Sneaks Liverpool LIVES

[pompeiisneaks]

So I just powered on and played the liverpool, WOW sounds so gritty and amazing. I've had some assistance with a few parts from a forum member (I won't reveal their name unless they want to be known and I reused my old AC30 board (Hoffman style) and my transformers, just readjusted the whole thing to get it connected in right and man does it sound great! I'm going to get the videos together I've filmed, but I'm pretty excited to try this out with my Celestion gold. Thanks so much to everyone here for such a great resource!

~Phil

[pompeiisneaks]

I posted this last night after the rush of excitement was on me from the startup, but I did have one minor problem, I somehow broke off the 100k resistor lead to the NFB on the 8 ohm tap, and was getting super odd noises, but I figured that out pretty quickly. I'm pleasantly surprised that I didn't need a grid stopper on V1B, the optional 820 to 2.2k resistor wasn't necessary, as there doesn't seem to be any oscillation that I can tell so far, I'll move it from my crappy speakers in the garage (where it's also pretty noisy) upstairs to my nice celestion gold and give it a whirl again soon.

I'm getting better at going over the amp 2 to 3 times before first power up and finding things I missed, like the wire from where the NFB connects in to the circuit over to the presence pot, kinda important eh . I also had completely screwed up the power dropping resistor setup, somehow I was thinking the order was a bit different and the first dual 9.1k pair was before the main grid 5w resistors... I also caught that before first power up as well. Would have worked but been a completely different power rail at that point.

Such cool stuff learning about this kind of amp.

~Phil

[xtian]

"getting better at going over the amp 2 to 3 times before first power up"

I'm with you! I built a Rocket in 2012, and sold it to a local player. It started acting up intermittently this year, and I found the 1M grid ref resistor on V1a had NEVER BEEN SOLDERED! It was half-wrapped around the turret, and that was just fine without solder for five years...

[romberg]

The single best amp diagnostic tool I have is a sharpie highlighter pen. It takes some self control, having a just completed amp sitting on your bench, to walk away without hitting the power switch. I make it a point to wait until the next day. Then sit down with the amp, the schematic and my trusty highlighter. It is surprising what you can find doing this.

Mike

P.S. Congrats on passing the smoke test! Any pictures?

[pompeiisneaks]

"getting better at going over the amp 2 to 3 times before first power up"

I'm with you! I built a Rocket in 2012, and sold it to a local player. It started acting up intermittently this year, and I found the 1M grid ref resistor on V1a had NEVER BEEN SOLDERED! It was half-wrapped around the turret, and that was just fine without solder for five years...

Yeah that's funny, I had some non soldered ones that were really poorly transmitting on my AC30/4 that I had to solder to make them work (It was odd because they were wrapped around the turret and everything, but I guess the mechanical connection was oddly not great, adding the solder resolved the intermittent problem. (popping/noise).

[pompeiisneaks]

The single best amp diagnostic tool I have is a sharpie highlighter pen. It takes some self control, having a just completed amp sitting on your bench, to walk away without hitting the power switch. I make it a point to wait until the next day. Then sit down with the amp, the schematic and my trusty highlighter. It is surprising what you can find doing this.

Mike

P.S. Congrats on passing the smoke test! Any pictures?

Yeah I do that too if I have a layout, but I didn't with this one, I took my existing turret board and just used the schematic to make sure it matched, and then went carefully over the schematic again and again before first power up. Everything was connected right, just one connection somehow got broken (Probably my fault too, but not sure yet how).

I filmed a lot of it, but no pictures, I could do a screen grab later when I'm home, or maybe I'll just snap a few shots.

~Phil

[pompeiisneaks]

Here are some picks of the guts, and top, just phone photos but something to show what I did, sorry I still need to clean the board of flux and resize the output wires, they were loose until I got phase right.

I've not yet figured out the cab situation, but I'll post that eventually too.

Power.jpg

Board.jpg

Top.jpg

~Phil

[pompeiisneaks]

I did a couple more final things, I moved the 25W resistor down to the chassis, and then shortened that one OT lead once I was sure the phase was the problem. I brought it upstairs last night and plugged er into my effects and my celestion gold alnico and man wow! Sounded great with reverb, with my EHX Soul Food and by itself. It didn't necessarily sound outstanding with my other OD the Green Rhino, but I may need to tweak the pedal's filter to get it more in line with the tone of the amp.

Such a great sounding amp!

Sound clips coming, I swear
~Phil

[joeboo88]

Thats a Beaut Phil!

[pompeiisneaks]

Thanks!

~Phil

[RJ Guitars]

Mistakes... you guys actually make mistakes, I gotta wonder what that is like? All my amps always start on the first power up and I've never seen that gross smelling greenish smoke come out of the power transformer - do you know it's a bad thing to run the center tap to ground on a 5V rectifier tube?? I sure haven't heard an electrolytic cap pop because I installed it backwards... or my all time favorite, stare at guts of the amp for two days while it sits there in silence because somebody wired the input jack to be permanently shorted.

Congrats Sneaks - The LP is a really fun amp and you will have a blast with it.

[pompeiisneaks]

Haha, lol yeah. Thanks

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