Mission 5E3 Build Success

[Airlock]

Just wanted to say thanks for such a great source of info. I did quite a bit of reading here about the 5E3 and the Mission kits. Although i had already decided to do the Mission kit "rather than the go it alone source all the bits yourself approach" before i found this site. It was great to read all the positive reports of others success with the kit. I have to say i could not be happier with the result, kit showed at work Monday rushed it home and started in. Between dinner and the kids distracting me i worked on it till about Midnight, Tuesday am i put the finishing touches on and hit the switch....none of the magic smoke came out good sign! waited about a min then hit the standby....still no smoke even better!! so i grabbed my Tele plugged in and WOW lets just say i was late for work could not bring myself to shut the damn thing off, very cool amp. This amp really is a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.. This 5e3 circuit is very different than most amps, the pine cabinet is really an instrument it self and the speaker changes character quite a bit. I went for the P12Q and am very happy with it, its not a very sensitive speaker so if you want loud this is not your speaker...but if you want tone oh yeah it's got that. At one end of my amps i have my Champ the other is my AB763 Deluxe Reverb..heavy mods to this..shh don't tell anyone.. and carving out its own sonic niche is this 5E3, yeah i see this getting played a LOT. I have build pics if anybody wants them let me know ill post them. If your on the fence like i was a couple months ago i say pull the trigger the 5E3 Tweed is very cool and the Mission kit is a great way to get there.
Cheers

[myfoot]

Yep I built one earlier this year and Bruce was great getting back with any questions I had.I'd recommend it to anyone.

[clyde]

Got one myself. Couldn't be happier.

[MLC]

I just finished mine up this past weekend.

The whole build process was a great experience and a lot of fun. The Mission kit is top notch and, of course, Bruce's customer service is second to none. And the end result is one of the best sounding amps I've ever owned.
Nope, no downside to it at all.

Here are a couple pics I took - one of the chassis and one of the completed project with a Tele parts-o-caster I built a while ago.
Nothing quite like making music on a homebrew rig.

[43scabs]

hi voltage tap

Maybe u can help me. On the PT there are two hi volt taps are both used in the 5e3 layout? Or just the red/white leads which are the 580 v I believe. Looks great!

[Bruce / Mission Amps]

Maybe u can help me. On the PT there are two hi volt taps are both used in the 5e3 layout? Or just the red/white leads which are the 580 v I believe. Looks great!

NO!

You would only use the two red leads to lugs 4 and 6 of your rectifier socket.

Don't use the red/white leads of the MA20/18 PT with a 5Y3GT in a 5E3.
Snip the red/white leads off about an inch and half long, tap or shrink wrap up the ends and tuck them out of the way.
I use a little heat from a heat gun or hair dryer to soften the plastic wires to make them more supple.

I use that same PT in a different amp with two EL84s and a GZ34/5AR4 or solid state rectifier for a little lower B+.

[Airlock]

As a follow up i have tried a few mods... Various tone values tried changing to a dual pot setup ie 6G3 brown face, tried different cathode caps, rewired volume pots for more conventional ramp, various coupling caps and in all cases except one i came back to stock... most mods to my ear made for some very cool sounds BUT. They all lost some of the rich harmonic charm of the original. If a person were using some hot pickups ie humbuckers im sure you would want to do somthing to tighten up the bottom end, for me though it great i use vintage pickups in my tele and a Don Mare 5.6k neck on my strat. These low output pickups and the 5E3 is a match made in well... Leo's head i guess, Oh almost forgot the one mod i did stick with was changing the bright channel coupling cap to a .02uf removed a bit of the low E flab and roll, playing my Tele though it is just very cool, took it to a jam the other weekend and the drummer made several comments about how good it sounded, thats always nice! Oh one last thing i tried was carbon comp resisters in the 100k and 56k spots, for me they just made a lot of hiss with no noticeable good contribution to sound, your millage may vary...
Hey MLC your 5e3 looks nice and Nice parts-o-caster i have been fighting the urge to build up a thinline... Couple questions how do you like the lace sensor pickups, and how would you describe the Red Fang speaker in this amp?

Chad

[MLC]

Thanks, Airlock.
I've been thinking about a Thinline project too, so I'm not going to be any help if you're looking for someone to talk you out of it.

Those pickups are actually "Cool Vintage Lil' Punchers" from GFS and I really like them. They're basically a GFS take on the Joe Barden design. They do a great job of sounding very much like a single coil with absolutely no noise.
They aren't quite Bardens, but then they only cost a fraction of what Joe's cost. I've owned a couple Tele's with Bardens and foolishly sold them. I'd like to get another set someday, but the Lil' Punchers are certainly doing the trick in the meantime.

The Red Fang is great. I went with it because I wanted the response of alnico, but I also wanted something that would deliver maximum clean headroom and the Red Fang is very efficient. It's definitely a loud speaker.
The best thing I like about it so far is how responsive it is at low, clean volumes. Everybody always talks about the tweed breakup (with good reason), but I've always been a huge fan of the "tweed clean" sounds - I love that fat, warm, mid-range clarity.
The Red Fang delivers that great OD too, when you crank up the amp.
And this is all before it's broken in. I figure it'll only get get better as it loosens up and smooths out. Meantime, I'm going to enjoy playing it into shape.

Hope that helps,
Mark

[Airlock]

Hey thanks for the info, I know what you mean about the clean sound. I think the 5e3's clean sound is very under rated, very full warm and rich, though the clean is replaced by clipped breakup very quickly as volume is ramped up... as you well know.lol I went with the P12Q for the authentic..ish sound but i have recently been trying some other speakers i have around and im now thinking about a more efficient speaker for the reasons you mentioned, extending the clean headroom mainly, thinking about the Black & Blue from warehousespeakers.com cant bring myself to part with the cash for a Celestion Blue...Chad

[milocj]

Have you or anybody that you know of tried the Black and Blue? The soundclips sound really good and I have a few friends that swear by the Celestion Blue, but I'm with you about shelling out that kind of cash if I can't try a Blue first with my own gear. On the other hand I don't think I want to spend $160 for the B&B without hearing anything about it either.

[TD_Madden]

5F4

Let me put in a good word for Bruce's 5F4 kit as well.....I built one and use it with my Tweedy.....usually with a GZ34 CopperCap and 6L6GCs....

Something about the way 10's sound.....