Reissue '65 Super Reverb Conversion to Handwired

[mikeboone]

Have any of you guys converted one of these new amps to handwired?

I have a friend who owns one of these and it's plagued with mfg defects (solder problems etc) and he has had enough and I talked him into gutting it and building a real BF Super.

What I am looking for is any "oh shit" moments with some portion of the process that was a deal breaker or required serious mods to make it work.

At face value it seems pretty straight forward as i have built a number of project amps, just time consuming.

Thanks for any wisdom

[loudthud]

I found this schematic: http://www.el34world.com/charts/Sche...per_reverb.pdf

Do you plan to replace all the pots and front panel parts? How about the filter cap board? Is there a board that contains all the input power line parts?

[mikeboone]

Yes sir... This a full effort to gut the amp and make it fully handwired. There is a filter cap board but i am going to replace it with a hand wired board and also make a small bias board or with term strips just for posterity.

I could take the easy route and order an already stuffed board from Metro or some place of the like. I will probably do that as it is tried & true and I don't want to gamble with layout issues where the Trem and Reverb circuit are concerned. If it were mine, I'd probably do it.

We talked it over he agrees that long term he will probably spend more having it repaired than it will cost to covert it. All of the big ticket items are already paid for, transformers, cabinet, speakers, chassis etc. it will be more service friendly as well. These PCB amps are a hassle to service as you can't do simple tasks like re-flowing solder or cleaning pots without disassembling it.

The idea is to make his amp a little more reliable and servicable when there are issues. He'll get a full compliment of documentation with schematic, layout diagram, and any project notes that I record in case it gets serviced by someone other than me.

[Jazz P Bass]

Seems like an awful lot of effort to me.
If the only upshot is access to the pots for cleaning, I don't see it.
Clean the pots, reflow the whole circuit board & give the amp back.
One customer complaint does not make all of Fenders efforts futile.
How mant thousands of amps are out there with circuit boards in them.
Are they all in need of PTP wiring?
I think not.

[JoeM]

Here's someone that does conversions. He did the turret board for my 5F6A clone. Nice guy too. He can probably give you some tips on the conversion.

Green Eagle Amps - Home

[mikeboone]

Seems like an awful lot of effort to me.
If the only upshot is access to the pots for cleaning, I don't see it.
Clean the pots, reflow the whole circuit board & give the amp back.
One customer complaint does not make all of Fenders efforts futile.
How mant thousands of amps are out there with circuit boards in them.
Are they all in need of PTP wiring?
I think not.

Point taken, but I have had this thing in here a time or two and its always the some little gremlin hiding somewhere creating some kind of problem that takes forever to fix. And yes,mthere a ton of PCB amps out there that work just fine, then there a the ones like this. Fender mfg technology is weak at best. I worked in a manufacturing plant for Scientific-Atlanta for many years and see the same old problems. I have fixed quite a few HR series and Black face RI's that have these same issues.

I think it going to be a fun project that I can learn a lot from. And I firmly believe the amp will still be chugging along well after his PCB cousins have fallen.

[Billy R aka DynaFreak]

I have done a bunch of these type of conversions, Twins, Vibrolux, Supers, Princetons. If you plan to just completely gut the amp and use classic layout and all new pots, and a Fender type eyelet board you should not have any problems but u will have to drill the pot mounting holes out to 3/8" if you use that size amp. I have done only one amp that way. My approach is to creat a custom g10 eyelet board on standoffs that incorporates or preserves additional features, circuit improvements, and safety features like switching both sides of the mains, etc.