There is PCB and then there is PCB

[MWJB]

"Originally Posted by MWJB
most boards in guitar amps are single sided, there would be no reason to dip the whole board in solder."

"You aren't working in our world. Wave solder is at its worst with large components which soak up a lot of heat and components mounted near the edges of the board where the wave doesn't propagate fully. This gets worse when the manufacturer pushes the throughput and economizes on the solder. The most common solder failures are on things like jacks and pots that are well away from the heat. The main advantage of double sided boards is the plated through holes. Those produce much more robust joints than single sided. There's a reason most mil-spec stuff is hand soldered, you don't have the issues of wave soldering."

Hmmm, not working in your world eh? No , I'm just going by the faults I see regularly on PCB constructed amps in the real world. To be fair, I steer clear of amps that don't have flying leads to jacks & sockets, whenever possible. Rarely seen problems with PCB mounted pots. In your world, how many guitar amps are built with double sided boards with plated through holes?

[Steve Conner]

It wouldn't surprise me if Behringer made their Bugera line of tube amps that way. As far as I know, they use double sided PTH for a lot of other things.

The military have the same problem I do, they can't use through-hole boards because they can't get the latest gee-whiz computer chips in a 40-pin DIP.

[J M Fahey]

The military have the same problem I do, they can't use through-hole boards because they can't get the latest gee-whiz computer chips in a 40-pin DIP.

*NOW* I know why they are always so angry and bitter and want to nuke everybody !!!!!

[teemuk]

It wouldn't surprise me if Behringer made their Bugera line of tube amps that way.

Which (not so surprisingly) they do.

[Ronsonic]

Building a few of anything is the worst situation. You can't afford the time to hand-tune every one, and you can't afford to throw away the first hundred while you get the process/line tweaked in and running right.

Hey! How'd you get in my workshop?

[Ronsonic]

Leo turning over in his grave? Not likely.

No I don;t consider the pcb a "slap in the face" to Leo. He had nothing against them, He would have used them, his eyelet board was not some sort of anti-pcb statement. He didn't use them then precisely BECAUSE he was being cheap.


One could even make a case that the truest copy of the amp would be to make it the cheapest way possible.

I think you're on the right track here, but overstating it a bit. Leo did things as cheaply as fit his standards for sound and ruggedness. He could have built even cheaper using even cheaper components. I'm working on some old Danelectro and Univox stuff at the moment and am getting real familiar with the lower end technologies of the 50s and 60s and Leo didn't go there. What he did do is find the cheapest possible way to build pro quality gear.

That was part of the problem with the CBS buyout - they figured they'd just send in their team of engineers with a slide rule in one hand and an adding machine under the other and find tremendous economies of production. Turns out that crafty old Bo-Hunk was making this stuff about as cheap as possible and all CBS could do was shove it down the line faster and Muntz a part here or there.

As for PCBs? Leo had presses, he didn't have acid baths. Why change technologies when you've got the tools for one and not the other.

[Enzo]

You know Mad Man Muntz?

[Ronsonic]

You know Mad Man Muntz?

Everybody knows Mad Man Muntz!

Mad Man Muntz!

[J M Fahey]

Leo did things as cheaply as fit his standards for sound and ruggedness.

Agreed.
Yet *his* personal standards were not *that* high, at least in the beginning.
The unsung hero in the Fender history is the Industrial Engineer Forrest White, who organized the mess the Factory was when he arrived and not only set the high production standards which followed, but made sure they were actually followed in detail, no exceptions allowed.
He resigned shortly after the CBS takeover because they did *not* send " a team of engineers with slide rules" (which would have been acceptable) but only guys fresh out of business school with grandiose ideas and zero experience.
The rest is history.

[kg]

Everybody knows Mad Man Muntz!

Mad Man Muntz!

interesting read!

[Ken Moon]

Now to the million dollar question: what do the military use today?

The military uses a wide variety of techniques. Most military contracts invoke soldering specs as well as general electronic manufacturing specs, most based on mil handbook 454:

http://www.dscc.dla.mil/Downloads/Mi...54/hdbk454.pdf

Here are a couple of boards out of a "black box" from a modern military aircraft - this system is just now being fielded:

[Ronsonic]

interesting read!

Almost anything by Bob Pease is a worthwhile read. He's a senior engineer at National and has a regular column in one of the electronic trade journals. The man's got a lot of history and knowledge behind him.

[Alex/Tubewonder]

Bob Pease was a staff scientist at NS but was laid off a year or two ago. There was a lot noise about it and NS came with some lame explanations. Anyway BP iis said to be on a consultant contract or something like that. Pretty colorful character and if there's anything he doesn't know about analog circuitry is simply not worth knowing.

[Ronsonic]

Hmmm, not working in your world eh? No , I'm just going by the faults I see regularly on PCB constructed amps in the real world. To be fair, I steer clear of amps that don't have flying leads to jacks & sockets, whenever possible. Rarely seen problems with PCB mounted pots. In your world, how many guitar amps are built with double sided boards with plated through holes?

I see far too few with DS boards. Mesa has been using them with great reliability since the beginning. Fender has recently caught on. As for the problems with bad solders, they appear on almost every single sided board with tubes, jacks and pots mounted to the board, not quite as common with snap mount caps. A lot of Fender production has these problems and Crate is possibly the worst offender. Ess Ell Emm Eee is an old Indian phrase meaning "not enough solder."

[Enzo]

Another big Pease fan here too.

I remember Muntz from my childhood. We heard a bunch of airplanes flying over one day, and we ran out to look and ther was a row of them flying in formation skywriting with smoke "Muntz TV" over and over, and they had a loudspeaker on one of them playing the Muntz jingle, "There's something about a Muntz TV, in Oh so many ways..."

Unusual to bump into someone who knows who he was, even more so to know him by way of Bob Pease.