Terra: A Trainwreck Express build with Stancor A-3801

[guitardude57]

Cliff,

Mike Ryan here.
I was in Austin between '92 and '98.....played all the 6th St clubs 3-5 nites a week nearly the whole time I was there. Your name sounds familiar.

Bill Webb of Fulton-Webb Amps on South Lamar, is a buddy of mine.......great guy. I wouldn't be surprised if he haunts around here.

I played with a few bands down there, but Gilson Viator's band was the more higher profile and the most fun.

I am looking forward to doing a jam with my Wreck inspired build.
I have a couple days off, so will put up some pix of my frankenstein.....LOL!

[Cliff Schecht]

I can't believe an Austinite became a RED RAIDER

Hook 'em baby.... I want some Alabama ASS tomorrow

I'm in DFW, but my oldest is a Longhorn.... gonna move to the Hill Country just as soon as my youngest gets out of High School...

Sorry for the hijack!

My girlfriend is all about UT and I always get flack for being a Red Raider. I don't really give a crap about football though, I came to Tech because their electrical engineering school is better than UT's .



Mike: I've been to Austin Vintage Guitars a lot, sometimes with my dad Geoff, but I don't think we've ever bought much or made a huge impression there. I used to go there when I was building a lot of guitar effects to gander at the originals of what I was copying and plunk on the nice Tele's but that's about it.

What was your favorite bar to play at? I've never played a show in Austin but I'm trying to get a gigging band going up here in Lubbock that could make it down to Austin.

[sliberty]

Speaking of PAIA many years ago I bought 15 of those 4739? IC to build all of Craig Anderton's guitar projects but never use them.

Shame - the Craig Anderton noise reduction project from GP used those chips, and was a great project. I built 4 channels of it to use with my Teac A-3340S. Man those were the days.

If you still hvae those chps, you should dig up some of the old projects (probably on the web somewhere) and get to buildin'.

[guitardude57]

Cliff,

All the places I used to play back there no longer exist. Joe's Generic, Bates Motel, Headliners, Babe's, Mercury, Black Cat.......are gone for various reasons. Mainly to the catering to the chickadees from UT with jello-shot bars. The 311 Club was fun and is still there.

Depending on the style of music, The Continental Club, Antoine's, Saxon Pub and Threadgill's are still around. Of course there are many others I'm sure nowadays, I'm not familiar with.

[Cliff Schecht]

My Express is going to be in the studio next Thursday. I'm excited to hear this thing in a more controlled environment where I can run it wide open without getting griped at by the bandmates for being too loud . I will post the songs as they get finished but it may be a while before they get finished.

I've also recently discovered the need for an attenuator after blowing the ancient speaker I was using, purchasing a used 1x12 Egnater cab and realizing that the Express is MUCH louder through newer and more efficient speaker. For a while I was using one of my single-ended builds through a 4x12 cab (puts out about 20W power max this way) but I was sorely missing the sound and simplicity of the Express. But after the first band practice with the Express/Egnater setup, I left with a bad case of tinnitus and the goal of quieting the Express without sacrificing sound. A simple 8 Ohm series, 16 Ohm parallel attenuator (-6dB @ 16 Ohms) does a fantastic job of hushing the amp without sacrificing the characteristic sound of the amplifier.

[M Fowler]

If you still hvae those chps, you should dig up some of the old projects (probably on the web somewhere) and get to buildin'

sliberty,

I have those 4739 IC chips still in the protective sleeve they came in and I have the project book and look at it every now and then but so far haven't built any of the old projects.

Mark

[Rick]

It was nice to see someone doing things on their own in regards to build layout. I have not gone so far as to PTP one of these. You no doubt learn through all this and gain respect for the original design. I can't even guess how many hours KF spent in the initial design stages before he got the design finalized. It is a finicky design, but not so much as many might think. I have built 4 or 5 TW based amps with a reversed marshall style layout (after I built a few with KF style layout). i.e, I flipped the whole thing right to left using 3 input jacks and the unused triode so that V1 is actually 2 channels albeit through the same tonestack. It took me a while but it wasn't all that hard. I always found the left side input and layout of the original a bit dyslexic as I built many marshall 18W types early on and grew very accustomed to that type of layout, so I build pretty much all my amps with right side inputs, PT and power section to the left, preamp to the right (looking from the front right side up) and it's just the way I like to do things.

It is isomorphic to the original just a mirror image of sorts so I didn't foresee it causing problems and it works quite well. The 3 inputs give a choice of 1.5K 25 uF preamp, 2.7K 0.68 uF preamp, or both channels at once in parallel for more gain and the mixing effects and loading down through a single 100K plate load resistor feeding both triodes. I added a couple pics. This is obviously a 2-EL84 version based largely on the liverpool with scounged trannys. Everything else I fabricated myself.

