The Amp Garage

My first impression is that you may be picking up an oscillation due to the layout. Normally you would want to keep the inputs and outputs separated as much as possible on the chassis. It looks like your speaker connector and input jack are very close together? Also, the placement of the tubes vs. t...

Reel! Wondered where you went. I thought maybe you had just had enough of us.

Glad you are back in circulation. Sorry to hear of your misfortune. Best wishes for your recovery.

I have had that happen. If you use too much solder, it will definitely run down into the hole. No amount of trying will ever clean it out satisfactorily, as far as I could see. The only solution for me was to replace the socket. For a while after that incident, I always inserted a dead tube in the s...

Power transformers often turn out to not be the problem. I think a lot of PT's get changed without curing the problem. I would not feel comfortable spending money on a new PT until I tested it with all the primaries disconnected as Lou mentioned above. If you are not getting any high voltage with th...

Remember that we are not dealing with steady-state DC. The voltage across the cap drops very rapidly as it discharges. If I recall correctly, the voltage drops about 63% every time constant as it discharges. The time constant (in seconds) is equal to R times C, where R is in ohms and C is in Farads....

Someone recently turned me on to using a sheet metal nibbler for IEC and transformer cutouts. Works very well, although it does still take some practice and patience.

There was a good sized earthquake in southern Idaho yesterday. From a geological point of view, the quakes in SLC and Idaho just indicate that the Earth is readjusting its trousers to get more comfortable. From any other viewpoint, it makes us wonder if the apocalypse is at hand, with the virus and ...

I know it is a common failure, and I had the impression it was caused by a bad tube. I have an amp on my bench now with a carbon track on one of the sockets. The B+ fuse was blown, but the filament fuses were OK. The owner told me he was just playing it, minding his own business, when he saw a FLASH...

I've seen the ole "Pin 2 to 3 Short" many times, but never understood what is going on with that type of failure. In a 6L6 or EL34 or the like, an arc between pins 2 and 3 means the filament shorted to the plate? That seems unlikely, doesn't it? Is all the action going on inside the tube? Or across ...

Thanks guys, that was the kind of info I was looking for! I knew I had seen an article about this once, but couldn't seem to find it.

Thanks! I've heard of the bucking transformer, and it might just be the best solution. It would be nice to be able to mount it inside an existing amp as a permanent mod, rather than having an extra box outside the chassis. I think that should be feasible.

What would be the preferred method for scrubbing off some voltage on old equipment that was designed to run on 110 VAC? I see guys doing refurbs on old gear without any concern for the higher voltages that will result from running the old transformers on modern wall voltage. I know you can lower B+ ...

Hey cbass, let me know how the sober thing goes. Good luck, man. I've been toying with the idea of giving up beer myself, but I like beer too damn much to stop. I only drink a couple beers each evening, but I do it every singly night of my life, almost. I went without beer for 5 days last month on a...

I quit playing guitar for about 10 years once, and it took me about a full year to get back to where I left off when I picked it up again. But it was all fresh and new again, and to this day it is really the one thing that keeps me somewhat sane. It does come back.

This thread has been a great read! I can relate. I have given up my starry-eyed vision of building and selling amps for all the reasons above. Now I just do it for me. And by special request (which is rare). I follow some of the facebook amp pages, and it seems like amp building has become a "thing"...