What Would Ken F Do?

[63superreverb]

just wondering if solid silver wire would have an affect on the sound..if you used it throughout the amp?

[rooster]

Billyz, I like where you are coming from.

I know, too, that David Funk said what he said, and I believe him because he went to some trouble to make this point clear. In fact, on Funk's web page he has a photo of a TW that he built. Yeah, kinda strange to see this because I just learned about this last month it seems, He has the gut shot up and everything... Have you guys seen this? Does anybody know how long this has been up? Was it up the whole time David dropped the bomb about building Wrecks, or put up recently? Well, I guess it pays to check out a website once in a while..

Anyway, FWIW, on the Twainwreck home page, at the bottom of the page, Ken writes: "..............The bad news is for 19 years so far, I've been suffering with chronic illnesses that have made me very frail. There are only about a hundred real TRAINWRECK'S out there, and about 5000 lame sounding clones by over 30 cloners. The real ones sell for north of $20,000 with offers of up to $35,000 for rare models. I only make amps when health permits. I sell those to personal friends at prices they can afford. More bad news, I am the only one it seems that can build and voice my amps so they sound right. I've tried to teach family and friends to build these amps for me, but to no avail. They never sound right. I do design amps for other companies, and they do sound very good. I play those myself sometimes. However, they are just not a TRAINWRECK."

Which is still interesting,eh?

[Kregg]

http://www.thunderfunk.com/History.html

[Firestorm]

I think Ken was just like the rest of us -- more talented than me for sure, more knowledgeable than many -- but I think he just screwed around with amps until they sounded right to him. We've all changed plate resistors, moved our wires around, tried different tubes, speakers, guitars, caps ... That's the fun thing about truly analog circuits -- you can make the same transistor a million times, but you can't make the same tube twice.

Yeah, he could identify a tube by the hiss (the same way a wine connoisseur can judge year, vineyard and chateau). But hearing the color of wire? I think he was having us on.

[koffee_iv]

I noticed on Dave Funk's website his TW pic showed less twists in the leads on V2 compared to some of the other builds here. Is there a reason for it?

When Ken F. setup or tuned an amp, did he change values on some components or just rout the leads a little different.... turn a tranny??? what kind of things did he do to tune it?

[geetarpicker]

just wondering if solid silver wire would have an affect on the sound..if you used it throughout the amp?

I specifically remembering Ken tell me he tried some "lead free" solder as he was worried about the health issues with the regular stuff. He said it made for a bright sounding amp and wasn't easy to work with. As far as silver solder I think he also mentioned having the same issues with it too.

[Blinkie]

GK is correct. The lead free and silver sounded too bright so he preferred the leaded solder. As far as parts go. He bought bulk and made them work. However he mentioned several times that the NOS parts he still had were the only parts he could really use these days. Once the parts were gone there would be no more Trainwrecks built. He even mentioned about the wooden cabinets coming from upstate NY and that the wood is now extinct.

[jaysg]

I've never seen a testimonial where someone said, "Ken tried to teach me how to build his amps and I sucked at it." Based on repeated whiny TGP posts, I think he suffered fools gladly. Imo it's lucky that a few great players bought his amps (good going Glen!) or the whole thing would have been relegated to the Paul Rosk scrap-heap of history.