It’s A Mod, Mod, Mod, Mod World!

 

Here's what the stock Blues Jr board looked like, with the tiny xicon chicklet caps.

The Fender Blues Jr and Pro Jr, were a couple of low-cost amps that I think were aimed at riding the “All things Vintage” wave, with some modern touches and best of all, a small price tag.  The customer I modded this for payed about $25 for this one on Craig’s List.  Not bad for a bedroom rocker or small club gigging amp.  The cons are that they sound pretty nasally and have the dreaded Kleenex box midrange that immediately strikes them from my list as far as sounds I want to listen to.  Also, when overdriven, they completely squash and have no low end, and and and….

   Ok,enough!  Anyone who has done any surfing of the web for mods to the aforementioned amps will have run across the web site of Bill M, considered by many to be “The Guy” to get your Blues Jr tweaked into useable shape.  His website http://billmaudio.com/wp/  is veritable cornucopia of useful mods and upgrades to make your Blues Jr an actual nice sounding amp.  Bill not only does the work, but kindly shares his knowledge with detailed descriptions and pics on how to get the most out of your amp.  so, I said all that to preface a call I got from a potential client who asked if I could do the “BillM Mods” to his Blues Jr?  Up to this point , I knew nothing about Bill M or his mods, but I said sure.  run to the computer, look up this BillM character and find out what make his mods so darn special.   A week later a new client is standing in my basement with little pride and joy and we start discussing what all he wants done, “All of it”.  Ok I can do that!  That’s pretty much my pat answer, because If I don’t know how to do it off the top of my head, I will spend many sleepless nights until I find out how to do it.  a character flaw perhaps, but I like to think of it as my secret weapon. 

   There are a lot of so-called “mods” floating around out there, that usually amount to no more than a component change and that’s it, the Bill M Mods are well thought out, and researched thru 1000’s of amps.  Best of all, they work.  First of all the reverb circuit on these amps is awful, every time the volume changes, the reverb changes, and it’s noisy and hums badly.  cover your ears kids…”it sounds like ass”.  No maybe you like the sound of ass, I don’t happen to.  By rerouting the ‘verb send and return to before the master volume, it makes a world of difference.  That tweak is very simple and requires disconnecting one cap and jumpering it to another part of the board nearby and “Poof” the reverb sounds nice and stays consistent no matter where the volume is set at.   Next up is the tone stack mod, which changes the bass & mid caps to alleviate the overbearing mid range hump you get with the stock values.  While you’re at it, why not change the other coupling caps.  Bill mentions this in the kit description, but I couldn’t find any pictorial evidence of it, so I took my reading of it to be true and replaced the preamp coupling caps and the post-PI coupling caps with 716p series Orange Drops.  I’m sure one of the reasons they didn’t come stock with these is that they’re about 4x the size of the tiny Xicon chicklet.

It’s kind of a squeeze getting them in there, but can be done.  A little hot glue and silicone also help to minimize shock and vibration, as they are now off the board slightly.  Actually, in the above picture, you can see just about all the changes done.  To the right in the corner, is the 1st preamp coupling cap (.0022uf);  in the middle are the tone stack caps (you’ll notice the black one is a Solen, which is a better fit than the OD).  Above and underneath the tone stack caps is the reverb change.  Word of warning, if you’re doing these mods to your amp, do the reverb first, as the wires and resistors go underneath the tone caps!  One other tweak was the “Twin tone Stack” mod, which comprises a jumper between the left/middle legs of the middle pot.  This gives you the ability to remove the mids all together in the first part of the pot rotation then bring them in as you turn it up, nice touch.  Lastly, doubling the first stage filter cap by adding another 47uf helps the mushy bottom when the amp is turned up, and lowers the AC hash in the B+ supply.

Finished with all the mods, note the doubled-up first stage filter caps on the upper left.

