Hookup wire guages?

[jbow]

I started a 5e3 several years ago and got sidetracked. I had built 3 5f1s and decided to try the 5e3 but... as I said, I got sidetracked, then we moved and now that I have decided to finish it I can't find my wire, thank God I have not lost more stuff. I have found most everything but cannot find my hookup wire. I'm sure it's in a box somewhere around here.

I have the board wired exept for the grounds. I was using a solid core cloth covered wire with a waxy finish; black, red, white, green, and yellow... sometimes blue. I cannot remember the guage i'm sure I had either .20 or .22 and I don't remember if I need something bigger for high voltages.

Can someone give me some help. I am going to have to order a bit to finish this amp. I found about 50' of it in green but I don't want to wire grounds in green.

I am going to build a Bandmaster or Super type amp next. Will the same wire work in it as well?

Thanks for the help,

Julien

[billyz]

20 awg works well, For heaters too. I believe the insulation has a bearing on the voltage rating. I use Teflon insulated stranded wire for my builds. For a vintage amp cloth insulation is authentic.

[jbow]

20 awg works well, For heaters too. I believe the insulation has a bearing on the voltage rating. I use Teflon insulated stranded wire for my builds. For a vintage amp cloth insulation is authentic.

Thanks for the info Billy. I was using the cloth wire on the Tweed clones. I went ahead and ordered some small footage of the teflon solid 22AWG from Weber. I think I have bought wore from Ted, STF, and Mojo. It was just easy and I am sure i'll find the spools that are still packed.

I have some weirdo cloth covered wire I bouth on ebay a few years ago. It has pvc beneath the cloth and the cloth isn't waxed. It frays and is really hard to work with. I need to put it back on the bay.

Thanks for the heads up. I only have to add a few ground wire to this amp but then I am starting another with the teflon covered wires, the specs look good on them.

Why do you use stranded wire instead of solid?

Julien

[billyz]

Teflon can be tough to strip. Kimber wire is teflon insulated but strips pretty easily. I use Stranded because my son the Nuclear Physicist tells me stranded is a better conductor of electrons for a given wire gauge. something about the way electrons behave on the surface of the wire.
Also, after working on one too many old Vox AC30's and a few other vintage amplifiers I have come to dislike solid core wire that is of smaller gauge, it breaks just looking at it.

[jbow]

Thanks for the headsup on the stripping. I am still a newbie and only know what people like you tell me. I was using the cloth covered solid wire for the vintage vibe. After posting my original question I was reading about different wires and from what I read, the teflon covered wire is superior and I want a superior fnished product more than I want a vintage vibe.

Do you have any trouble with the stranded wires that you don't have with solid? I have learned to add a second grounding lug to my grounding point and am thinking about going to a short lug strip for grounding in all future builds. Again, all I have built is three 5F1 clones, (one head kit STF, and three combos from parts) and I have mostly completed this 5E3. I was going with the zener that Bruce uses in his design but pulled it and decided to fo with the 'updated' original wiring. My PT for this amo has a center tap green so I don't need the 100 ohm resistors at the pilot. I was going to use a Bandmaster/Super OT but was advised to use the Deluxe OT instead. I have both and was going to build one with each but I think, since I have several Deluxe OTs, i'll just try a Bandmaster with that OT.
You mentioned AC30s. That is my short term goal, to build a top boost Ac clone sans reverb. I have the books from Tino Zottola and he has one in his second book that looks like I can do it.

Sorry about the ramble. Thanks for any and all help!

Julien

[billyz]

Julien,

You raised a number of subjects!

Transformers are a pretty involved one, impedance load and wind type/quality and core material are pretty subjective as long as they are within the right range. I opt for overkill on the transformer, I am not a believer in core saturation as a desirable sound. I am also not a cloner . I used to like to upgrade old Tweed Deluxes to a Blackface Deluxe OT though. I believe the 5E3 had a OT w a primary impedance of 8K and rated for maybe 12w and the blackface was 6.6K at 25watts +-. you can use a blackface Vibrolux OT which is 4K at 4 ohms and it reflects 8k when used with an 8 ohm speaker. Again there is a lot more to it than that, reflected loads, cathode vs fixed bias operating conditions, get the RCA Recieving tube Manual to read more.

Actually, for vintage Fenders, Cloth covered Stranded wire is the norm. I have seen others like some old Gibsons that used solid core wire but it was not cloth covered either, ( well old ones are cloth). There probably is some mojo to solid core wire , just like carbon comp resistors ( which I do like ). But, I believe the main reason to use solid core wire is , it stays put when you put a nice bend in it. Bend it 90o and it stays at 90o's. Stranded wire will stay too, but it is not as stiff and straight looking.

Grounding is a whole other can o worms. stick with proven layouts until you have some experience. I like to ground the input jack and all preamp circuits and control pots to a copper buss wire grounded as close to the input as I can. Filter caps all grounded to a single point and the AC mains and PT and the rest of the Power supply as close to the mains on Star point . But , make sure the AC has it's own lug , don't piggy back the others to it. I believe that is in the Electrical code somewhere.
Oh, the power tubes get grounded right at each tube socket too. I never trust mechanical chassis grounds either, like the output jacks run a ground from them to the output tube ground point. And make sure the ground wire is of sufficient gauge to handle all the grounds connected, I usually use at least 18ga.

There is a lot more to it than that though. And that is how I do it on my custom built amps. that is not how everyone does it and there is not one right way, but there are principals to it. Some HiFI amps use one Central Star point ground.

