Volume control not working on express clone.

Express, Liverpool, Rocket, Dirty Little Monster, etc.

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amiga
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Apr 16, 2012 10:08 am

Re: Volume control not working on express clone.

Post by amiga »

Thanks to everyone who provided help and suggestions in this thread to help me get my clone up and running again.

At this time I don't really know what caused the problem but it seems to have resolved somehow.

I re-soldered some of the connections that looked suspect, including the grounding bus to the back of some pots ( next time I'm going to rig up a harness before I attempt to attach a rod to the back of pots ) . Replaced the bright switch ( probably didn't need to do but I wanted a single row of connections on the back instead of two ) and the wiring around there, carefully following the bright switch lead dress of Fransesca. Replaced the ground wire from the ground bus to the board. Gave the inside a good clean with a damp cloth to remove any solder and junk.

The amp sounds much better than it did before the problems occurred so I'm glad I had to have had this issue in the first place. Its very quiet now apart from the hiss which is inherent in these amps anyway. I no longer need to have the shielding of the wire connected to the back of the volume pot as some have suggested here to resolve some other issues. With all the knobs at 12, I can have the guitar volume on full with my hand damping out the strings and it wont squeal like it used to ( I think this might have to do with the fact that I replaced the resistor on pin7 of V1 to 15k ). The other surprise is that the amp sounds less harsh and more smooth now even with the bright switch up or down which is what I set out to achieve by replacing the treble cap from a silver mica to a polystyrene.

At the moment I'm using some JJ tubes for the preamp & GT-EL34M . It sounds great now but I can't imagine how much better it will be with some decent pre-amp tubes.
guitarsnguns04
Posts: 286
Joined: Tue Nov 13, 2007 10:49 pm

Re: Volume control not working on express clone.

Post by guitarsnguns04 »

Congrats...glad you were able to get it solved....enjoy!
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