     I hate to be derivative, but the amp is really a different beast now.  Gone is the boxy annoying midrange, which is probably the biggest complaint people have with this amp.  Also gone is the veiled quality of the sound in general.  The tone spectrum is much better now, with a lot more bass.  It has more of the character of the Blackface amps now, with a more scooped mid and prominent bass.  If you’re comtemplating changing the speaker, hold off until you’ve done some of these tweaks, as you just might not want to replace it afterwards.  I know a lot of folks go crazy trying to find a speaker that helps the sound of a stock Blues Jr, and never really get there. 

  Oh, I almost forgot.  Probably the most important change was to make the bias adjustable.  Stock these amps drive the output tubes at about 90% of max plate dissipation.   While that makes it sound like a cranked Marshall, it burns thru tubes, melts the solder joints on the output sockets and makes the amp noisey with no clean headroom at all.  The fixed resister network is replaced by a precision trimpot that allows the user to dial back the bias to a more sane 60%-70%, which will give your tubes some breathing room, reduce the noise and clean it up a bit.  Nice!

 The mods are easy to do, if you have a basic level of competency with a soldering iron.  Be aware that you have to pull the board out and deal with removing components without destroying the delicate circuit traces.  So, if you’re at all unsure of your abilities, let someone you trust do it.   

Peace out,

Matthew M

Hey, what is that thing?

    As with the coming of Spring, I need to clean the basement and get some other things out of the dusty closet.  I’ve been needing to take a few minutes and share some other projects that I’ve done over the last few years.  One is a funny little purple thing that kind of confounds people when the see it and then plug-in and proceed to have a ridiculous look on their faces. 

The first thing one notices about this little beast, is that it is PURPLE.  I don’t mean soft lavender or muted regal shades, I mean screaming, electric Barney Purple!  Once suitable eye protection has been found and the glare dies down, one can get close enough to the action  part of the amp, the control panel.    All one really needs is an input jack, Volume  and Tone.  what could be easier?  There is also a preamp cathode cap selector to put a couple different caps across the first stage, but other than that, nada.  I had been wanting to build a version of Angela Instruments “Super Champ” circuit for some time but never got around to it.  When my former boss  scavenged an old Magnavox console for the record player because it had a 78 rpm speed, he asked me if I wanted the amp from said console.  Not being one to pass up free salvage, I said “Hhhmmmm, ok!”.  Now I had the perfect vict…, I mean participant for my experiment. 

     This little creature is really a very cool amp in its own right.  Back in the day, before stereo, there was mono.  In an attempt to expand the horizons of audio enjoyment, Magnavox had a large cabinet with 2 speakers each driven by its own output section.  This shared a common preamp and driver section, because it is after all MONO.  So instead of doing a paralleled SE output pushing one speaker, I’ll do two SE outputs each driving its own speaker in one box.  Hehehehehe…  (insert evil laughter here).

This amp puts out about 6 watts per output tube for a whooping 12 watts of pure single-ended, oversaturated whoop ass.  The output transformers are tiny and saturate really quick.  There’s not alot of clean headroom available, but what is there is warm and responsive.  I actually pulled out the cathode bypss cap on the second stage to lower the gain a bit, that helped keep it from going into distortion so fast.  There is one main departure from the Angela design, in that they used PSE 6V6 tubes and this one has dual SE  EL84 tubes (6BQ5’s really).  All that really does is change the tonal spectrum a bit, I would think the 6V6 would be alittle smokier, and the EL84’s are easier to drive.  When you crank it up, it’s rock tone of the gods.  Think first Led Zepplin album, plug in a Les Paul and go into “Whole Lotta Love”, you’ll be grinning like a fool.  All this without make one deaf.  Now, your not going to cut through a loud band, in a club.  But for small coffee houses or the church or little bandstands, it’s perfect.

There you go!  maximal enjoyment for the cost of some pine boards from Home Depot and of course two custom ordered Weber alnico 10’s, these added about $200 to the total cost, but when everything else was pretty much free, I can live with that.  By the way, if you ever get the chance to pair a Weber Blue Pup & Silver Ten, do it.  The Blue has a great Voxie bright crunch and the Silver is more subdued with more bottm end, it’s a really nice mating and they love SE amps. 

