Lt Boob amp PART 2 - the other boob!

[Lt. Bob]

oh I'm positive it looks great.
That stressing about minor unimportant things like that is something people who haven't owned 100 amps do ....... lol.
that's not me!

The part that's amazing about the amp is what you did ..... a turret board constructed amp done perfectly with beautiful solder joints and all done with care and, dare I say, love.

Any extra holes in it will just be part of it's specialness.
When I'm dead and gone and wifey wills ya' the amp there will be a time when you look at those holes and smile, remembering.

I'm quite happy to have a tangible mark of this moment that something special was created for me ...... it will be the only one there is on Earth and that's really the point.
I could have bought anything I wanted ....... i could have built it myself ..... I didn't want that ...... i wanted a gRamp and everything you have to do to make it work just makes it that much more awesome to me.

[WhiskeyJack]

oh I'm positive it looks great.
That stressing about minor unimportant things like that is something people who haven't owned 100 amps do ....... lol.
that's not me!

The part that's amazing about the amp is what you did ..... a turret board constructed amp done perfectly with beautiful solder joints and all done with care and, dare I say, love.

Any extra holes in it will just be part of it's specialness.
When I'm dead and gone and wifey wills ya' the amp there will be a time when you look at those holes and smile, remembering.

I'm quite happy to have a tangible mark of this moment that something special was created for me ...... it will be the only one there is on Earth and that's really the point.
I could have bought anything I wanted ....... i could have built it myself ..... I didn't want that ...... i wanted a gRamp and everything you have to do to make it work just makes it that much more awesome to me.

Anything with love in it is always heaps and heaps better than anything mass manufactured. Some people have a boner for handmade stuff and that's cool. But handmade doesn't always equate to being made with love. those to me are tow entirely different things that sometimes overlap.

Not that this is the same or relevant, but my wife get's kind of wrangy with me when, on the Saturday after each one of my pay days i sneak off to this donut shop in town and i'll buy two donuts that roughly cost me about same price as a dozen at say tim hortons or a local bakery.

But man. that old girl who works there puts her whole heart into her donuts and you can tell she just loves what she does because we all love what she does. There isn't a donut on the face of this planet that can hold a candle to those. My grandmother made friggin good donuts i'd place these ones at least 50 notches up the donut scale of goodness.

I will always overpay for something with love in it.

Anyways. Thats only my back to the amp thread. Which by the way looks so good. I really can not wait to hear it.

[Lt. Bob]

oh I'm positive it looks great.
That stressing about minor unimportant things like that is something people who haven't owned 100 amps do ....... lol.
that's not me!

The part that's amazing about the amp is what you did ..... a turret board constructed amp done perfectly with beautiful solder joints and all done with care and, dare I say, love.

Any extra holes in it will just be part of it's specialness.
When I'm dead and gone and wifey wills ya' the amp there will be a time when you look at those holes and smile, remembering.

I'm quite happy to have a tangible mark of this moment that something special was created for me ...... it will be the only one there is on Earth and that's really the point.
I could have bought anything I wanted ....... i could have built it myself ..... I didn't want that ...... i wanted a gRamp and everything you have to do to make it work just makes it that much more awesome to me.

Anything with love in it is always heaps and heaps better than anything mass manufactured. Some people have a boner for handmade stuff and that's cool. But handmade doesn't always equate to being made with love. those to me are tow entirely different things that sometimes overlap.

Not that this is the same or relevant, but my wife get's kind of wrangy with me when, on the Saturday after each one of my pay days i sneak off to this donut shop in town and i'll buy two donuts that roughly cost me about same price as a dozen at say tim hortons or a local bakery.

But man. that old girl who works there puts her whole heart into her donuts and you can tell she just loves what she does because we all love what she does. There isn't a donut on the face of this planet that can hold a candle to those. My grandmother made friggin good donuts i'd place these ones at least 50 notches up the donut scale of goodness.

I will always overpay for something with love in it.

Anyways. Thats only my back to the amp thread. Which by the way looks so good. I really can not wait to hear it.

yeah ..... the older I get the more what's important to me evolves

also being sick with a potentially fatal disease might have me a little maudlin!

[WhiskeyJack]

Anything with love in it is always heaps and heaps better than anything mass manufactured. Some people have a boner for handmade stuff and that's cool. But handmade doesn't always equate to being made with love. those to me are tow entirely different things that sometimes overlap.

