holidays

i've been on holidays,

should be back home in a couple.

just ordered more parts.

british 18 watt

cobalt

my friends get drunk and go to shows.

one grabbed me a pic of johnny playing white thrash.

photo courtesy of reagen 

white thrash

well there she is all buttoned up.

buttoned up.

well,

i finished johnny's amp, it sounds fucking awesome.

have some pics of it with its cab and logo. but i don't have my camera with me. johnny picked it up earlier than i had hoped he would. so i never got to crank it full throttle. i'll leave that to him so no sound clips and i'll probably only get live ones now as i don't think he'll let it leave his sight. well... that is unless there is any problems with it that i need to rework.

i'll post some pics of it soon, and i get some live footage of the amp it action.

its pretty loud. 

i am a little worried about it being full throttle as i never had a chance to do it myself. i had it on a dummy load and it seemed fine so here's hoping i am not an idiot.

so now i have a hiwatt clone to build for myself. the uphill challenge keeps getting steeper and steeper.

progress

well i made progress in my head anyways,

i fix the drive control. how? well i check the switch for continuity with my multimeter, and that didn't even help. i had to take the switch apart to figure it out. stupi stupid stupid. but you gotta do what you gotta do.

so next up. i think i have tracked a whole bunch of the problem down to the negative feedback loop (nfb) but this is just in my head. when i get home today i will work on that. i am hoping it will just be a reconnection. if not i'll reroute the leads from presence control to the impedance selector.

if that fails well then its on to the master volume.

there is still miles of hope, as everything is working nothing is smoking or blowing. its just minor signal issues that come with the joys of building amps!

yay!

setting sail

well had to sign off of my work.

strap on a badge. and she is ready to go.
thanks reagen, for cutting these plates for me on the fly.

moving right along

i feel like such a dummy, this is such a complex build and i was just so involved that i forget so many important shots.

anyways heres a close up of the impedance selector. this switches are weird and they are tricky too.

a shot of the buss bar grounding system. and the drive selector pot. again this is a tricky little switch. and so much so that i am having trouble get all positions working. but with some more playing around. i'll get it worked out.

heres a better shot of the same thing. the 40 uf caps are pretty big and intrusive. i'm going to look around for some better ones and switch them out.

i'm not a huge fan of how they hang out the board like that.
heres an overhead shot of the whole chassis. every is wired up and going good.

the amp has power and producing sound. i still have some bugs to work out high gain amps are tricky. one wire moves a millimeter and it could totally change the sound of the amp.

there are 50 voltages to check on all the tubes.

everyone checked out perfect that is a really good thing!!!! 

so it practically done.

just got tinker with the glitches until i get it perfect for johnny.

rawpower

well this one right here is for johnny wakeham of featherwolf and bogus tokus. its going to be a relatively close copy of and orange 100watter seventies style. running kt66 power tubes. so heres a shot of the chassis, transformers and pots mounted, and the filaments on the tube sockets wired.

another chassis shot pretty much the same state.
here the turret board completed. i got so into this one i forgot to take pictures of the process.
another shot of the board. nice and clean.
macro shot mother fuckers.

finishing stretch

well heres the last set of pics for this baby cause it is finished and sounds awesome.

it'll will ship out to alberta on tuesday!

anyways heres a shot of the preamp socket, nice and tidy the way i like my builds. my house is nowhere near this clean!

most people use a brass plate for a grounding platform for these old tweed styles.

i prefer a floating buss bar system its a little trickier to do. but it looks ten times better, and your amp is ten times quieter. heres a detail.
and heres  shot of the whole buss bar. the key is to tie all grounds to this bar and only have the bar connect to the chassis at one single point. this eliminates ground loops which can cause excessive hum and feedback.
chassis installed in the cabinet and reday to be buttoned up.
and the finished product wrapped in a nice tooled leather tolex box. mart, i hope you get around to building the matching guitar.
stay tuned everyone next up is a 100watt orange style amp

exausted

well i was up til 3am working on this guy last night. and the board is done. with all its leads attached and nicely colour coated, purple goes to tubes. and blacks are grounds. not that i needed to do this. just thought it would be a nice touch.

here is the fiber board in its new home. tightly fitting in the chassis. the thing that is a real pain about tweed styled amps that sucks is the very little space you have to work inside of.
and you cant forget to mark your territory.. nice little touch inside the chassis.

when are you going to grow up and cut your hair?

i'll probably cut my hair when i stop living.
well finally the parts are here and its time i let you all in on whats being going down. first up is a princeton style amp for my telecaster loving friend marty over at prairie custom guitars. if you like tele's you should probably get one of his. so here is the chassis laid out and ready to go.and this is the heater wiring all done on this guy. i have to say this was a breeze i'm used to amps with 6 plus tubes in it... not three. so laying out wiring on this guy for a quiet running with no noise should be easy.
heres the controls installed on the front and the back panels..

and some tidy wiring. there are a few wiring from the power transformer that aren't used. but you never want to gut them short in case you want to modify the circuit later down the road.

i like to twist my up neatly. the twist helps eliminate stay rf noise. so on the one i braided them to keep it really clean lookin.

and back inside the chassis i have the tone and volume controls wired up.