Peace!  Matthew M

Number Two Redux

chassis for No. 2 finished and fired up!

     Everyday is like Christmas when deliveries show up at the door.  Since my extended unemployment, I’ve become friends with my mailman, Fed-Ex guy and the men in Brown.  I hear the truck pull up and look out the window, “Yes, they stopped”.  Then out the door and down the steps, to greet them with a warm hello and thank you.  So has our dog Abby, in no small measure because of the treats our mailman has given her.  She sees the uniform, be it blue/brown/purple & green, she will race down the side-walk and plant herself at their feet wiggling out of her skin.  Or stop on the sidewalk and sit, staring expectantly into the door of their truck, hoping, longing for the biscuit.

Our dog Abby, also known as Black Dog, Doggus, etc...

 I just realized that this must have been taken after a session of digging in the backyard, as her nose is covered in dirt.  Good Dog!

 

 

     Getting back to what I started to say, everyone that comes to our house gets greeted warmly and welcomed.  I imagine that during the day delivering in the neighborhoods where all one sees is closed doors, having someone greet you is probably a welcome change. 

 

You see, I have a hard time staying on track.  “Focus Man, Focus”.  So the last of the packages arrived yesterday with the missing pots, knobs and tube sockets.  Which means I spent the rest of the day soldering and attaching the last of the wires in a rush to get the thing powered up.  It’s always interesting using new iron from different makers for the first time.  for example, normally I would just hook up the low voltage secondary automatically.  In this case, it didn’t give me anywhere near enough B+, somewhere in the neighborhood of 350volts.  also the bias was way off, so I had to play with the bias dropping resistor a bit to get the range right.  So after I had neatly wrapped up the hi-volt winding and labeled it for future use, I had to cut it apart and hook it up instead.  Maybe that will teach me to wait to do final tie offs till I get it powered up and tested.  Once I swapped the B+ leads and adjusted the bias, brought it up to the correct voltage, 

 

I used Hi-Temp pvc 20ga wire this time and it made the heaters much easier to wire on the preamp sockets.

SUCCESS!,   sort of.  Actually, there was a problem.  It seemed much quieter than I would have expected and the bass control was doing something really weird, like turned all the way off, it was really loud and grainy, but as I turned it up, the amp got quieter and more dampened.  Also, it was much more distorted at low volume.  Ok, whose the joker that’s messing with my stuff.  I’m usually really careful about hooking up wires and following schematics and double checking things, so It’s not unusual to have everything work right the first try, not this.  Anyway, I started inspecting around and double checking all the connections around the tone circuit.  “100k resistor to input of the treble control, check.  250pf cap to the wiper check.  Oh,      what’s this wire doing not connected to anything?”

Yes I did it, I left a ground wire to the preamp stage filter unconnected.  No wonder my voltages were wacky and there was no power.  That also left the 2nd stage un grounded, at least directly.  Problem solved, wire connected.   AAAhhhhhhhhh!  that’s better. 

 

I borrowed a friends label maker, I want one!

     The next thing on the agenda is to yard this over to Guitar Crazy, before Bob sells my other amp and play both this and No. 1  into the same speakers, so I can hear the difference in transformers and coupling caps.  That’s probably been the most frustrating aspect of just starting up w/o any capital, is I can only usually make one thing at a time and it’s hard to do several versions and put them side by side.  It’s kind of like shooting in the dark and having to get it right on the first shot.  Or at least close to right, so small changes at this point aren’t too drastic.  “Hey, they’re limited additions, of course there different, What did you expect”.  Actually, they all will sound wonderful and a little different anyway, that’s what makes life so nice, the little  things, subtle textures, spices and aromas.  

I still am working on getting some way to record some decent clips to post.  so until then people will have to march down to Guitar Crazy and demand to try it out in person.