Not that this is the same or relevant, but my wife get's kind of wrangy with me when, on the Saturday after each one of my pay days i sneak off to this donut shop in town and i'll buy two donuts that roughly cost me about same price as a dozen at say tim hortons or a local bakery.

But man. that old girl who works there puts her whole heart into her donuts and you can tell she just loves what she does because we all love what she does. There isn't a donut on the face of this planet that can hold a candle to those. My grandmother made friggin good donuts i'd place these ones at least 50 notches up the donut scale of goodness.

I will always overpay for something with love in it.

Anyways. Thats only my back to the amp thread. Which by the way looks so good. I really can not wait to hear it.

yeah ..... the older I get the more what's important to me evolves

also being sick with a potentially fatal disease might have me a little maudlin!

Poppycock! You are gonna kick its ass dude!!! Fuck covid

[Greg_L]

oh I'm positive it looks great.
That stressing about minor unimportant things like that is something people who haven't owned 100 amps do ....... lol.
that's not me!

The part that's amazing about the amp is what you did ..... a turret board constructed amp done perfectly with beautiful solder joints and all done with care and, dare I say, love.

Any extra holes in it will just be part of it's specialness.
When I'm dead and gone and wifey wills ya' the amp there will be a time when you look at those holes and smile, remembering.

I'm quite happy to have a tangible mark of this moment that something special was created for me ...... it will be the only one there is on Earth and that's really the point.
I could have bought anything I wanted ....... i could have built it myself ..... I didn't want that ...... i wanted a gRamp and everything you have to do to make it work just makes it that much more awesome to me.

Haha thanks. I really do make it with love!

When I was first starting to even consider trying to build amps I was looking at a lot of horror stories online from other n00b amp builders. They had a lot of problems. The one common thread between all of them? They all looked like absolute shit inside. Sloppy wiring, cold solders, just bad everything. And a very common theme to their sloppy amps not working was disorganization and poor preparation. Most often they used a wrong part in the wrong spot. They'd put a 100 ohm resistor where a 100k should go. Or they'd connect wires to the wrong spots. Or they'd connect a polarized capacitor backwards. Simple stupid mistakes that don't have to be made at all. I myself put a rectifier socket in backwards in my own amp. I turned my filter caps into firecrackers. Dumb stuff like that.

And every good amp that worked beautifully and sounded awesome looked like a god built it. They were neat and organized, the wiring was clean and efficient, everything looked like a lot of care and attention to detail was put into it. So that's what I try to do. A neat amp looks great, it looks professional, but it also means that things are probably done right. "Lead dress" is the tech nerd term for wire routing, and that shit is SUPER important. Besides just looking tidy, an amp with good lead dress will sit there and idle so quietly you can't even tell it's turned on. That's a good thing. An amp with bad lead dress will hum and buzz and probably send one or all of the tubes into oscillation. All bad. So besides just looking great, a tidy amp will work better.

I put my best effort into building Boob's amps clean and tidy and most importantly, reliable. Maybe in five years I'll look back and think "what a mess" but right now I'm really happy with them. This is the best I can do.

[Lt. Bob]

fucking double post

[Lt. Bob]

I put my best effort into building Boob's amps clean and tidy and most importantly, reliable. Maybe in five years I'll look back and think "what a mess" but right now I'm really happy with them. This is the best I can do.

and 5 years from now your amps will still be gigging and recording ....... I'm no weekend warrior and plan on doing this till I'm way older than I am now.

and that wire routing thing is definitely a big deal.
I have a fender Hot Rod deVille ..... I think from the earliest run.
And those things had these really stiff ribbon connectors that were notorious for fracturing their solder joints because they were stiff and hung there vibrating from being in your truck driving down the road and even the vibrations from playing.
I had to resolder the joints every 6 months or so .... a real PIA.
Finally after the 4th time I yanked out all the ribbon cables and replaced them with 32 individual wires.
Nightmare time!
If this wire was a little too close to that wire it'd hum and if that wire was a bit too close to that component there'd be some ugly distortion.
I finally got it right but it really took a while and lots of what the fucking fuck!! moments.

[Greg_L]

I heard you the first time!

[Greg_L]

TONE CLIPS HERE

[rayc]

Tone is coollllll.

[Greg_L]

Okay [mention]Lt. Bob[/mention] .....finally got a chance to BLAST this thing last night at a band practice. And I do mean blast it.

