Ceriatone Hey What 504OL

[Enzo]

Outside foil is one of those things people like to pontificate about on the internet. Like 70% bias. Amp makers like Fender would not be bothered.

[broughton1320]

There are good theoretical reasons for these "pontifications", but in the practical world they might not be worth while. To give an example: one of my first jobs was in a race engine machine shop (I'm now adiesel mechanic by trade). The "assembly room" was practically laboratory clean. No dust, no lint, you get the idea. The reason being that with the tolerances those engines run under, abrasive dust could ruin bearings, lint could clog oil passages, a multitude of contaminants could ruin an engine before it found itself inside a car. Fast forward to now and I rebuild engines 10 feet away from a guy grinding rust off a frame. The engines I work on now (within reason) don't care. My younger self would've been horrified to see that.
At this point I'm still learning the idea of "practically acceptible". Also, to the Fender argument, the construction of those amps was mainly driven by economics. I understand that part of the charm of the old amps is the "character" of the sound caused by what would by today's standards be considered, if not flawed, non-ideal circuit choices. But you need only to look at the "box of caps" in the bassman, or the grounding scheme of the early Marshalls to see that lots of shortcuts were taken in the name of ease of manufacture. I'm trying to take a considered approach on this project with the aim of building a better mouse trap. In learning to do the fundamentals properly from the beginning I hope to learn more about how to shape tone rather than fix bugs within a circuit due to oversights. Crawl, walk, run is better than run, bust your face, spend a week in the hospital, then run again.

[g1]

If you want to get into it, here's a whole thread we had about the cap orientation thing : https://music-electronics-forum.com/...s-outside-foil

[Enzo]

The engines I work on now (within reason) don't care

And that is the entire point. They wouldn't bother to mark outside foil if it didn't matter SOMEWHERE. But it doesn't here. Every phenomenon has a context, but like say skin effect on the speaker wires in a Deluxe Reverb, this isn't such a context. I just don't want to see a novice or a first time builder get tied up in esoterica that won't matter a whit in his amp.

[broughton1320]

I appreciate the feedback from you all. I've been picking away at it slowly. If I'm honest my eye for "pretty" construction is slowing me down a lot. Screw it. I'm not getting paid for this job and, for once, I can do it to my standards of quality. To be honest it's the reason I decided to start on a "hiwatt". I like the way early mesa's and Dumbles sound, but the gut shots make me cringe. I like the orderly construction. Mil spec wiring is my style.
To my first question, has anyone here built one of these or something similar? Anything you would change? Is there any interest in build documentation from me? If so let me know

[Chuck H]

I appreciate the feedback from you all. I've been picking away at it slowly. If I'm honest my eye for "pretty" construction is slowing me down a lot. Screw it. I'm not getting paid for this job and, for once, I can do it to my standards of quality. To be honest it's the reason I decided to start on a "hiwatt". I like the way early mesa's and Dumbles sound, but the gut shots make me cringe. I like the orderly construction. Mil spec wiring is my style.
To my first question, has anyone here built one of these or something similar? Anything you would change? Is there any interest in build documentation from me? If so let me know

A common complaint about HiWatt amps is noise at equivalent gain levels to other brands. The reason for this is the layout (from what I've read). The parallel board mounting of components and underboard daisy chained connections for grounds and other cause interactions. There are even mods for HiWatt amps that reduce noise by running grounds to a single point rather than in series along the board. In other words...

"Pretty" is a goal independent of function. If Hiwatt had it on the ball they could have been another Marshall or Fender in the market. But they weren't. Why? Maybe because there were non sequitur criteria clogging the path?

Once an amp is buttoned up and all you can see is the face plate and where to plug your guitar in, it doesn't matter what the innards look like. It only matters that they work to achieve the sonic goal. A visible goal becomes moot once the amp is in the cabinet. And putting a priority on that can only detriment the most important criteria of an instrument amplifier. (<period)

[Helmholtz]

Ceriatone might have improved the layout and ground wiring (technically).