Peace

Son of Super

     Well,  as all good things come to an end, so it was with the rush of getting my first amp out into the world.  One was good, two is gooder!   Actually, I had started this one in November, but kind of sat on it while I was getting some repairs done and Christmas and ……..  In the last week, I’ve gotten most of this one wrapped up.  The tolex went much quicker this time, thank God

Once again, I used old Douglas Fir for the cabinet.  The joints came out better on this one, with much less filler and sanding to smooth things out.

All in all, this came together so much faster.  I also started doing extra pieces when I was cutting out things like the rails and the front valance.  I made some patterns for the tolex this time and they worked out pretty good.  The first one was like agonizing over every cut, every piece.  I would sit there and measure, think about it, measure again, think about it.   This one was like , “what did I do last time, oh yeah.”  Cut, cut, cut, glue, sand, done!  One of these days I need to get a proper table saw, if I’m going to continue to make my own cabinets.

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     This one has some important changes from the first one, primarily it will have a single 12″ speaker, a  1/16″ glass board with eyelets and different wiring.  I kind of went with the total vintage vibe on #001, but to be honest, the 18 ga solid core wire was a bitch to work with on the 9 pin sockets.  Also, the 20 ga solid cloth wire I used for everything else was really bulky in tight spaces (which there were alot of).  The turrets on thick glass board, standing on 1/4″ stand-offs made the components almost touch the front panel switches and indicator lamps and such.  So I thought I’d use eyelets on this one.  They definetly helped in making things lay lower, but…..  I think I like the stability of the heavier board opposed to the 1/16″ one I used here.

     There are two other important changes this time around, namely PIO coupling caps in the preamp and a new set of iron.  Both of these, I’m excited to here how they sound.  Antique Electronics just started carrying these and they look promising.  Typically, the paper in oil caps are used by audiophile types looking for the smoothest sounding mojo for their amps, but they usually are quite expensive.  I know that’s all relative, because in the Audiophile world, people will spend thousands on cables and think it’s a bargin, while guitar guys balk at using anything other than lamp cord for their speakers.  That’s not totally true, but then again, when the end user makes $50 bucks a night giging, spending $25 coupling caps is a stretch.

     That was one of the issues with my “concept”, in that I wanted to use the best parts I could to a point.  Typically in mass produced products, the weak link is the parts quality and other short cuts to keep margins higher.  Nothing wrong with that, I just wanted to offer an alternative.  If I get a piece of gear, what are the things I’d change because I’m not worried about saving a few pennies on components.  So, spending 1.50 to 4.50 per cap isn’t so bad.  Now, I still can’t justify using things like Allesandro’s copper and oil caps that he sells for like $28 each (actually rebranded Jensen caps),  but I can use something a little better than the .02 parts you’d find in a Peavey or Mesa or Fender (esp).

I’m really excited about trying out these trannies,  I like to think of them as the Mercury Magnetics for the PBR set.  They really do look promising and the price is awesome.  The proof as they say is in the pudding, and I like puddding. 

Cue music….. “Oh, the big red letters stand for the Jello company, the big red letters stand for taste and quality, It’s Jello yum, yum, yum,  Jello pudding yum, yum, yum,  Tapioca pudding, try all three”.     I still remember that from when I was a wee lad!   All this talk about pudding has got me wanting some desert, and I think my wife Julia (there I mentioned her by name) has just made some of her kick ass, dynomite Lemon Bars.  They be calling my name right about now.  So until we meet again, Sionara!  I have now idea how that’s spelled, so forgive me.   Peace

The Further Adventures of Number 1

Well folks, this was the moment I was waiting for, #001 is in the window.  Or to be more exact, it’s sitting on the floor of a wonderful little shop called Guitar Crazy in Portland, Oregon.  The owner of the aforementioned establishment is Bob Stull, who over the years has allowed me to hang out, ask lots of questions, try out very cool guitars and always treated me very well.  Because of his expertice in all things vintage, he’d be the goto guy if I were buying a vintage Strat or Les Paul, and wanted to be sure that the instrument was what it claimed to be,  “not so subtle hint”. 

