adding reverb to spot meant for tremolo, badly bent leads :(

[Chuck H]

Right! I forgot to mention the other job solder is doing. It insulates the contact from oxygen. Unsoldered contacts will typically fail prematurely because of oxides on the contact surfaces. That's why jack and switch contacts are plated with something more durable than tin and less prone to oxidize than copper, tin or brass.

[bob p]

Don't lie though. I know you do it too

I avoid doing that when I can, but sometimes there's just no way around it.

I prefer a different approach.

When I have a turret board if there is a tiny part of the lead sticking out then I'll grab it with pliers, heat the turrent and give the lead a quick spin to unwind it. Then after doing both sides I'll just pick up the loose component; if there is no lead sticking out, like when somebody spins the lead after cutting it, and then solders it so that they have a smooth post, then I'll just clip the lead at the body of the passive component, remove the body, and then use the pliers and heat to unspool the lead from the turret. Nothing surprising so far.

When I have an eyelet board, I'm not one to just heat the wire and push it through the hole while the solder is molten, if I can avoid doing that. What I try to do is to clip out the old part, leaving it's leads in place, and then use the old lead as a turret and folding it down and then clipping it when I'm done. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't then I have to fall back to the cheating method you've described.

I prefer building on turret boards and terminal strips because I inherited a boatload of turrets way back when, and I prefer a mechanically strong connection to the so-so mechanical connections that you get with eyelet boards. But I don't ever use the hole in the turrets like a socket, as shown in those illustrations. Although I've repaired a lot of eyelet board amps and I've populated a few eyelet boards for other people by request, I've never fab'd a board using eyelets. I just don't like them. Fender used them because they were a fast and cheap way to build an amp, not because they were the best way to build an amp.

If I'm building a one-off design then I'll just use straight rows of turrets or terminal strips and jumper them as needed. It's a very rare case that I'll spend the time laying out a custom turret board layout because it's very time consuming.

[Steve A.]

In defense of eyelet boards...

Although I've repaired a lot of eyelet board amps and I've populated a few eyelet boards for other people by request, I've never fab'd a board using eyelets. I just don't like them. Fender used them because they were a fast and cheap way to build an amp, not because they were the best way to build an amp.

I do think that eyelet boards are great for one-offs and prototypes — cut the vulcanized fiberboard to size, draw out your design, drill the holes and secure your eyelets. IMO a big step up from the perfboard that people like Ken Fischer used...

I do agree with you that the technique leaves much to be desired for production line amps. I do like how Howard Dumble built his amps on eyelet boards made from G10 FR-4 Garolite or a Formica-like wood grain material. I do see one possible advantage with the Fender method using a blank sheet under the eyelet board: they were able to keep the components and on-board wiring very close to the chassis which might reduce noise (although in modern high gain amps I can see how that might possibly introduce noise as well, at least in theory.)

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks, I guess...

Steve A.

P.S. Speaking of fiberboard it is cheapest by the sheet which is pretty darned big. With PayPal and on-line USPS shipping labels available these days perhaps the "buyers clubs" which didn't always work out so well at AMPAGE back in the day could be resurrected for items like fiberboard.

If someone lives close to a distributor they could pick up the full sheet and cut and ship it to members here who placed pre-orders, marking it up enough to pay for their time. I think that many if not most of the desired sizes would fit in the padded USPS flat rate envelopes to keep shipping costs down.

I think that in the past the game plan was for, say, pickup makers to buy 1,000 magnets and then sell off half of them in 100-lots so that they were essentially getting their 500 for free... a bit cut-throat but what the heck, everybody usually came out ahead.

If anyone lives close to a distributor I would be interested in buying some since I don't have a lot left.

[bob p]

... With PayPal and on-line USPS shipping labels available these days perhaps the "buyers clubs" which didn't always work out so well at AMPAGE back in the day could be resurrected for items like fiberboard.

If someone lives close to a distributor they could pick up the full sheet and cut and ship it to members here who placed pre-orders, marking it up enough to pay for their time. I think that many if not most of the desired sizes would fit in the padded USPS flat rate envelopes to keep shipping costs down.

I haven't organized a group buy since the Midway Magnetics transformer group buy blew up in my face. That was 15 years ago. Rather than repeating those headaches, I just pay more to buy what I need for myself. That way I avoid the headaches.

One of the problems with organizing group buys is that you don't only end up coordinating a purchase for all of your friends on the boards, you always end up dealing with a lot of people that you don't know. People who lurk on the board and never post will come out of the woodwork if someone takes the time to put together a really good deal. Then instead of just dealing with people who you know and trust, you end up dealing with total strangers who want to get in on the deal. Eventually everyone and his brother is trying to get in and you end up having to spend your time worrying about details for people who you don't even know. And those people always end up placing unrealistic demands on you. It's worse than trying to sell gear on CL.

To make up for all of the effort that's involved in coordinating a group buy, most people who organize group buys end up doing what's called a "Texas Split." That's where there's a profit built into the group pricing so that whoever does all of the work coordinating the buy ends up getting his widget for nothing. Stupid me, I didn't do that. I just collected enough money up front to pay for two legs of shipping heavy transformers to me and then out to everyone else, and when there was money left over I refunded it to the people who had overpaid. When I received two identical transformers where one looked better than the other, I always shipped the better looking one to the group buy guy, just to make sure everyone would be happy. It didn't work. No matter how much effort I spent on the project there was always going to be someone who was unhappy for one reason or another. And in the spirit of no good deed going unpunished, no matter how hard you worked to put a good deal together for everyone, there's always going to be one guy who's unhappy and makes a big stink about it.

The first time I did the group buy things worked OK. The second time Midway Magnetics filled my order with factory seconds and rejects that were so bad that the group members didn't want them. That put me between a rock and a hard place. I was stuck with iron that nobody wanted, and to get a refund Midway demanded that I spend $200 to ship their rejects back to California. I ended up blowing most of the iron out at a loss on ebay.

I've had no enthusiasm for repeating that experience. Today I avoid the headaches. Now I just pay whatever it costs to buy what I need and I don't waste time trying to save a few pennies -- and I wouldn't buy iron from Midway Magnetics if my life depended on it.

[Chuck H]

Steve, you're still in the bay area, Ca. right? I know there's a couple of industrial shops in Santa Clara that do G-10/FR-4. It's been so long ago I don't remember the name of the company, but I bought my sheet of material as a scrap. Slightly off of 4'x4' because of some custom request they filled that had them cut a full sheet. I got it for $60 and I've built every amp I've ever done with the stuff and there's still plenty left! Anyway... Worth looking into. The industrial and fabrication stuff in all those city crossover points (think near fairgrounds or along hwy237, etc.) in the bay area is full of opportunities if you call and ask. Just open a phone book instead of going on line because a lot of those sorts of shops have no use for a web presence. They don't sell widgets to the public, they sell custom shaped raw materials to local contractors. Heat treating, aluminum fabrication and all kinds of stuff. I think I even tracked down a magnetics company that had done some guitar amp transformers once. These small-ish shops are busy enough they actually DON'T want people placing on line orders, but they're usually amicable with walk ins. It's a real good ol boys, brick and morter mentality.

[bob p]

There are a lot of magnetic shops that fly under the radar. They're more than happy in their niche in the market and they aren't worried about painting their endbells orange or advertising in Vintage Guitar. The carnival barker types seem to be the exception to that rule.

I was in the barbershop getting them cut the other day and as I sat in the chair I asked the barber what was going on in the old white-brick building across the street. Although I'd lived in this town since 1971 I never really knew what was in one of those old industrial buildings by the train tracks that was so old that it didn't even have lights or a sign facing the road. I always thought that the building was just a warehouse. The barber told me that it was a transformer company, and the old guy who owns it, Jerry, comes in to get his hair cut. For almost 50 years I had no idea that there had been a transformer company located a mile and a half down the road from my house. These kinds of small winding shops are capable of winding just about anything you'd want. They must have a recipe book or something.

Back in the day these kinds of shops were located all over the industrialized areas of the Midwest. They manufactured their products locally and distributed them locally. Commercial customers would come in and pick up their orders on the loading dock, or if they had a big order they might get a delivery. UPS wasn't even part of their distribution plan because they made things that were so heavy. These types of shops primarily do B2B activity, so they don't have any need to advertise to retail customers and they're not likely to have a web site. Chances are that there's one nearby if you're in any sort of industrialized area.

Moral of the story: If you want to know about what's going on in town, ask your barber.

[mikepukmel]

Thanks everyone. I put the bigger caps on top of the turrets, and used a soldering tool (the sharp pin point thing) to try to fit the lead against the inside of the hole in the top of the turret so it would make contact. (or contacts if multiple leads in there). I dhdn't know what to do with the under board wiring. There are 3 leads that go under the board on fender eyelet board layouts, to the 3 caps for the tone controls. On teh eyelet board, I ran the wires a little longer so they poked through the top of the eyelet then ran the leads from components down the eyelet so both made contact before soldering (nothing dangling in the middle was the goal anyway).

