The chassis is a Princeton reverb, for which will be installed in a small 1x12 combo cab. Placing the trannies on the outskirts of the chassis was necessary in order not to bump into the speaker. This forced me to rethink the entire layout. I know it’s not a great layout; in fact it’s probably breaking lots of rules. The filter-caps should be closer to their intended fed plates. I could have simply placed them on the terminal strip where they were feeding filtered DC. Yet, I couldn’t get them to lay down and install smoothly, as well as not standing too high above the chassis. And thus I left them where you see them.
After all of the layout frustrations and uncertainties, I fired it up yesterday; and to my surprise, it sounded quite good. There’s lots of chime and a huge amount of hairy gain once it’s cranked past 9 oclock. All of the voltages fall within the normal Rocket parameters. It’s also a little on the bassy side tonally. It’s got to be that Mercury Magnetic OT. It sounds great, but it’s definitely thicker sounding the Heyboers or Pacifics I’ve used on other Rocket builds. Finally, there’s a touch of hum; and I’m sure it’s due to my layout blunders. I’ll chop stick around a bit tonight and see if I can limit some of it. It’s really not that bad, just a subtle hum.
Anyway, there you go….. Critique away!
