A few months ago I stripped out my first build (183) with the intent of rebuilding. there were a ew choices made when I built back in 2012 that seem questionable now and probably went a long way to explain why I never really liked it.
Long story short, I've now got a decent, if loud amp. Halfway through I did get a bit distracted and ordered on of Erwin's chassis and board sets. It's nice.
This build will be a slow burner and for the most part will be from the spares left over form a hifi build a couple of years ago. I'm hoping that documenting this will clear my head about some aspects of this amp. I've read a lot, learned a lot and have a lot left to chew through.
I'm a fool for starting something before finishing the last.
Well I did say this was going to be a slow burner. This is pretty much a weeks headscratching.
I'm kicking myself because I was one pot short on my last parts order and I'm getting to think I've paid more shipping on this build than anything else.
The irons off for today before hitting the filters. Not really feeling up to that amount of headwork today.
thanks, that's very kind of you. this is where it gets a bit knarly for me. I've never really gotten heater wiring down.
yes, I know, parallel heaters. I've never had any issues with them and I'm horrible at twisting pairs. I've also only got teflon wire to hand so at the momen, no.
Got the signal board in. not sure if that was a bit premature because I'm still waiting on transformers.
also got a bit of the power amp wired.
For the head cab, I'm finally going to use a couple of leaves of curly oak that I randomly bought a few years ago. the plan is to use this as a baffle with a wenge cab. Heavy.
This one is destinded for the 183 build. It's glued to a MDF backing with a thick wash of shellac. Looks ok. I'll bind with wenge and maybe maple.
Stayed on BOM for these. Hammond PT, choke and reverb transformers and tube towns dumble style OT. Instead of sizing things up and having a think I went all hot headed and glued some wire.
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Burnt fingers by candlelight. Pins to the reverb tube and heaters left to do. not sure about whether to wire the pedal in. Seems a bit of a shame not to seeing as I refinanced the house to get the jack.
Thinking about it, nothing, no reason to leave it out. I found the corner round the reverb board tight enough not to want to mess with it much further. this is why I usually have to sleep on things before making sensible decisions.
Doubt it'll ever get used though. I've 3 home brew amps round the house, none of which I've gotten around to making footswitches for yet. Right now I'm disappearing down the magnatone rabbit hole, so the chances are this one will be the same.
Finally got around to ordering tubes and a reverb tank. Everything arrived this morning, so today was the first turn on. Amasingly, works for the most part as intended on power up. Always pleasent. The only thing I need to look at is the bias circuit range. It's small, but sitting where I need it at the moment.
First off I had an old set of tad 6l6s in but things were a bit noisy. They came from an amp that went full on Chernobyl, so probably shouldn't have been a surprise. Swapped them out for a set of jjs and things cleaned up nicely. I went for a tad reverb tank. This is the first head based reverb I've had so nothing to compare with, but the verb sounds nice to me. As others have said, can't see me turning it off.
The filters have an unexpectedly profound impact on the sound. Much playing to be done there. Tis a nice amp right enough.
Next up is something with a magnatone vibrato in it as I've a set of 4 varistors burning a hole in the stash. I'm trying to get my head around what a JM preamp > reverb > vibrato > stereo power amps would look like.
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