Zeus, my First (and on going) Build.

[Structo]

Hmmm, I sure hope you guys spare us the drama that you created over at TGP.

If you are serious about building a decent Express then by all means build it.
But please do not try to improve the design and tell this forum that they should use your techniques.
Most everybody here is after the mythical Trainwreck amps and try to build them exactly like Ken did when possible.

Don't try to re-invent the wheel.

I noticed in you photo of the amp you supposedly built you say that Mallory caps were the best and the standard in the 80's.

I'm pretty sure Sprague has always been considered among the best electrolytics as well as their orange drop caps currently being made by SBE.

Oh and by the way, you should never, ever use acid flux anywhere near electronics.

[Ron Worley]

"The pickup wire crosses the heater wire at 90 degrees, need to reroute"

It's intentional, and if you'd ever done any professional sound reinforcement work or serious audio circuit design, you'd know why.

As for all the "errors" in the documentation, how about solid real constructive corrections? Could it be that perhaps the documents are right and based off REAL TRAINWRECKS, not some BS science project?

Spare us the horseshit dude. Cloth wire... seriously.... I for one am not buying the BS.

[frenster]

Can't wait to see pics and hear sound files.

[MBD115]

http://www.firestormigniters.com/trainw ... ighRes.jpg

Note: This is the first time we've used this site, we'll refine our techniques as we gain experience.

He already posted a pic of the guts of his amp. Here it is.

[VacuumVoodoo]

This is what's hiding in that underexposed photo.

[img1585]http://anacon-tech.com/images/addypics/ ... masked.jpg[/img]

[benoit]

One important piece of insight you don't want to overlook - trainwrecks are ladies. Beautiful, fierce, angry ladies. Naming one Zeus will at best confuse her, and at worst, drive her to destroy herself, and possibly the world.

[mumford]

Wow, guys. The posts in this thread are pretty out of character for this place. Yeah, he's cocky, but seriously?

[paulster]

You'd probably be a bit circumspect if you'd wasted an hour of your life reading 43 pages of meandering diatribe on TGP about the virtues of the front panel not quite lining up properly with the cabinet and the weather stripping used to fill the gap.

Here's one of my favourite bits, from the first (introductory) post:

I find people looking at simple things like the two 40uf electrolytic capacitors in parallel, and they have no clue as to how Ken ended up putting in two 40uf caps instead of one 80uf electrolytic cap. To have that insight you must have the R&D lab experience of building over one hundred power supplies from scratch in diverse situations like me. Only then will you appreciate why Ken Fischer put in two 40uf caps instead of just one 80uf cap. The answer involves knowing the practices of how the power supplies were designed, the rules-of-thumb that were in place, having insight of what it is like to have a limited stock of parts, and much more. Only then can people appreciate why Ken Fischer chose to use two 40uf electrolytic caps instead of the single 80uf cap.

From my perspective, I can easily envision Ken at the bench building this amp and appreciate why he put in those two caps. Yet, debates rage on why he would do such a thing and whether it would affect the sound of the amp. I know the answer to the question. Yet I find myself questioning whether it is even worth explaining how such a simple thing would come about.

On page 8 we're allowed to hear the answer:

Short answer. When KF went to the bench with the first prototype he had a design problem. There was too much noise. In troubleshooting the unit he found the noise was coming from the DC supplies ac ripple. KF dropped in a second 40uf cap to get less than 100mv ac ripple. That resulted in less than .025% power supply noise and resolves is noise issue.

This amp has tons of gain. It has to have a near perfect power supply to sound good.

When KF went to build the second amp he simply followed the model of the first prototype. He put in the second cap rather than changing it to an 80uf cap. In the end the design/build practice stuck.

which is really interesting, except that it's complete crap.

The first Wreck, Ginger, actually had two 80uF caps as the first filter node. Successive amps went down to a pair of 40uF caps, which pretty well torpedoes this statement of 'fact'.

