After seeing that Francesca '85 was virtually identical to Kelly '90 (and these seem to be the only verifyable schematics around), I'm kinda wondering whether the descriptions of Ken Fisher tweaking each individual amp components, might just be some good ol' American "mystique" marketing. That's not to take anything away from his design skills,..he made a GREAT amp. My apologies in advance to anyone who might consider this heresy, but I wonder how many members here are thinking the same thing. Perhaps Geetarpicker could post some photos of the guts of his amp? Two alike could be a coincidence , but three would be very telling.
David Hicks
HERESY???
Moderators: pompeiisneaks, Colossal
Re: HERESY???
Look at it this way- "whos fooling who?"
Kenny is all about "tweak"
I highly doubt geetarpicker will post a gut pic of his wreck but if he does I'll eat my el34s!
Kenny is all about "tweak"
I highly doubt geetarpicker will post a gut pic of his wreck but if he does I'll eat my el34s!
Re: HERESY???
Hi all, I'd like to know if Glens (Geetar picker) TW is the same on the inside as Kelly and Francesca too! I don't even care if he takes gut shots. How about it Glen? will you look and tell? No pics required! 
I think that will go a long way to help the forum members here.
Allynmey
I think that will go a long way to help the forum members here.
Allynmey
Re: HERESY???
[quote=
I think that will go a long way to help the forum members here.
Allynmey[/quote]
No offense but using your ears will get you a long way down the road.
How is your stash of NOS tubes?
How is your stash of old Celestions?
These alone play a BIG part of the TW tone
Do you build for players?
Do you build for yourself?
These amps were tweaked 20+/- years ago using readily available parts for THAT time and for THAT tone
Look to Komet and Dr Z for realtime progress regarding TrainWreck
I think that will go a long way to help the forum members here.
Allynmey[/quote]
No offense but using your ears will get you a long way down the road.
How is your stash of NOS tubes?
How is your stash of old Celestions?
These alone play a BIG part of the TW tone
Do you build for players?
Do you build for yourself?
These amps were tweaked 20+/- years ago using readily available parts for THAT time and for THAT tone
Look to Komet and Dr Z for realtime progress regarding TrainWreck
-
geetarpicker
- Posts: 916
- Joined: Sat Mar 12, 2005 8:08 pm
- Location: Nashville, TN
- Contact:
Re: HERESY???
Can't post any pics as I'm a bit nervous about that, but I will take a look...
So far my '89 Orphan Annie appears VERY close to Francesca. The smoothing cap on phase inverter on mine is a brown silver mica looking cap. On Francesca it's the blue one. Mine has "Aerovox Mallorys" not just "Mallory", not sure what's up with the model differences. My amp seems to have a center tap on the heater circuit, as it has no double resistors on the output tube socket heater leads. Can't find any different values as far as resistors or caps but I can't see everything from the pics. Color coding a bit different on wiring. The B+ resistors grouped together on the power supply board has some jumpers underneath, instead of all being visible on top. Mine has the later black OPT. Different brand of output tube sockets, mine are brown not the nicer looking ceramics that appear to be in Francesca. My "choke" resistor has the lettering face up and it says "8335 TRW PW25 1K 10%". My feedback cap shrinked wrapped up at the presence appears to be 100k I think, it's covered up on Francesca. On my amp the bias feed has an additional terminal on the PS board. Seems the bias supply feeds under the board, then has a terminal just on the other side of the big resistor, then the white wire goes from there to the preamp. On Francesca that wire goes straight from the bias cap terminal, then fishes under the big resistor. I don't know what the bright caps on mine are. Ken told me day before yesterday the stronger of the two bright caps is a 500pf.
I could spend more time looking, but my gut feeling is the amps are identical except for the model of power supply caps, though even that may just be a label change for all I know. Mine say Aerovox just underneath that lettering Mallory.
If I remember my Liverpool had some brown PS caps, maybe they were Spragues? Have some pics around here of that amp that I'll check later.
I know there are some slight diffences in the preamp, maybe just a resistor or two.
I was under the impression from way back that Ken had his amps basically standardized. Even to the point of checking resistors to check their tolerance and picking the closer ones to spec for the amps. That said, I kinda thought he only tweaked the circuit if a customer requested it. I could be wrong though. When I bought my wreck I had played one other, an earlier one with the grey OPT. Ken told me mine would sound a little different than the one I had heard. He said the grey ones were a little fatter, maybe a little less aggressive and possibly a little more compressed. He told me the black ones would be a little tighter, and more aggressive or something like that. At least that is what I seem to remember. I sort of wish mine had the grey transformer, as at the time I seem to liked the tone of the amp I borrowed just a bit more than Orphan Annie. That said, I'm quite happy with Annie though. You all remember the issue with her power tranny. That is why she originally earned the name "Orphan Annie", because she started out somewhat unwanted.
