circuitry in.
This one is just for the sake of it really. These two amps are practically the same circuit wise the main differences being mine (the white one) is running on JJ E34L and Daves is running on JJ 6l6GC so it's kinda the evil twin scenario!
And here is the final shot of the amp in my posession where it went through around 8 hours of constant play testing at a range of volumes (which my gerbils weren't too happy about when it got higher)
Dave is coming to pick up the amp this evening after a 6 hour tattooing session and is extremely excited.
Well here is a little something i'm putting together for a friend of a friend!
So far all the pcbs are populated and the chassis & headshell are in which I am going to prepare for the final build steps this weekend.
The transformers should hopefully be here in the middle of next week.
The spec is as follows
50w
Sprague Orange Drops
Vishay CCF60/ Koa Speer & Panasonic Resistors
Sprague Atom, F&T, Nichicon Muse Electrolytics
Onetics Hi Def Output Transformer
Onetics Custom Power Transformer
Onetics 5H Choke
SLO style Chassis & Headshell - none more black.
And here are a few pictures of whats been done so far.
Resistors Populated Vishay CCF60 1% MF for ultra quiet operation.
Panasonic Power Resistors.
Full preamp resistor population shot.
F&T Electrolytic Capacitors added
Sprague Orange Drop 715p/225p Capacitors
Sprague Atom Electrolytic Capacitor
This one is pretty much the entire preamp populated
Power amp Using Nichicon Muse Series Electrolytics & UF5408 Diodes
Vactec VTL5C1 Optocouplers for Silent & Instantaneous channel switching
Recton DB101 Bridge Rectifier for the channel switching voltage rectification
The Headshell when it arrived
This headshell needs a little adjustment. The front grill sits about 11mm too far forward.
And that is all for now. I shall update this post as and when things happen which should be a fair amount over the coming week.
Update: Sunday 19th February
I started work drilling the chassis today should hopefully get the amp finished by the end of the week.
This one is a fairly boring update as not much went on as this part takes quite some time as I countersunk the holes by hand as I find it a lot easier to do it accurately this way.
The reason for countersinking all the board mounting holes is so that the transformers can sit flush against the chassis.
Transformer Drilling #1
Transformer Drilling #2
Update: Friday 24th February
I managed to get a good amount done today, the amp is mainly wired up im just waiting on the preamp & power amp valve sockets as the ones I had didn't quite fit the chassis or they were the wrong pin orientation for how I wanted to do the wiring.
All that's left to do now is wire up all the heaters/valve sockets and wiring the actual circuitry in.
The Pot Shot!
Faux Center Tap
Lamp Wiring #1
Lamp Wiring Close Up #1
Lamp Wiring Close Up #2
Clean/Crunch & Bright Switch Wiring. This part needs redoing.
Pot Wiring
Transformers Mounted
Clean/ Crunch, Bright & Channel Switches
Power, Standby Switches & Lamp
Onetics Power Transformer Hookup Schematic
Power Amp Wiring
Preamp Wiring #1
Preamp Wiring #2 In this photo you can also see a wire joining to the preamp PCB mounting post this is coming from an RF cap that is just an extra measure that I was made aware of by my co blogger Bob that just stops those annoying radio frequencies that can sometimes be picked up by guitar cables.
Pot Wiring & Effects Loop
Test Run #1
Final Assembly
Front Right. You can see in this picture that the front panel now perfectly lines up with the front of the chassis.
Rear Right
Signature
This one is just for the sake of it really. These two amps are practically the same circuit wise the main differences being mine (the white one) is running on JJ E34L and Daves is running on JJ 6l6GC so it's kinda the evil twin scenario!
And here is the final shot of the amp in my posession where it went through around 8 hours of constant play testing at a range of volumes (which my gerbils weren't too happy about when it got higher)
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