   He has also been kind to me whenever I’d show up at his shop with some funny looking amp in tow and tell him I just finished it and would he be so kind as to bash at it for a few seconds to get his opinion.   When I decided to start building amps, I felt Bob was the one person I knew who  had considerable experience in vintage amps of all stripes (esp Tweeds), and I needed to let him check it out.  I mean anybody can buy a kit these days and call themselves an “Amp Builder”, but does the amp really measure up to the pedigree or is it just an interesting replica in a world full of replicas, wanna-bes and coat-tail riders.  I probably err on the side of not presenting myself as the former unless it absolutely measures up.  But not only that, does it stand on it’s own and meet my criteria for quality/ tone/ etc..

So, as I said this is the moment I daydreamed about when rolling the idea of building professionally came wafting thru my thoughts.  I never really allowed myself to think about how it would actually feel though.  I mean how cool is it to go to someones store, online and see the fruits of your labor in full color and know that someone else might actually want to buy it and fetish it as much as I do.  Yes, that’s right I said “fetish”, because guitar players as a species like to have a personal relationship with their equipment.  Going so far as to name their guitars and amps and talk about their personalities and moods and those moments of transcendence when the barriers between heart, hands, strings, capacitors becomes one and the doors of reality are thrown wide open and light beams down from above and all present are washed in the waves of  a shared spec of time and are changed forever!  Or maybe it’s just me, that likes to rumple my toys and give my wife pause as to come into the basement for fear of walking in on some strange wholely un-natural tryst between man and machine going on.

Ok, so maybe not, but it is really exciting and a little scarey to really put oneself out into the world this way, especially if that person is prone to be very introverted and shy.  so here is the link to Guitar Crazy  http://www.gbase.com/powered/geardetails.aspx?dealer=beb0a029-3424-4bea-9db3-409327c13999&item=2813474

If nothing else, if you need anything in the way of a wonderful used guitar or truely vintage piece Bob’s stuff are always in fabulous condition and priced fairly.  If you want to get something cheap or don’t know quality if it sat on ya, go to Guitar Center.  Otherwise, support your small locally owned shops in your area, because otherwise all that will be left will be the Walmarts of the world, and oohh what a sad day that will be.

Peace, Matt

The Evil That Men Do

I don’t know why I do it, but virtually every thought that pops in my head has a built-in reference to a song lyric or title.  It just happens.  Like dyslexia or a stutter, the moment before the words will spill out of my mouth, a lyric pops into my head and distracts me.  Then I ponder it for a few moments, then speak.  It’s gotten so I pause so often, I feel my wife thinks I must be getting senile or something.  But alas, I digress…….

    My particular thoughts are about the abuse some amps receive at the hands of their owners.  I see it a lot on the web, especially Ebay,  someone trying to pawn off a treasure that often looks as if it were set upon by some cyborg/beaver half-breed.  Replete with chunks missing, large blobs of glue like matter, parts relocated for some unknown reason, and just bad general hygiene.  These poor amps (and guitars for that matter), never asked for this kind of treatment, nor deserved the torture they have endured, they just were a victim of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. 

    The little beasty I brought home and gave safe haven to is one such amp.  It’s kind of funny, but a nice fellow who has been bringing me a slew, no,  I dare say a herd of amps/ cabinets and rotating thing-a-ma-jobs, brought this poor creature to me to look at and see how bad it was.

Well, after pulling the chassis out and standing there gazing at it in mute silence, I was overcome by the same feelings that one gets at the animal Shelter.  I wanted to bring it home and bath it and fix all of its ills and restore it to its former beauty.  Although to do that, it would mean completely disassembling the amp and give it an acid bath as a start, then completely rewireing it and put it back together with all new parts and board and………    I really felt pangs of sympathy for the torment this innocent amp had been through.  It had so many holes drilled in it, I was reminded of our house which was similarly riddled with bullet holes everywhere thanks to a drunken former owner who liked to shoot his guns in the house.