My video clips are with old Telefunken (Mullard relabeled?) preamp tubes, and Groove tube EL34s with only about 30 minutes on them. Though most of the years I eventually come back to liking Sylvanias 12ax7s more. The Sylvanias tend to have the biggest bass. The Teles are very tight sounding though, and allow the amp to sound pretty usuable and not overly compressed even wide open on the volume knob. I think one of my clips might be with the amp all the way up, though I think I ran the amp 1:00-3:00 mostly.
On my amp if you crank it all the way the hiss almosts rolls back like a studio compressor. Like if you hit a power chord and immediately choke the strings the hiss will be quite low then ramp up within a second or two. Like a compressor with a somewhat slow release. Quite dramatic. Some tweed fenders do this, but they sound like the notes are almost choking off. It's almost like the Trainwreck power supply sags alot to keep the output level even, without actually sounding overly compressed. This is something I've never quite heard in any other high gain amp. The somewhat slow ramping up of the gain after you play. Like I said, almost like having a studio compressor set on about a one or two second release time. Maybe that is part of why the clean to scream factor is so fairly even in volume on the Wreck.
So far my '89 Orphan Annie appears VERY close to Francesca. The smoothing cap on phase inverter on mine is a brown silver mica looking cap. On Francesca it's the blue one. Mine has "Aerovox Mallorys" not just "Mallory", not sure what's up with the model differences. My amp seems to have a center tap on the heater circuit, as it has no double resistors on the output tube socket heater leads. Can't find any different values as far as resistors or caps but I can't see everything from the pics. Color coding a bit different on wiring. The B+ resistors grouped together on the power supply board has some jumpers underneath, instead of all being visible on top. Mine has the later black OPT. Different brand of output tube sockets, mine are brown not the nicer looking ceramics that appear to be in Francesca. My "choke" resistor has the lettering face up and it says "8335 TRW PW25 1K 10%". My feedback cap shrinked wrapped up at the presence appears to be 100k I think, it's covered up on Francesca. On my amp the bias feed has an additional terminal on the PS board. Seems the bias supply feeds under the board, then has a terminal just on the other side of the big resistor, then the white wire goes from there to the preamp. On Francesca that wire goes straight from the bias cap terminal, then fishes under the big resistor. I don't know what the bright caps on mine are. Ken told me day before yesterday the stronger of the two bright caps is a 500pf.
I could spend more time looking, but my gut feeling is the amps are identical except for the model of power supply caps, though even that may just be a label change for all I know. Mine say Aerovox just underneath that lettering Mallory.
If I remember my Liverpool had some brown PS caps, maybe they were Spragues? Have some pics around here of that amp that I'll check later.
I know there are some slight diffences in the preamp, maybe just a resistor or two.
I was under the impression from way back that Ken had his amps basically standardized. Even to the point of checking resistors to check their tolerance and picking the closer ones to spec for the amps. That said, I kinda thought he only tweaked the circuit if a customer requested it. I could be wrong though. When I bought my wreck I had played one other, an earlier one with the grey OPT. Ken told me mine would sound a little different than the one I had heard. He said the grey ones were a little fatter, maybe a little less aggressive and possibly a little more compressed. He told me the black ones would be a little tighter, and more aggressive or something like that. At least that is what I seem to remember. I sort of wish mine had the grey transformer, as at the time I seem to liked the tone of the amp I borrowed just a bit more than Orphan Annie. That said, I'm quite happy with Annie though. You all remember the issue with her power tranny. That is why she originally earned the name "Orphan Annie", because she started out somewhat unwanted.
My video clips are with old Telefunken (Mullard relabeled?) preamp tubes, and Groove tube EL34s with only about 30 minutes on them. Though most of the years I eventually come back to liking Sylvanias 12ax7s more. The Sylvanias tend to have the biggest bass. The Teles are very tight sounding though, and allow the amp to sound pretty usuable and not overly compressed even wide open on the volume knob. I think one of my clips might be with the amp all the way up, though I think I ran the amp 1:00-3:00 mostly.
On my amp if you crank it all the way the hiss almosts rolls back like a studio compressor. Like if you hit a power chord and immediately choke the strings the hiss will be quite low then ramp up within a second or two. Like a compressor with a somewhat slow release. Quite dramatic. Some tweed fenders do this, but they sound like the notes are almost choking off. It's almost like the Trainwreck power supply sags alot to keep the output level even, without actually sounding overly compressed. This is something I've never quite heard in any other high gain amp. The somewhat slow ramping up of the gain after you play. Like I said, almost like having a studio compressor set on about a one or two second release time. Maybe that is part of why the clean to scream factor is so fairly even in volume on the Wreck.