And this motherfucker sounds and works great. Not one single problem. I used the TMB channel with the gain maybe around 6-7 and it was nicely in that Marshall crunch sweet spot. You like the bonk, this fucker bonks hard. When you chop a chord it has that short percussive *bonk*. Very punchy. It doesn't have a lot of headroom, but the compression of the overdriving EL84s allow leads to pop out with really good fullness and clarity. I had NO problem being heard and didn't use a single pedal. Not even a tuner. I ran straight into the amp. This thing definitely sounds like a Marshall. Now the other guitar player wants one too.

My only issue with the amp as it is, and it's just a small thing, the master volume's usable range is pretty narrow. It goes from nothing to bedroom to as loud as it can be pretty quickly. It definitely has a tipping point where it doesn't get any louder but gets more saturated. That's a Pre-Phase Inverter MV for ya. It's not as smooth or as linear as a Post PIMV. But it was definitely able to dial it in pretty easily and it was plenty loud enough with room to spare. The tone was pretty much perfect. Not that you'd wanna be as loud or rowdy as a live hardcore punk rock band, but this amp will do it if you want.

[Lt. Bob]

awesome!!
First off that chopping a chord and getting that percussive bonk is exactly the 'bonk' I'm talking about ..... you've nailed the description.
That makes me so happy to know it does that because that's my single most favorite Marshall thing and not all of them do it.
My 6101 doesn't ........ so YAY!!!

Sounds perfect actually and I like that the master works like that .... a master on one side of its range and on the other a saturation control.
one of my Mesas does that with the midrange ..... in the manual they say that up to 1/2 way up it's a mid control and after that it's a dirt control.

How's it look with the purple cab and chicken knobs?

[Greg_L]

How's it look with the purple cab and chicken knobs?

It looks fucking awesome. My wife thinks it looks better than the Deluxe. I'm gonna do a final walk-through vid today.

[Greg_L]

Also, now that it's had a few hard heat cycles and break in, I'm gonna go back in and double check some voltages and bias. This thing was right on the edge bias-wise. I wanna see if some run time has "softened" it up a little.

[Greg_L]

Okay @Lt. Bob and those of you following along....

Sorry for the delays. Covid and christmas have come and gone now I can get back to this thing.

So where we left off...the amp works and sounds great. I'm a little on the fence about the ragged edge of sanity bias so I got some more resistors and bypass caps to try to tame it just a little. A few milliamps won't affect the sound and will definitely help the tubes. Also, on the bias, I noticed the cathode bias resistor gets a little warm. It's a 3 watt ceramic resistor and that might be a little light-duty with the current passing through. So I got a handful of 5 watt resistors in various values to try out. I'd feel better with a 5 watt bias resistor if it were my own amp, so that's what I'm gonna do.

And just FYI....the bias resistor is what sets the bias point of the tubes. Some amps have a pot that you can just turn. This one isn't like that. You have to physically change a resistor on the board. It's a little more hassle to deal with initially, but in the long run it's pretty much set-and-forget. Once you dial it in you're good to go pretty much forever.

[rayc]

Excellent...I look forward to the vid.

[WhiskeyJack]

Beauty!! For some reason i had thought this build was done and dusted but i think it was just the down time that threw me off.

Looking forward to hearing this bad boy.

[Lt. Bob]

gonna be a good one ......

[Greg_L]

Update....

Been working on the cathode bias resistor fine tuning. I got the bias down to perfect level. The trade off is as bias current drops, plate voltage goes up. So now the plate voltage is a little high for EL84s.

There are amps that run higher plate voltages, so I don't think it's that big a deal, but it's something I want to look into further. As I understand it, a tube can withstand higher plate voltage better than it can withstand bias current that's beyond it's limits. Guitar amps regularly run plate voltages WAY higher than the tube data sheet specs recommend. These things aren't that precious. So I don't think it's a problem as long as the bias current stays stable....and it should. The bias setting is a fixed value.

The root of this minor issue is the power transformer just puts out too much voltage, and/or it needs a less efficient rectifier. The rectified voltage coming out of the PT is just slightly too high. As things burn in and settle in I think things will settle down.

[Lt. Bob]

well take as long as needed to get it sorted out ....... I don't want magic smoke over here.
Plus I want that 'bonk' so don't do anything that unbonks it