The Amp Garage

If you take some clay or playdough and make a tee pee out of it, stick it on the inside of the chassis where you need to drill your hole(s) and it will catch all the metal shavings, and when you are just roll it up into a ball as you peel it of the chassis and toss it out,ZERO mess or shorts!

First off replace all the plate load resistors, then lift one end of any cap that has more than 30 volts DC on the other end of it and check the lifted end for leakage, anything more than .5 VDC and you replace it.

When you get the chance, change out all 6 rectifiers with fast recovery type UF5408. The leads on these are too large to get two leads in one ring hole like stock so you will need to rap the center rectos leads around the ends of the two other rectos tha boarder it. This will make for near zero swit...

A real 5V4 recto wold be the way to go, plus this is a indriectly heated type like a 5AR4, so it will not shorten the life of the tubes by cathode stripping them which is what the 5Y3 does so well unforutnatly! A princton OT is a push pull type and not what the amp uses, the amp is single ended, plu...

unlike the ELs a 6CA7 is a beam type power tubes like a 6L6GC and will bias in real close to EL34. The best made and sounding 34s right now are JJs, very punchy and not brash on the top when pushed to clipping, and the groovertubes version of the JJ (EL34S) has been up rated with beefer plates to a ...

If the preamp tube sockets are mouted on a circuit board its likly that a solder connection has gone bad due to heat up and cool down sessions. If this is the case you will see a full or partial ring around the tubes sockets pin in the circuit board trace. use only a leaded type solder to fix this o...

The groovetubes version of the JJ EL has been uprated to a 30, watt from its 25 watt rating by adding extra plate mass to its structure, heay wings as they call them. Also a true 6CA7 plays different than a EL as its a beam type tube and as such in amps with out a feedback circuit you can really hea...

With the silver face and these reissue blackface amps the plate voltage on the output will be some 380 to 403 volts dependant on the how strong the output tube is.

Rewire the heaters like a good amp (two well twisted wires), no one leg of the 6.3 volts landed to the chassis like the way they come. These amps run a ton of plate voltage( way out of class A) even with the 5y3 recto and idle with a good 6v6 way above 40 ma. If you want to keep the 5y3 recto and no...

You can not get 100 watts out of 2 6l6s unless the amp class AB2.

If the preamp, or any tubes are mounted right on a circuit board then one or more of the solder connections (tube pins to circuit board trace) has factured. This will be the most likly cause, so break out the soldering iron and use a leaded type (vintage if you will) solder if you can as leaded type...

Does the amp you will be using this thru have a effects loop?
Time based effects like reverb,chours and echo sound like crap when they get added in thru the front of the amp and then distored by latter stages.
Amps with built in effects add these in almost last, right before the power amp.

You should post up what type of music your into playing so you get relevent ideas.

The insulating film is made from pertroleum and labor cost are going up.

those blackface amps could have been fitted with a 5AR4 recto, or a 5U4GB, both set up`s use the same power transformer. The 5U4 recto should not pump into more the 40 uf of filter cap, the 5AR4 can handle 60 uf of filtering. If your current recto is a 5U4 replacing it with the lower impeadance 5AR4...