Re: HERESY???
Interesting... My build does that. I thought I may have had a problem.This is something I've never quite heard in any other high gain amp. The somewhat slow ramping up of the gain after you play.
Thanks again for the great videos and information!
Jake
Re: HERESY???
Wow! Thanks for the great info Geetarpicker! Do you have any idea what brand the two transformers (black/grey) that Ken used might be? (Stancor, Triad Heyboer, Pacific etc.) Looking at Francesca, someone mentioned that they thought the Grey output might be a Triad. However after looking at pictures of Triads on the net they seem to have a different style mounting foot. The mounting feet on Francesca’s output transformer look quite close to the Heyboers I purchased form Moose although I could be wrong. Any ideas?? Also, would you happen to know what the primary impedance of the output transformer on Orphane Annie might be?
Re: HERESY???
Thanks Glen, I think that your comparisons help demystify somethings.
Now I guess there's nothing left to do but build!
Anyone know where I can get some of that nice perfboard?
Allynmey
Now I guess there's nothing left to do but build!
Anyone know where I can get some of that nice perfboard?
Allynmey
Re: HERESY???
hello there, i believe that the grey output is a stancor. i've had a couple of their outputs from that era with bell ends/feet that were identical to that one and i think it's known that stancor's were used in some of the early amps. i've had a couple of triad power trannies that also had grey bells but were just slightly different looking so i bet it's a stancor. rh
Re: HERESY???
Thanks Geetarpicker, and all who commented. I've observed the same phenomenon with the hiss on my builds, and I think your theory is right on the money.
David Hicks
David Hicks
Re: HERESY???
Thanks geetarpicker for all the info and comparing it to Francesca. I drove myself crazy with the hiss issue you mentioned with my clone. I thought I had used inferior parts or had made some critcal mistake. In the end I couldn't get rid of the compressor/hiss thing and decided to start over. Makes me feel alot better! 
Also, I remember Hogy making a comment over on the Gear Page that a real TW should not have the hiss issue.
That's what probably drove me crazy!!!
Omar
Also, I remember Hogy making a comment over on the Gear Page that a real TW should not have the hiss issue.
That's what probably drove me crazy!!!Omar
Tone by misadventure
Re: HERESY???
hello, yeah the couple of express clones i've built did the same thing---i've built old design fuzz boxes that did the same thing as well (give 'em a quick hard cord then mute and you hear almost no hiss then over the next 3-4 secs. the hiss rises back up). i thought it might be due to the 1k resistor instead of a choke (effectively 2k total resistance to the screens and el34 screens draw a good deal of current relative to 6l6's, 6v6's, etc.)--usually most good chokes in guitar amps are only like 100-250 ohms. anyway, just some thoughts. rh
Re: HERESY???
No offense but using your ears will get you a long way down the road.chimeboss wrote:[quote=
I think that will go a long way to help the forum members here.
Allynmey
How is your stash of NOS tubes?
How is your stash of old Celestions?
These alone play a BIG part of the TW tone
Do you build for players?
Do you build for yourself?
These amps were tweaked 20+/- years ago using readily available parts for THAT time and for THAT tone
Look to Komet and Dr Z for realtime progress regarding TrainWreck[/quote]
Chimeboss you sound like a a past member or two that have recently left our forum....hmmm...about the same time you joined. The name is new but the attitude is the same. Anyone else notice?
I feel I have to say this again for our re-incarnated member.
This is a builders forum...we build amps. There may be a worship forum you may enjoy more. We are here to trade, share, and create and yes...copy
circuits that we like the sound of. We already know that Mr. Fischer could care less about us crazies building ourselves a one off for our own use but, that doesn't seem to be enough for the self appointed "advocates" for Ken Fischer like yourself. Maybe your next post will be chock full of circuit tweaks and helpful info about the circuit at hand.Sorry for the rant guys...I just don't think these guys get it!
Allynmey
Re: HERESY???
Thanks Geetarpicker, great info!
Re: HERESY???
My apologies to Allynmey.
The next time I post I'll have something to add.
I am working on posting the pics of my old Celestions for reference that I spoke of in another post. Just got to get it done! (taking apart cabs ect...)
Perhaps thats a start.
Im glad geetarpicker is here to put some real world balance to the TW mystique.
Sorry guys,
CB
The next time I post I'll have something to add.
I am working on posting the pics of my old Celestions for reference that I spoke of in another post. Just got to get it done! (taking apart cabs ect...)
Perhaps thats a start.
Im glad geetarpicker is here to put some real world balance to the TW mystique.
Sorry guys,
CB