The Amp Garage

Nice! Was that the old Antone's on 29th street? Man, I really liked that room. Saw great shows there.

I used to be of the mindset that the specs were what mattered, and as long as everything was the right value it would work fine. Experience has now taught me that this is true for a given value of "works fine". Experience has also taught me there is a vast difference between "works fine" and "sounds...

I have also done a two week whisky fast. It promotes a bloated, angry liver. I do not recommend it. As far as stem cells, fasting shifts your body to produce its own stem cells. I forget exactly how it works. One benefit here is that your own stem cells will work for you, while someone else's are a ...

I forget exactly where I read it, I think it may have been something by Dr. Edward Group, that a two week water fast has the same effect as $250,000 worth of stem cell therapy. I try to do it once a year, and I'd say it helps with my overall issues. I haven't had stem cell therapy to compare it to t...

Hey, so it sounds like you have an old hi fi speaker you'd like to turn into a guitar amp? While I will not say that can't be done, I would suggest that it might be a poor choice for your first build. I say this from the perspective of "That's the kind of thing I needed to be warned away from when I...

I have had really good experiences with Edcor iron and feel they offer excellent performance at a reasonable price. I am currently running them in my little D'lite build which is my everyday stage amp and am quite happy with them. I am in fact using that exact CXPP35 OT and have no complaints. Plus,...

That is an impressive piece of work there sir. What do you think of those Jupiter caps? I have yet to try any of those, but I amp curious.

That's an interesting question. I'm not sure if they're non inductive. I bought a few just to try and see for myself, fully expecting to dismiss them as overpriced. Without getting into the weeds about my impression of other "audio grade" carbon films, these AMRG's are the ones which, to my ear, are...

I too have been impressed with the Amtrans AMRG's. Really like the 2w in the dropping string and the 3/4w in the bias and negative feedback circuits. Seems to smooth the whole amp and tame high end unpleasantness. Didn't expect to prefer them for those positions.

I'm finding this to be a very interesting and useful topic, especially regarding 120hz intermodulation. Might this find it's way next to the lead dress info in the FAQ's?

I have a Weber alnico Blue Dog in my little d'lite style combo. I'm happy with it. Does the fat, smooth, creamy thing pretty well. Took forever to break in with the pre rola dope.

Ok, on your posted layout, the two 100k resistors in a v below the two .1uf caps are your plate load resistors for v1 (your first preamp tube). The two .1uf caps are your coupling caps for those gain stages. Measuring DC volts, place your ground lead to ground somewhere in the amp chassis. Then meas...

Do you have a multimeter to check B+ voltages? That could be very helpful. A bad plate resistor could kill one channel and make the other a little funky. If all the plate voltages are good then a coupling cap becomes a more likely suspect.

Filter caps can do some interesting things depending on current demand. But that is neither here nor there. Have you carefully inspected the preamp tube socket to ensure that there is no incidental contact between pins? Wire ends gently brushing each other or a tiny drip of solder that slipped down ...

If you plug into the offending channel, hit a chord and it goes BLATT and fizzles out, then you wait a few seconds, try again, and it does the same thing, it's likely a filter cap.