I am a newby here, so be gentle! I am from Durban in South Africa and regularly visit this awsome site. Recently I decided to take the plunge and order parts for an exspress build from rj (what a helpful guy!!). I ordered everthing from him, including the cherry wood cabinet "in the raw" and unfinished. Everthing arrived safe and well packed.
I recently payed a freinds Express and was very impressed so decided to go for it. I ordered with a VVR circuit which is not the purest approach, but my buddy's one sounded great and seemed to work well. Transformers are MM.
This is the first time I have ever built an amp, so will keep the pics coming.
RJ sent a STANCOR 3801 to MM to clone (info somewhere on the forum). By the sound of things, he prefered the clone to the original!! I kinda get the feeling I can trust the guy. He seems to be well respected here.
When funds become avaialable and this build works out, I will look out for a NOS Black STANDCOR 3801 .
Loose twists are ok but try to keep them forced against the chassis on these amps. Desoldering at V1 and lightly turning the individual sides will fix that in a jiffy.
RJ do you have a mile of that material? I like that stuff.
Signatures have a 255 character limit that I could abuse, but I am not Cecil B. DeMille.
Looking great! Good call on the needed Mosfet heatsink, or chassis mount for it. Perhaps you could mount the Mosfet close by and add short jumpers over to it? Or maybe a vertical heatsink right near the VVR board. Others will know better what is workable there. I have heard good things about the VVRs, even the amp's ability to be brought down a bit but still do the clean to mean thing well. I'll have to try one someday in one of my two clones.
Thank you for all the kind words guys!! I AM TRULY A NOVICE
The Mosfet will be mounted to the chassis next to VVR board with the appropriate mica washer and heat transfer paste (i am waiting for non-conductive paste). My buddys mosfet is mounted this way (counter sunk with plastic bolt and washers), and once coupled to chassis, it gets luck warm at best. This way by "feeling" the front panel next to VVR, you can monitor it without having to remove the chassis.
BTW, Glen, LOVE your playing style and FEEL. You were a big inspiraion for this build and my decicing to start playing again 25 years later after seeing your youtube clip (in the booth). Once the amp is done and working, I will practice that bluesy piece until I get it right!!
Amp is done!! NOT tested. I have rewired the heaters (they were untidy). I am really shitting myself to power this thing up (even without tubes)!!! Scared of blowing something up. Will take to my buddy who is knowledgable, and ask him to test voltages.
All done with the exeption of pilot light. Waiting for 230v (might adapt existing light with resistor). I will run this off the 260v secondary.
Now I will concentrate on cabinet and testing/voicing.
Have ordered matched pair of NOS Phillips EL34's FX2!! (have been offered Siemons FX3's, but will stick to FX2's). Also have a bunch of preamp NOS Mullard, Brimar, Sylvania, Phillips miniwatt and telefunkens waiting to go. Will test with old "second" tubes first.
Thanks for all the help guys!!
Looks great! Very nice work. Don't sweat starting up, you'll do fine. Good you've got a buddy to help out with it though. As for the boards being conductive, I used the same material (from RJ) and had no issues.
thanks colossal,
Delivering amp to buddy to give it a final check tomorrow. Glad to hear about the board material.
Should know where I stand by next week. Will start on head cab in the meantime. Will keep posting.
768]http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f214/ ... 9d31b9.jpg[/img]
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Will see how she sounds before I change. But then again its going to bug the hell of me!! 