[paulster]

I build mine left-handed as well, but that's the Marshall legacy showing through I guess.

And I suppose that since we drive on the wrong side of the road as well...

[Cliff Schecht]

Rick, are those Xicon metal film resistors? I used them in my build and found the leads to be incredibly weak and flimsy, definitely the weakest part of my PTP build. I've already had to go in and replace a few of them (namely the grid stoppers) because the weak leads broke so easily. I'm sure you're build will be a lot sturdier because you have the support of a board underneath. I will never use those resistors in a PTP build again, I think it's only going to be carbon comp or those snazzy Dale resistors that the Dumble people are so wild about (I've had great luck with these myself).

I think my next Express build is going to also be PTP, but I will be using two rows of terminal strips to do the build and will follow the typical Express layout more closely with respect to tube and component placement (as opposed to cramming everything in a case that's too small). I'm still going to stick with the ultra-low noise and stout toroidal transformer but will try to keep the component choice more consistent with what KF did. Hopefully I can get one of Allyn's pre-drilled Express cases soon and also hope to actually put this build in a wooden case, I'm tired of driving around with the tubes exposed (I already flipped the amp once in my trunk and shattered an EL34 :-/).

[Rick]

Cliff, I'm not sure of the brand, they were lot orders from China through eBay, they very well could be Xicon, just not sure. The leads have been pretty good for the most part. BTW, I've noticed if you wrap the lead around sharp edges like a terminal strip has, and you crip it with the needle nose, that can score the lead enough that any bending will cause it to snap. I suspect that may be the problem. A related note, I use a lot of solid core wire and if you strip the insulation say with a sharp blade by encircling the wire with the blade, it will score the tinning on the core and the wire will snap with one or two bends. Needless to say, I stopped doing that long ago. I use a lot of eyelet construction now as it is very conducive to frequent modding and is not destructive to lead ends, so that probably helps quite a bit. A quality wire stripper is a must. Gardner Bender strippers seem quite good and are not overly expensive, I use G-B strippers a lot.

[Cliff Schecht]

I'm usually pretty careful about not excessively bending part leads. I was just upset at how thin and flimsy those little Xicon resistors really were.. I only had the two free-floating grid stoppers and one plate resistor break but all of the other Xicon's are securely supported by at least a tube socket pin and a terminal strip.


So I got this build into the studio the other day but we ran into problem after problem so it was really a waste of a session, albeit I wasn't the only one having issues. The Egnater Rebel 112x cab I have was rattling like a sonofabitch and it took two 30 pound metal solid state amps and a lot of tape to just cut down on the rattling. I've already busted down the cab completely and blocked off the space in between the grille cloth and the front speaker support with foam and tightened all of the screws which seems to have killed the vibrations. This is a loud little cab though so pretty much anything loose in or around the isolation booth will also rattle if allowed to do so. At least we don't actually ever pay for studio time, three of the five band members have recording equipment or access to a full blown studio .

[Rick]

Yeah, cab vibration can be a bitz. I have an old Crate BV412 and cranked up the whole cabinet will literally rattle an amp to death. Any bad connects or poor wiring will show up in a hurry. It doesn't buzz or make noises, it just resonates with the output and induces vibration to anything on it. That's when I started mounting chassis with spring tension on rubber grommets, kills about 95% of the induced vibration to the chassis. I'm beginning to wonder about the wisdom of using solid wire because of vibration causing trouble eventually. I have some mil spec teflon insulated silver coated solid wire that is great stuff, but stiff as Jack Daniels in the morning. It actually vibrates like a spring it's so stiff, takes heat fantastic though so the old weller 8200 doesn't toast it like PVC insulation. I know, always use an iron, not a gun. I use the big heater all the time though, I like heat on fast in and out. Great for one time use, not so good for a lot of modding, things get pretty toasty with too much 120W iron. Build one with a board and follow the layout and you'll be happy

[Cliff Schecht]

I will be building another Express soon (Spring Break), but my current trainwreck of an Express has really surprised me with its durability and ability to consistently sound great. The cab compliments the Express well once the knobies on the Express are tweaked correctly.

We had another studio session the other day and everything went swimmingly, except for my solo overdubs at the end. My fingers were sore from doing take after take and by the end, I was playing pretty sloppy. Hopefully I will have a rough mix tomorrow to post up but if not tomorrow then soon after that. I'm just annoyed that I wasn't playing in the studio like I was today at practice, but it always seems to go that way doesn't it.. .

[Finom1]

Does anyone have sound clips of their builds????

Thank you.