Suggest a build for me

[Noval_novice]

I have a Carvin Bell Air amp that recently died. Output tube arced and burnt the hell out of one of the PCB's. Boring story. Anyway, I'd relike to reuse the cabinet (a 2x12 loaded with Carvin's version of vintage 30's) and the chassis if possible. I plan on removing the fake vinyl tweed and recovering in tolex, but was uncertain of what to build in the chassis. There are a total of 9 9-pin sockets on the chassis. See the blurry picture below:

Any suggestions are welcome. Oh, and I am not terribly experienced having only made a 5f1, 5e3 and ax84 HO within the last year, so simple is better!

[jhaas]

Is that a 4xEL84 amp?

You might consider the Trainwreck Rocket. That requires seven 9-pin sockets, and one octal for the rectifier. Not terribly complex.

Adding a little complexity to it, you could add reverb which would take up another 9-pin socket, but you'd also need a reverb tranny, pan, rca jacks, etc.

Lots of folks around these parts are very high on the reverb rocket.

[sliberty]

If you like chimey cleans and really smooth overdrive, the Rocket would be my recommendation as well. Lovely sounding amps.

Another choice would be the DC30. Maybe not as clean as a Rocket, but not what I would all aggressive overall.

If you want more grit, consider a Liverpool. Same tube compliment. Pretty aggressive.

[Noval_novice]

There is a reverb pan in the cabinet, but I wasn't sure I should attempt a build with reverb since I am a noob.

[Alexo]

Iirc, the Bel Air runs those EL84's hot Hot HOT! Like 400 - 450 volts hot. Crazy. Possibly related to your tube failure?

If I was going to rebuild that amp with those transformers, I'd bore out the holes for octal sockets and run a quad of JJ 6V6's, or maybe just a pair of 6L6's or something.

S'pose you could keep the EL84's if you dropped in a sag resistor and/or a couple Zener diodes and got the plate voltage down by 100 volts or so (which is a lot to drop).

[jhaas]

BTW, I don't see the link to the picture you mentioned in your original post.

The Rocket Reverb is *very* well documented here, and you'll get boatloads of support from the forum, should you need it. You've got three under your belt, I think you'll be fine with it.

[M Fowler]

I also suggest the rocket reverb and it is no harder for a newbie to build then a regular Rocket or Vox AC 30. With the extra available noval socket you could go with a two tube reverb which would sound better.

There are many posted layouts and schematics for the one tube reverb Rocket by Normster, Rawnster and others including myself.

Mark

[Noval_novice]

Yeah, sorry. I guess my blurry pic was still too big to upload. I'd be willing to get new transformers and save the old ones for something else in the future. I have to admit I was somewhat pleased when it started to smoke, because the clean channel was the only one worth using.

[M Fowler]

So your able to use whatever transformers you want now and can go with octal power tubes as well for a Marshall EL34 amp or Fender brighter toned amp 6L6.

[Noval_novice]

Ok, I am getting interested in the Rocket with Reverb. At the least, I would like to utilize the reverb tank I now have in the amp. It is an Accutronics 9GB2C1B. I believe it is a large tank with medium decay and a 10k input impedence, 2575 Ohm output impedence. How would I need to modify your reverb circuit to accomodate this tank?

[FYL]

It is an Accutronics 9GB2C1B. I believe it is a large tank with medium decay and a 10k input impedence, 2575 Ohm output impedence.

Yep. A custom 6 springs unit that IMO should only be used with a proper dwell control. Well, unless you're into surf music.

[Structo]

Too bad you fried the Carvin.

There are some simple mods you can do to the Soak channel that greatly improves it.

I own a Belair as well but I haven't done the mods either.
The amp does have excellent clean tone and it is a very loud amp.

Now that I hear the plates are at 450v that may explain it. Although I never went through power tubes on it.
In fact I ordered a set of JJ's for the amp and never installed them.....

[M Fowler]

The layouts I am referring to are on page three of this link.

https://tubeamparchive.com/viewtopic.ph ... sc&start=0

[Noval_novice]

Update on this thread:

Although the Rocket Reverb sounded nice, I finally decided to build an 18 watt. Channel 1 is EF86 input and Channel 2 is the standard tremolo. I also incorporated a simple PPIMV and a cut control. The tremolo is LED biased, which is pretty cool, IMO. I tried to make use of some of Merlin's discussion of the design of a small signal pentode gain stage, so I used different values for biasing than the typical AC30, etc.

Initial impressions are good. It is a very nice clear and semi-distorted tone from either channel, but the EF86 input is really lovely. Now all my 12AX7 input amps sound dull.

I wound up using a different chassis and iron. Really the only things I did use from the initial combo were the speakers (Carvin's version of the Vintage 30), the cabinet (which I retolexed) and some of the knobs. Drilling my own chassis and making a layout were new tasks for me as was the retolexing. Definitely a learning experience. Here are a few bad photos. Any constructive criticism is very welcome.

[Noval_novice]

Gutshots: