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http://s291.photobucket.com/albums/ll300/PeaveyBandit/
Thanks Bruce, Hasser and all the others that helped me on this forum. Your help was priceless and I actually pulled this amp build off with great success. I wanted to post the photos just as a follow up on this adventure and say I never would have been able to build this amp without your help. The FDP forum was indeed some help also but the real bulk of mods and useful tech info came from this forum. Rarely do you find a place online that's this nice and helpful, and talented.
I installed the mods recommended but I certainly did not go all the way with every value. I installed the full Stokes and Paulc mod but on the RickE mod I only reduced the resistor from 18K slightly lower. Mainly because I didn't want to throw too much power supply voltage on the amp yet. I also held off on the reverb mixing resistor change but I may try it and the NFB resistor in the future. For now I'm utterly amazed at the tone and quality of the amp as-is.
The padded Tuki reverb tank cover is cooler than I ever imagined. You almost cannot make a huge BOING sound moving the amp around on stage and I'm sure the pan is protected much better than a stock reverb bag.
The Celestion Gold, I feared, would be too high wattage rating but it's actually not a speaker with the headroom you'd see in most 50W speakers. This little 20 watt or so amp has no trouble driving the holy hell out of that speaker. It's a perfect match for a deluxe class amp and it's already one of the best sounds I've ever heard from any Fender amp, new, old or custom that I've ever owned. The notes leap out of this amp and it can be driven from clean to dirty without even touching a knob. Just the attack of your picking and touch has a huge dynamic range. It's like a drug playing the thing and even my acoustic guitar and pickup sound amazing through it.
The tubes I finally decided on were very affordable EH sovteks, the 6V6s are impressive and the preamp tubes are very quiet and sound wonderful to my ear. I also love the plain brown Belton tube sockets and how they fit, solder and work much better than I did some of the ceramic kinds I used before.
The big thing was the chassis I bought on Ebay from overseas. It was like working on a real original and I loved how screws could tap into it and hold strongly enough that I didn't have to use a ton of locking nuts and things to assemble it. Came together like a real vintage amp and not a kit. This amp is such a far leap above a mojo kit it's not even funny.
Also stumbled into the Mathers cabinet with dovetailed joints and very impressive work. I was going to install the real expensive audio tone caps but honestly the Mallory 150s in there are sounding so sweet and are taming the highs too well to even consider touching it.
Last thing was my first G10 material circuit board. It was nice to work with, very sturdy and made for a very clean build. I can't recommend the service I got from turretboards.com enough. I used Hoffman, Allen and a number of vendors to find the parts I wanted. I'm not super tickled with the feel of the nylon shafts on the CTS pots I got from Hoffman but they do seem like very high quality. The only thing on the amp I may have done differently would be all metal shafts.
I also wired the power circuit like recommended here then I connected a standby switch in the hole where the unused ground polarity switch would have been. Installed screen resistors on the tubes etc. One pair of 470s are a little big but what I had on hand. I had to use the milliamp current measuring method on the cathodes to get the adjustable bias circuit dialed in nicely. A 22K resistor ended up working best with the 10KL pot.
The final touch was a D2F padded cover and I have some of the folding legs for a 16" tall amp on order to allow me to lean the amp back. Also have some medium sized chassis straps on order.
I also wanted to say the amp fired up and worked on the FIRST TRY. The only adjustments I had to make were to the BIAS circuit. I burned the amp in with a special guitar recording routine for about 8 hours with no glitches and then used it for 2 hours on it's first gig last night. To say I'm happy is an understatement. This amp building is worth every ounce of the hard work and homework. Plus I got real good over these last few amp projects at reducing hum, noise and issues. Now this amp is so quiet you think it's on standby but it's not. Reducing ground loop issues around the two speaker jacks, the filament circuit and the input and volume leads proved to be the heart of making it so quiet.