    After reporting back that to get the amp into any semblance of safe use, it was going to take a bit more money and time than the owner felt it was worth, seeing as he got it for free in a trade.  In a momentary flash of brazenness, I offered to relieve him of it for the balance he owed me on a previous repair.  He felt sorry for it also and thought it just needed someone to love it and give a break for once, so,   I became the new owner.

One of the other weird things about it was somewhere along the line someone had replaced the Bandmaster iron (power/choke/OT) with iron from either a Twin or a Showman.  So it got me to thinkin’, there are already four output tube holes, why not keep the power trans and ditch the OT for a Bassman and fill it up with a quad of 6V6’s and make it a mini Showman.  Hmmmmmm?   Actually after doing some research, I think a 50 watt Marshall OT would be better at 3.2k on the primary which is half of what a pair of 6V6’s would like to see. (6.6k).    So  put a quad in and make a great 40 or so watt amp complete with “Showman” faceplate.  My initial thought was to just make a scaled down Showman with BF circuit and the 6v6’s. then I thought well, how about something different on the Normal channel like a JTM 45/ Tweed Bassman or high gain Dumbell or…..  I try to not get carried away, but I get distracted easily.  What ever the case may be I need to start with stripping the chassis and starting from scratch.

   The circuit is actually close to stock, but the wiring is so bad that it really needs to be redone.

    There’s lots of insulation missing and just general fire hazards in there.

    Heater wires taped together, way too small a gauge wire on them also.

After removing everything and giving it a once over with an oscillating sander tool to remove all the burrs and globs of solder and epoxy and whatever else.  It is shiny bright.  I wish I had a little grinder to do the little circular pattern in the surface, I can’t remember what it’s called, but it would have that classic sports car dash look.  Also to get the Twin PT in, they had cut the hole bigger and redrilled for the mounting screws.  Except they must have gotten tired and quit part way or just gave up and just jammed  the bell end into the chassis, bending the screws and rolling up the inside edges of the mounting hole.  Nice!!!!!     That had to be hammered back down and the edges cleaned up too.

So for now that’s where it’s at,  parts arrived for my second “Super” so I got to get back to that.  Check back for the continuing saga……….

Hello world!

Greetings All,

My name is Matthew and this is my story.  This is the start of a new chapter in my life, mainly the move from indentured slavery to freedom.  Or how I worked for the man for many years then got out and did my own thing.  Actually it is kind of like that, as I had worked in the Printing industry for about 25 years and was totally fed up and in severe pain from lifting too much paper for too many years.  I was a press operator and very good at it, but extremely bored and tired of feeling under appreciated and dealing with cranky salespeople.  I was very unhappy and cranky myself.

  All my life I’ve also played music and run live sound and traveled doing both and built stuff.  It’s the latter that I’ve envisioned taking me on the next phase of my life.  Getting back to what I was sharing about the Print world, was, after 16 years in my last job, I got layed off.  The old 10 am announcement, “All employees to the conference room”  followed by “We can pay you til the end of the day”.  I hate that line.  Obviously, you’ve been thinking about whether or not you can keep the doors open for some time, and you know that most of the employees (mostly family… actually all family except me) live pay check to pay check.  So why, “you’ve got till the end of the day”, why not “things don’t look good, why don’t you start looking for other jobs over the next 3 weeks before we lay everyone off”?

   After about a year of being unemployed and doing odd jobs and whatever came my way, I decided to try to develop my hobby of building things, primarily guitar amps into a business.  Now, I’ve supplemented this with repairs and gigs and yard work, what ever to keep the roof over our heads.  And God has blessed us with a surprise check when the bills were due and I didn’t have enough money to cover everything.  In fact this whole process has been a path of self discovery, having to face all my self doubts and fears just to get to the point of even giving it a go.  Taking a fantasy and make it a reality.  I keep going back to the thought of following my passion.  I’ve had other opportunities to make money that also required overcoming fears and growing and facing doubts etc, but I kept coming back to “I wasn’t passionate about them”.  I love building things and being involved in music making, Period!!  Always have been.  So the purpose of this step into the web-o-sphere is to get my ideas and labours out into the wider world and give me a place to share what I’m doing with the world, or at least a small community of like-minded folks.