So we're faced with an almost unimaginable amount of arrogance (this is beyond what I'd call cocky), and a couple of builders who don't understand a few elementary things like how to wire the OT primaries round the right way, don't understand the phase shifts that are taking place in the tone stack judging by their wiring, and yet are still debating the noise implications of the choice of power indicator.

Humility would be a good word for them to learn.

[M Fowler]

Paulster you had me going, nice.

[mumford]

Ok, you win.

[warble]

Wow, guys. The posts in this thread are pretty out of character for this place. Yeah, he's cocky, but seriously?

Yes. We are going to simply ignore that stuff. It was funny for a while but went way over the top. The quality of those post say more about the character of those individuals.


With that said, this is valuable experience for Travis. It is his project and not mine. I am simply encouraging him to be creative and think out of the box. We have lots of ideas. Where go too far in creative thought intelligent people will explain why.

Also, please be aware that Travis does not have the production and engineering experience that I have in my background.


Best Regards,

Warble

[warble]

Travis, Jeff - welcome to Ampgarage!
You do not have an 'ampstrument', you have a potentially cool guitar amplifier - no more, no less - made to a design that dates back almost 30 years. You're not 'pioneers' in any sense, outside of your own workshop. The people here at Ampgarage have built hundreds of these, and have a wealth of experience and information which by the very nature of the place, they are usually delighted to share.
......
Good luck!

Hey Dunara,

Thanks for the good wishes. Yes I realize some consider us to be cocky. We hope there is a way to change that perception. I am most likely sounding cocky because I have built and created so many different electronic designs. I only stopped about 14 years ago because of the massive job exportation that resulted in my industry shutting down. So, if I seem cocky it is because of that background. I still own that knowledge and experience. Nobody can take that away simply because my work was exported.

Somebody finally had the good sense to point out that the gap we observed in the photos has insulation to prevent the undesirable micro-phonics. So, the hypothesis that I proposed has been disproven. We appreciate the input. The gap would have been a serious design flaw. We simply did not know if it was intentional or not on KF’s part.

The fact that we spotted the risk of micro-phonics even before putting this amp into the cabinet speaks to our skill. It was not accident. Others would have lacked the insight to even consider micro-phonics or look up the original spec sheets for the tubes.

Yes there is a learning curve for us, but it isn't like I haven't build 1000's of varying categories of electronic projects. I do in fact have extensive expertise in production electronics and R&D. My projects include building life saving heart defibrillators and network devices before the invention of the Ethernet. It is a different area, but there are skills and techniques that apply here. We hope that people will respect that fact.

Also, people want to hear the sound of the amp Travis has built. Travis knows whether an amp sounds good or not. That is why it is being built to his personal taste. We only request that people respect his creative endeavor. He is allowed to make mistakes in my world. Every mistake represents a valuable learning experience.

Finally, we see no reason to open ourselves up to the ridicule and bigotry that took place on TGP by posting sound clips. So, we will just continue the build, use creative license at our discretion (to the dismay of others), learn from our mistakes, and above all have fun.


Best Regards,

Jeff

[M Fowler]

I'm backing out of this thread for obvious reasons.

Good luck Travis and Jeff

[paulster]

I still can't figure if you're here to preach about your superior design/diagnostic skills or whether you actually want to learn something from the many people here who have infinitely more experience building amps, and Wrecks in particular, than you, so as you up with an amp that sounds way better than I can very easily tell yours does right now.

Regardless, I'm unsubscribing from this one.

[dreric]

Jeff (and Travis)

To quote:

"Thanks for the good wishes. Yes I realize some consider us to be cocky. We hope there is a way to change that perception."

The way to change "that perception" is with humility in your words and respect to those members who make up this form.

IMO, you are bringing the condescending tone that caused TGP thread to be closed down in your posting here. Reminds me of a quote:

"talent always recognizes genius, but mediocrity never sees anything higher than it's self"

The very genius who would kindly help Travis on his project doesn't seem to be showing you guys a lot of recognition. Is this what you want?

Personally as a father of three I'd like to ask how old Travis is .... about twenty? The internet can be pretty hard for a 20 year old not to take personally, again THINK! There's no "coded message" here

Eric