I've got the tubes biased around 26ma and hoping that's a good setting. The vibrato sounds great so I know they must be biased pretty close to a good spot. Any comments on your experiences biasing appreciated.
http://s291.photobucket.com/albums/ll300/PeaveyBandit/
Thanks Bruce, Hasser and all the others that helped me on this forum. Your help was priceless and I actually pulled this amp build off with great success. I wanted to post the photos just as a follow up on this adventure and say I never would have been able to build this amp without your help. The FDP forum was indeed some help also but the real bulk of mods and useful tech info came from this forum. Rarely do you find a place online that's this nice and helpful, and talented.
I installed the mods recommended but I certainly did not go all the way with every value. I installed the full Stokes and Paulc mod but on the RickE mod I only reduced the resistor from 18K slightly lower. Mainly because I didn't want to throw too much power supply voltage on the amp yet. I also held off on the reverb mixing resistor change but I may try it and the NFB resistor in the future. For now I'm utterly amazed at the tone and quality of the amp as-is.
The padded Tuki reverb tank cover is cooler than I ever imagined. You almost cannot make a huge BOING sound moving the amp around on stage and I'm sure the pan is protected much better than a stock reverb bag.
The Celestion Gold, I feared, would be too high wattage rating but it's actually not a speaker with the headroom you'd see in most 50W speakers. This little 20 watt or so amp has no trouble driving the holy hell out of that speaker. It's a perfect match for a deluxe class amp and it's already one of the best sounds I've ever heard from any Fender amp, new, old or custom that I've ever owned. The notes leap out of this amp and it can be driven from clean to dirty without even touching a knob. Just the attack of your picking and touch has a huge dynamic range. It's like a drug playing the thing and even my acoustic guitar and pickup sound amazing through it.
The tubes I finally decided on were very affordable EH sovteks, the 6V6s are impressive and the preamp tubes are very quiet and sound wonderful to my ear. I also love the plain brown Belton tube sockets and how they fit, solder and work much better than I did some of the ceramic kinds I used before.
The big thing was the chassis I bought on Ebay from overseas. It was like working on a real original and I loved how screws could tap into it and hold strongly enough that I didn't have to use a ton of locking nuts and things to assemble it. Came together like a real vintage amp and not a kit. This amp is such a far leap above a mojo kit it's not even funny.
Also stumbled into the Mathers cabinet with dovetailed joints and very impressive work. I was going to install the real expensive audio tone caps but honestly the Mallory 150s in there are sounding so sweet and are taming the highs too well to even consider touching it.
Last thing was my first G10 material circuit board. It was nice to work with, very sturdy and made for a very clean build. I can't recommend the service I got from turretboards.com enough. I used Hoffman, Allen and a number of vendors to find the parts I wanted. I'm not super tickled with the feel of the nylon shafts on the CTS pots I got from Hoffman but they do seem like very high quality. The only thing on the amp I may have done differently would be all metal shafts.
I also wired the power circuit like recommended here then I connected a standby switch in the hole where the unused ground polarity switch would have been. Installed screen resistors on the tubes etc. One pair of 470s are a little big but what I had on hand. I had to use the milliamp current measuring method on the cathodes to get the adjustable bias circuit dialed in nicely. A 22K resistor ended up working best with the 10KL pot.
The final touch was a D2F padded cover and I have some of the folding legs for a 16" tall amp on order to allow me to lean the amp back. Also have some medium sized chassis straps on order.
I also wanted to say the amp fired up and worked on the FIRST TRY. The only adjustments I had to make were to the BIAS circuit. I burned the amp in with a special guitar recording routine for about 8 hours with no glitches and then used it for 2 hours on it's first gig last night. To say I'm happy is an understatement. This amp building is worth every ounce of the hard work and homework. Plus I got real good over these last few amp projects at reducing hum, noise and issues. Now this amp is so quiet you think it's on standby but it's not. Reducing ground loop issues around the two speaker jacks, the filament circuit and the input and volume leads proved to be the heart of making it so quiet.
I've got the tubes biased around 26ma and hoping that's a good setting. The vibrato sounds great so I know they must be biased pretty close to a good spot. Any comments on your experiences biasing appreciated.
http://s291.photobucket.com/albums/ll300/PeaveyBandit/
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