Your My Number One!

So it has to begin somewhere…  I’ve always built stuff for myself or around the home, but it’s a different thing altogether to build it for public consumption.  My whole goal is to build amps that I dig, because I know if I get off on it, there’s got to be others who will dig it also.  I don’t mean that in a conceited kind of way, I have built a number of amps that I thought were pretty cool and the response from other players is usually something like”where did you get that? it sounds awesome”  I don’t want to reinvent the wheel and I also don’t want to offer a bunch of different models for every taste.  I just want to build a few select circuits, done by hand to a high quality standard.  For the time being, I’m doing the entire amp from the ground up.  The cabinets will feature reclaimed wood, typically salvaged old growth Firs ( Hey, we live in the Northwest), Pine (the traditional Fender cabinet) and whatever I can find that might be interesting.  Anything but cheap, wet warpy soft pine from Home Depot.  There’s nothing like good old solid, dried and aged lumber.  It might be a little battle-scarred, but it has a different character and it’s been through the mill like me. 

    There are also alot of other builders out there who do vintage recreations of the Fender Tweed line of amps.  There are also a lot of people who fetish those days of yore and want an amp just like the ones in the old books.  I don’t really care, if an amp is a perfect replica with period correct glue under the tweed and 50 yr old resistors.  Not to malign anyone, those that build them do beautiful work and those that buy them enjoy them greatly.  I wanted to do something  different, so I’ve chosen a “Tweed” style cabinet, but with diffent wrapping.  This first run will be rough Brown tolex and wheat grill cloth, again a personal affection for something tasteful. 

The circuit on this amp is the much loved 5F4 Tweed Super, which is a great all around small club gigging amp.  It has a wonderful clean sound and open it up for glorious overdrive.  I left the circuit intact, but used a higher quality of parts for quiet, reliable operation night after night.  The board is built on 1/8″ G10 epoxy with hand drilled and hand pressed turret construction.  I decided to use better quality components without getting crazy.  for coupling caps I’m starting out with Mallory 150 series film caps.  They are  good sonicly and inexpensive.  I do dig the Sozo Mustard caps and their new Blue Aston modular caps as well.  I built a 5E7 Bandmaster with the Blue Sozo’s and I really like them, but they are alittle veiled, or rolled off or dark.  Whatever adjective you want to use.  They haven’t been played alot yet to break them in, so they might clear up in awhile.  The Mallories are in the same ball park, but about considerably less money.

For resistors, I decided to use 1% metal films for all voltage and noise sensitive positions, and carbon comps in the signal chain,  All plate resistors will be 1 or 2 watt metal oxides, for noise and stability.  The filter caps will be F&T from Germany.  I know, sacrilidge using non-Made in the USA  (meaning Sprage Atoms) in a Tweed style amp, but I think they are too expensive and quite abit bigger.  It’s tough enough squeezing a turret board on standoffs in this little chassis as it is without putting big giant filter caps in there also.  Then I used sealed conductive plasic volume pots and CTS pots for the rest of the controls.  Again, long life and quiet, smooth operation are the goal.  To round off the components are a set of Hammond transformers, from their new “Guitar Amp” series, supposedly “period” correct, although I haven’t been able to ascertain if that means paper not plastic.  So far so good, they sound nice and seem well built.  I would like to get a set of the Custom Magnetics trannies next to see how they compare.

Rounding off the menu are a set of Weber speakers, primarily one 10A125/ 30 watt paired with one 10F150 25 watt speaker.  I’ve been using a combo of alnico and ceramic in tweed style amps and I think I like it better as it holds together better on the bottom end and still has nice chime to it.  Although, if it takes a month to get them from Weber each time I order, I might consider using a different speaker manufactuer.  That was really frustrating.

Anyway, I’ll have more pics and hopefully some sound clips coming soon.  Please keep checking back as this is a new venue for me, blogging  I mean.  I’ll try to keep it interesting and also branch out to other cool builders and musicians and music as time goes on.

Peace!