And then there is Lead dress as it relates to the Audio circuits and if not done properly can cause problems like Parasitic oscillation.

I suggest studying some known good layouts and follow them closely until you have a better understanding of what affects running certain wires close together and parallel can have.

By the way, I am NO expert by any means on this topic and I strongly suggest you read as much as you can first.

[Bruce / Mission Amps]

...Again, all I have built is three 5F1 clones, (one head kit STF, and three combos from parts) and I have mostly completed this 5E3. I was going with the zener that Bruce uses in his design but pulled it and decided to fo with the 'updated' original wiring. My PT for this amo has a center tap green so I don't need the 100 ohm resistors at the pilot.
Julien

I don't know why people keep say that I use a zener diode in my design, I DO NOT.
About 5 or 6 years ago I was using MOJO's Deluxe Reverb PT for a little while... which required me to drop the B+ down a few volts to keep the 6V6 power tubes idling where I wanted them... but Christ, that was 5 or 6 years ago and I have been using custom wound and proprietary transformers since then. All my power transformers are modern line voltage corrected.
For many years, none of the Mission Amps 5E3 kits have needed any voltage correction when operated at 117v-126v.
If I have a European customer needing 220v to 240v primary transformers, I buy and use the MOJO 761 export PT, which does need a zener diode if the country has only 240vac mains ... other then that I use no zener diodes for any B+ control.

[Darr]

I use Stranded because my son the Nuclear Physicist tells me stranded is a better conductor of electrons for a given wire gauge. something about the way electrons behave on the surface of the wire.

I'm just a dumb electrician, but for individual (and smaller) wires to mitigate skin effect for AC signals they have to be insulated from each other, otherwise proximity effect comes into play. See Litz wire.

Of course, I'm not saying stranded wire cannot 'sound' different (than solid conductor of the same cross sectional area) in a particular amp circuit... still, I don't think it would be due to skin effect per se. Unmatched tubes (or even unbalanced sides of dual triodes) could easily affect the sound of particular circuits more than solid versus stranded wire.

[jbow]

I don't know why people keep say that I use a zener diode in my design, I DO NOT.
About 5 or 6 years ago I was using MOJO's Deluxe Reverb PT for a little while... which required me to drop the B+ down a few volts to keep the 6V6 power tubes idling where I wanted them... but Christ, that was 5 or 6 years ago and I have been using custom wound and proprietary transformers since then. All my power transformers are modern line voltage corrected.
For many years, none of the Mission Amps 5E3 kits have needed any voltage correction when operated at 117v-126v.
If I have a European customer needing 220v to 240v primary transformers, I buy and use the MOJO 761 export PT, which does need a zener diode if the country has only 240vac mains ... other then that I use no zener diodes for any B+ control.

Thanks Bruce,

I just teleported from 5 years ago, sorta. I was building then. Had to stop, moved, lost stuff, forgot stuff, and recently got to the place where I could start again. So I am starting over from about 5 years ago. I did decide to not use it. I am using a older Mojo PT. I'm not using the zener. I am using an older Mojo 756 PT, (when it had a center tap green) I think the new ones don't have the center green.

You know what they say about the internet... once it's out there it's out there forever.
Thanks for clarifying it, for me at least. I didn't mean to add frustration to your day sorry if I did.

Julien

[billyz]

I'm just a dumb electrician, but for individual (and smaller) wires to mitigate skin effect for AC signals they have to be insulated from each other, otherwise proximity effect comes into play. See Litz wire.

Of course, I'm not saying stranded wire cannot 'sound' different (than solid conductor of the same cross sectional area) in a particular amp circuit... still, I don't think it would be due to skin effect per se. Unmatched tubes (or even unbalanced sides of dual triodes) could easily affect the sound of particular circuits more than solid versus stranded wire.

Well, I am even dumber, I am not a licensed electrician. I have read and do believe Litz Wire is the best stranded wire to use.( hard to solder) But blood being blood, I will stand by my Experimental Nuclear Research Son. Even though there are other good reasons to use stranded wire, like durability. I doubt if I could hear the difference if you replaced one or more wires with solid core . I did build several amps with higher quality Kimber wire and they were some of the best sounding amps I ever built. was it the wire, I could not prove it. I mean the audio range of a guitar amp is pretty limited, but it is at the most critical part of the frequency spectrum, the middle.

[jbow]

Grounding is a whole other can o worms. stick with proven layouts until you have some experience. I like to ground the input jack and all preamp circuits and control pots to a copper buss wire grounded as close to the input as I can. Filter caps all grounded to a single point and the AC mains and PT and the rest of the Power supply as close to the mains on Star point . But , make sure the AC has it's own lug , don't piggy back the others to it.

Thanks Billy. I have always made a seperate ground for the AC but have been running the inputs and preamp grounds all to the same place as the filter caps. I will make a change and ground the inputs and preamp grounds closer to the inputs, ground the filter caps to a lug on the PT, and the AC to it's own lug on the far end of the chassis the end away from the inputs. Thanks.
I did manage to find some wire that I bought but never used because it is a PITA... it is cloth covered with PVC or some other plastic covering under the cloth and it's not waxed so it frays unless I heat it with a flame... it sucks but I only need a couple of pieces of it to complete this amp.

I really appreciate all your help. I really love the building that I have done. I have lots of books and have read some, others I have placed in a sort of order to read. Right now I am reading, "Inside the Vacuum Tube" by John Rider. Most of it I that I have read so far I already had a bit of a grasp on but I want to know it all... so I am trying to get a good understanding of the basics so I will understand more of the why and wherefore.

So, thanks again!!

J