The Amp Garage

Greetings, So, a guy drops off, at my shop, a Top Hat club royale 2x12 combo. Nice amp! He says he wants me to sell it for him and take the proceeds and apply it to an amp like I built for so and so. Cool! Anyway, I haven't got a clue what this thing is worth. It's in pristine condition. It's a 2x12...

I've built both 15 and 30 watt rockets, and the standard with 4 el84's sure did seem to have more "swirl"...no matter what changes I made. Very little volume difference.

I too, used to be impatient. I would almost get panicky when people wouldn't get back with me. I guess I outgrew it or something...I'm not sure, exactly. If I remember right, It was right around the time I built my first xpress. Anyway, nowadays I don't sweat it. I've found that some of the really g...

47k is exactly where I ended up.

They claim that the crystals are carefully selected based on their effectiveness.

Damn! Why didn't I think of that technique! Sometimes it's just right there in front of you...and you can't see it...the solution always evades me for some reason.

Another (could be) factor is the player. Some guys just seem to catch fire when they play. You know, the guitar player who plugs into the PA...and sounds just exactly like he does when his marshall stack isn't currently at the pawn shop. Loudest guitar I ever heard? Dick Dale...dual showmans and JBL...

Your build looks great! I like the push-back wire you're using. Looking forward to your updates.

Great job on the winder! Very cool! My teenage son has been winding strat style single coils for a couple of months now. Interesting results on a few. When he first started out (i let him make his own mistakes) he WAY underwound a few. The resulting output was quite low...in the 4.6k to 5.2k range. ...

500v means that finally, I've found a decent sounding cap that I can use to replace that sterile-sounding fan motor start cap in our home's central air conditioning unit. After all, summer is right around the corner!

And......they're 500v!!!

Tillydog wrote:
The wiring around the bright caps needs to be really carefully run and tucked away

Absolutely! And, on one of mine, the wire runs around the brite caps as short as possible.

M Fowler wrote: My builds suck

I'm gonna have to get my eyes checked. What I'm seeing in your pictures looks fantastic...as always.

That sounds interesting. I'm gonna re-visit that Aiken article... and check out the Wattkins thread as well. I'd love to try my luck with my own circuit...been meaning to at some point. I have noticed that there is a bit of "flattening" that takes place as you attenuate. It's nice to know why and it...

Yep, I used Dana's and scaled the pre and power tubes. If I remember right, you can just scale the power tubes, but that requires a master volume so the preamp tubes' signal, running at normal voltage, doesn't blast away at the power tubes running scaled. But, I never use master and volume in the sa...

I've built 2 xpress amps that I equipped with VVR's. Both amps are professionally owned and have been gigged with fairly hard for the past 4 years or so with no reliability problems. I did, however, end up changing out a pair of resistors that determine the amount of attenuation. After battling DC l...