But with turrets, not sure what to do with the underside lead connections. The few jumpers, two on preamp section for AB763 type circuits, and a couple on the power supply board, seem sketchy at best. If I make a jumper and push it into the bottom of the turret, its not held there very well, just a little side friction with 1/4" of the lead against the inside turret wall. I had thought to remove these and just put the jumper around the turret on top of the board (as you mention above). But I quickly get a whole bunch of jumpers and wires on top of the board and some wires its just impossible to route 90 degrees from other wires like they do if run under the board.

As an aside, anyone know of a template maybe made of plastic to form that cool S shape like in the mil spec turret lead bending demos?

[soundmasterg]

Thanks everyone. I put the bigger caps on top of the turrets, and used a soldering tool (the sharp pin point thing) to try to fit the lead against the inside of the hole in the top of the turret so it would make contact. (or contacts if multiple leads in there). I dhdn't know what to do with the under board wiring. There are 3 leads that go under the board on fender eyelet board layouts, to the 3 caps for the tone controls. On teh eyelet board, I ran the wires a little longer so they poked through the top of the eyelet then ran the leads from components down the eyelet so both made contact before soldering (nothing dangling in the middle was the goal anyway).

But with turrets, not sure what to do with the underside lead connections. The few jumpers, two on preamp section for AB763 type circuits, and a couple on the power supply board, seem sketchy at best. If I make a jumper and push it into the bottom of the turret, its not held there very well, just a little side friction with 1/4" of the lead against the inside turret wall. I had thought to remove these and just put the jumper around the turret on top of the board (as you mention above). But I quickly get a whole bunch of jumpers and wires on top of the board and some wires its just impossible to route 90 degrees from other wires like they do if run under the board.

As an aside, anyone know of a template maybe made of plastic to form that cool S shape like in the mil spec turret lead bending demos?

In the past I've run wire under the board into the bottom of the turrets and soldered them in place, then later when I solder something to the top, the turret is large enough that if you are good with your technique and you have properly wrapped the part lead around the turret then you don't need to heat it up that much to solder the part in place. In those cases I used a sharpie to mark the top of the board so I knew where the wire was running. You can cut that wire lead long, twist and tin the lead, then run it up through the turret and off at a right angle, then add your part in the top too. This only works with the turrets like what Hoffman sells that have the hole in the top, and also your wire and part leads can't be too big. In some mil spec cases back in the day with turret construction, they mandated that the device had to be full power tested before any solder was added to the chassis, which meant that all the part leads were well wrapped around the turrets. Another way to do it is with the dual section turrets you can attach the wire to the bottom section of the turret and wrap it around properly, then solder in place, and then when you add your part on the top wrap it around and solder in place and the wire won't loosen up below.

Greg

[Enzo]

Just because Fender ran wires under the board doesn't mean you have to. You can put the wires on top of the board, and slip them under the resistors and caps.

[soundmasterg]

Just because Fender ran wires under the board doesn't mean you have to. You can put the wires on top of the board, and slip them under the resistors and caps.

I wasn't quite clear enough in my previous post. The last part of it I was saying that you can place the wires on top also.

From my previous post:

Another way to do it is with the dual section turrets you can attach the wire to the bottom section of the turret and wrap it around properly, then solder in place, and then when you add your part on the top wrap it around and solder in place and the wire won't loosen up below.

This would be on top of the board.

Greg

[mikepukmel]

Thanks everyone. I think Im worried enough about having a wire fall off the bottom of the board and not knowing about it, Im going to try a hybrid of your suggestions. There are only a few places where wires run from the bottom of an eyelet out to other locations. I think I can drill a small hole in a couple of places near the turret, wire around the bottom section of the turret, solder in place there, then run the wire through the board and out to where it needs to go. This way, nothing will be at a hidden connection in the hole in the turret under the board, but the top of the board won't be so messy with wiring I will probably never need to get to.

[soundmasterg]

Thanks everyone. I think Im worried enough about having a wire fall off the bottom of the board and not knowing about it, Im going to try a hybrid of your suggestions. There are only a few places where wires run from the bottom of an eyelet out to other locations. I think I can drill a small hole in a couple of places near the turret, wire around the bottom section of the turret, solder in place there, then run the wire through the board and out to where it needs to go. This way, nothing will be at a hidden connection in the hole in the turret under the board, but the top of the board won't be so messy with wiring I will probably never need to get to.

You could also just remove the turret and press an eyelet in that spot if you have the proper size eyelet and a staking tool. I like the turrets from hoffman (link below) since they have a hole in the top and plenty of room if I choose to wrap the wire around the turret or run it up the bottom of the turret also.

Greg

Tube amp parts, Guitar amp parts, Tube amp for guitar

[mikepukmel]

Thanks Greg!