Blues Deluxe to ODS #183 Thread

[JazzGuitarGimp]

Hey Phil,

Just got out of a physical therapy appt. i missed a whole bunch of discussion! I’ll be home in about an hour, and I will verify the incorrect labling on the board. Thank you for catching this!

Lou

[pompeiisneaks]

Yup no worries, one of those things that can get past the labelling part

Of course I tried unscrewing the jacks and spinning them 180 and the ground lead is too short, so I'm going to have to desolder the pin connections and swap those... not a huge deal, so long as my near lead is long enough to reach the far side I guess.

~Phil

[JazzGuitarGimp]

Okay, It took me a bit longer than I had expected to work through this. In a nutshell, you are correct, Phil; the "SEND" and "RETURN" labels in the silkscreen are swapped. I apologize for my oversight and I hope it didn't cause too much rework pain. I will be sending out a revised schematic, noting the error, as well as moving the Master Volume pot VR5 from where it was (before relay K2) to where it belongs (after K2). I will be sending out a new schematic and Build Notes document to all parties involved.

Cheers,
Lou

[pompeiisneaks]

Okay, It took me a bit longer than I had expected to work through this. In a nutshell, you are correct, Phil; the "SEND" and "RETURN" labels in the silkscreen are swapped. I apologize for my oversight and I hope it didn't cause too much rework pain. I will be sending out a revised schematic, noting the error, as well as moving the Master Volume pot VR5 from where it was (before relay K2) to where it belongs (after K2). I will be sending out a new schematic and Build Notes document to all parties involved.

Cheers,
Lou

I love troubleshooting things. It wasn't hard, took me all of a few hours of back and forth here and got it sorted (most of the few hours was pondering and waiting for suggestions lol).

~Phil

[pompeiisneaks]

And here's video 5, doing the caps. All of them




~Phil

[JazzGuitarGimp]

Over the years, I have developed a few unconventional solder sucker strategies that prove useful, time and again with regards to stubborn holes. When you use the solder sucker in the conventional way, as you do in your video, you are fighting (John Meyers) Gravity, pulling the solder upwards. To alleviate this:

- Stand the board vertically and clamp it in the vise. Use one hand to apply heat with iron on one side of the board (for me, that’s the component side). Then, in your other hand, bring the solder sucker tip to the hole on the other (solder side in my case) side of the board. There are several advantages here:
— — You can continue to apply heat while you suck the solder out of the hole.
— — You can get a much better seal from the tip to the board surface, which directs more of the airflow through the hole.
— — You are not working against JM’s Gravity.

- Put the board in the vise horizontally as usual, but let the board hang beyond the edge of your workbench so that you can heat from the top, and suck from the bottom. This approach gives you all the benefits of the previous method, with this additional benefit:
— — John’s Gravity is now completely in your favor.

[pompeiisneaks]

Over the years, I have developed a few unconventional solder sucker strategies that prove useful, time and again with regards to stubborn holes. When you use the solder sucker in the conventional way, as you do in your video, you are fighting (John Meyers) Gravity, pulling the solder upwards. To alleviate this:

- Stand the board vertically and clamp it in the vise. Use one hand to apply heat with iron on one side of the board (for me, that’s the component side). Then, in your other hand, bring the solder sucker tip to the hole on the other (solder side in my case) side of the board. There are several advantages here:
— — You can continue to apply heat while you suck the solder out of the hole.
— — You can get a much better seal from the tip to the board surface, which directs more of the airflow through the hole.
— — You are not working against JM’s Gravity.

- Put the board in the vise horizontally as usual, but let the board hang beyond the edge of your workbench so that you can heat from the top, and suck from the bottom. This approach gives you all the benefits of the previous method, with this additional benefit:
— — John’s Gravity is now completely in your favor.

Oh man, pro tip! thanks, I'll def use that, I've always fought with those damn things

~Phil

[pompeiisneaks]

The next video is up:




~Phil

[Guy77]

Thanks for taking the time to create the video Phil, very informative !
I love how these orange boards look especially when the light is shinning on them.
The purple wiring was also a great choice.
As they often say. God is in the details!

Cheers
Guy

[pompeiisneaks]

Thanks for taking the time to create the video Phil, very informative !
I love how these orange boards look especially when the light is shinning on them.
The purple wiring was also a great choice.
As they often say. God is in the details!

Cheers
Guy

It's a skittles amp Taste the rainbow hehehe

As a side note, I hate skittles. they came in almost every MRE bag in the army, and I got SO sick of them.
My mom then sent me a 1lb bag of them as snacks since they wouldn't 'melt' etc en route to Iraq and although I greatly appreciated the thought.. I asked her to not send any more

When I got home, my dad had to do dad jokes and give me a gift of skittles . Such a jerk! (J/k he's always got mad jokes)

~Phil

[pompeiisneaks]

Video 7, all the wiring and jacks and such done. A few boo boo's along the way but it's good seeing my fail and figuring it out This one's a long one, 30 mins, I was trying to get all the wiring done in one video. Next one will be the fire up and demo.




~Phil

[pompeiisneaks]

Still no luck in eliminating that oscillation on single coil pickups. I've tried a lot of things to source the problem. The closest I've gotten was that if I touch the isolated standoff where the input wire connects to the 33k resistor that goes to the input of the first triode, the noise 'changes' it doesn't go away, it just changes tone a bit. I thought reflowing the solder on the input joints may help but it didn't. Again, with drive off the amp sounds great.

I can impact the tone with the treble and mid pots, a bit, the jazz/rock switch seems, under the right conditions, to eliminate the noise, but in some cases it won't. if the drive is turned down to maybe half way, it goes away (on the top panel). the noise exists at almost drive shutoff on the board pot, nearly always basically. when i go from no signal at all to maybe 1 on the dial it starts up.

I've tapped everywhere else I could think of, with no impact.

I've removed the NFB wire to ensure it wasn't that somehow, to no change.

I also noted that lead dress around the first two tubes changes the noise for sure, but doesn't eliminate it.

I have no clue what to do next, the drive is going to basically have to be nearly blues level on single coils to make it not sound horriffic with that squeal.

It's very high frequency, but I don't know the exact amount.

Here's an audio sample of the noise(it's harsh make sure your volume is a bit low ):

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated....

~Phil

[xtian]

Can you post a photo if the input jack-to-first triode wiring?

You could try using shielded cable, and/or increasing the grid stop to 68K.

[xtian]

You say this is only with single coils? And does the noise vanish if you turn the Volume of the guitar OFF? If yes, do you get the same noise in other rooms of the house? Other houses?

[pompeiisneaks]

I am using shielded wire.

The input jack connects to the shielded wire, and then over to an isolated standoff that connects to the 33k input resistor. I broke the lead off the one that came with it and replaced it with an RN65 but the same exact tone issue existed with either input resistor.

I can definitely try a 68k but man it's a nightmare getting a resistor in/out of there with everything in the chassis.

Here are the pics:

20191127_130047.jpg

20191127_130132.jpg

~Phil