Lead Dress Guidelines

[WhopperPlate]

http://www.geofex.com/article_folders/l ... e_amps.htm

R.G. , do we have your permission to share ? Seems like this is a perfect sticky for this sub forum .

The following material is copyright 2005 R.G. Keen. All rights are reserved. It is an exerpt from an article in preparation for posting from http://www.geofex.com, and is reproduced here by written permission. It may be posted here at ampage.com, but may not be reproduced in any form at other web sites without written permission of the author.

Lead dress in tube amps is a tough subject. Just moving wires around inside a chassis with a wooden stick can cause otherwise-intractable hum or oscillation, or cure it. How do you know what wire to put where?

1. You have to know what signal is on each wire. Important classes of signals are:

AC power wires (emitter wires)
AC heater wires (emitter wires)
signal ground (quieting and shielding wires)
power ground (resistive coupling wires)
power supply (resistive coupling wires)
rectifier wires, both power and ground side (the ultimate evil for interference!)
grid wires (sensitive input wires)
plate wires (both emitters and inputs)
screen wires (input wires)
chassis - not really a wire, but a connector that's electrically connected. Could be a resistive coupling emitter, could also be a shield.
2. You also have to know what the *magnetic field* emitters are. These are all transfomers and chokes and any high current wires.

3. Wires are sensitive in proportion to how high the impedances are that they connect. A wire's impedance may be thought of as the larger of the wire's resistance itself, or the smallest impedance to which it connects at either of its ends. So a wire to ground may be thought of as only the wire resistance, a wire connecting a plate to a grid is the plate's impedance. An open input wire is the input grid resistor's impedance. A wire to an otherwise open grid is an very high impedance indeed.

4. Wires are sensitive to disturbance in proportion to how much gain is available between the grid wire and the output of the amp. For example, the input grids are hypersensitive, the output tube grids are only mildly sensitive. Screen grids are mildly sensitive, plates only slightly.

Crosstalk is picked up three ways: capacitively, inductively, and by shared resistance. Capactive pickup is maximized by wires close together and parallel, with high voltages on one wire and high sensitivity on the other. It is minimized by wires far apart, nonparallel or crossing at right angles, and by electrically grounded shielding between the wires.

Inductive pickup is maximized by large loops of wire sharing a lot of common loop area, one of which carries high currents and high frequencies and one of which is sensitive. It is minimized by making current loops small (hey! twisted pair!), by making loops NOT share loop area, and by distance. Notice that shielding signal wires in a loop will not shield the wires from inductive pickup if the loop shares a lot of common area with a high current interfering loop. Soft iron between the two loops helps, but is not as good as minimal loop area and not sharing loop area.

Both capacitive and inductive pickup are inverse square law emitters. That is, if you double the distance, the crosstalk goes down by a factor of four. This is why there is such a premium on getting sensitive wires far away from emitting wires.

Resistive crosstalk happens whenever two signal currents share the same wire. The resistance of the wire converts both currents to voltages, and if one of the signals happens to be an input signal, then the other signal gets inserted into the input.

Those are the basics. How do you apply them systematically? Easy in concept, complex in execution.

Sensitive input wires far away from emitter wires
This is why input jacks are usually at the farthest end of the chassis from the AC line input and power transformer. Inside the chassis, keep the grid wires away from the succeeding plate wires, and run signals on short, direct wires from one stage to the next. Circuit stages should progress from smallest to largest signals as you go toward the output end of the chassis. If you keep the wires apart, minimizing crosstalk is easiest. Putting an input wire near the output stage is begging for intractible oscillation. Shield sensitive wires if they simply have to travel through high signal level territory. The best way to keep sensitive wires away from other things is to make them short and direct.
Sensitive input wire loops small and far away from magnetic emitters and high current loops. Very importantly, make high current loops small by wire routing and twisting. The best examples of high current loops are the AC line input and heater wires. These are both large signal, large current loops. They should be routed on wires which are twisted pairs so that the area of the loop the wires enclose is the smallest possible, and so the residual fields tend to cancel because of the twisting. Output transformer primary and secondary wires are another good example.
No shared resistive coupling wires. That statement almost implies star grounding. Power ground returns are like sewers, carrying the used electricity back to the power supply for recycling. If there is only a single, shared sewer, it takes some complex routing and careful thought to keep the heavy-industry sewage from fouling up the sensitive light duty stuff. Separate sewer lines are not the only way, but they are sure and simple in concept.
Using the chassis for a ground return is a bad idea. It's big, it's everywhere, and it's hard to predict where the sewage came from; and it makes big, untwistable loops with every wire that connects to it. However, if you have the chassis grounded one place only, then it becomes a fairly effective shield. Wires near the chassis are stitched down to the chassis by capacitive connections to it like Gulliver in Lilliput, and this connection helps eat the capacitive radiation from the wire. Chassis are usually steel, and high current wires near the chassis have much of their magnetic radiation shorted by the ferromagnetic steel. High impedance wires like input grid wires can be loaded down by the parasitic capacitance of running right next to a chassis.

The "complex in execution" is because you have to know and think about each wire, and how it relates to all the other wires and conductors near it.

[maxkracht]

Excellent information. In case that is overwhelming to someone starting out, here’s a less accurate, less detailed, TLDR, for dummies, version:




The AC mains input and power transformer are noisy. Keep them on one side of the amp, and your guitar input on the other.



Filaments are also noisy, keep them away from audio signals. Twisting can help, but distance is more important.



Your guitar signal should become progressively stronger the closer it gets to the output. The stronger your guitar signal, the less it will be affected by outside influence, but the more it can influence smaller guitar signals from earlier stages.



Grid wires are sensitive and can act like antennas, so keep them short and away from noisy things and larger signals. 



The longer a wire is, the more likely it will pick up noise. 



Wires and components generally interact more the closer they are.



Wires running parallel to each other will interact more than wires crossing at right angles. 



You can move wires with a non-conductive stick to find the quietest location. 

If you can’t find a quiet location for a wire, you can shield it. 



All of these points are about balance and compromise. Taken to extremes, many will cause more problems than they solve.

The higher the gain, the more important grounding and lead dress become. 



Everything will be noisier when you are sitting right in front of an amp with an open chassis, so shield the open part of the chassis and/or take a step back before you become hypercritical of how noisy your amp seems.


[Raoul Duke]

I don’t know why I hadn’t seen these two posts before today, but both very informative!

Read through the first one and it made sense, but I got lost a few times (being inexperienced and untrained in electronics) - but Max’s summary tied it all together for me.

Thanks Charlie and Max! Great info

[bepone]

3d building on the sockets directly + tag boards, and check to the old radios layout is good guideline too

[pjd3]

I am mystified by those that are able to bundle amp wires like finely wrapped Christmas boxes. Still not sure which wires you can do that with and still maintain quietness in an amp.
I think it's time to start reading up on this as is sourced by this thread.

I've taken the opposite route where all wires are kept separated from each other in space by at least 1/2" with PT secondary's being the only wires that I twist/bundle. It has made for quiet amps but, it also makes for a hard time when it's time for either troubleshooting or modifying.

Phil D.

[maxkracht]

I am mystified by those that are able to bundle amp wires like finely wrapped Christmas boxes. Still not sure which wires you can do that with and still maintain quietness in an amp.
I think it's time to start reading up on this as is sourced by this thread.

I've taken the opposite route where all wires are kept separated from each other in space by at least 1/2" with PT secondary's being the only wires that I twist/bundle. It has made for quiet amps but, it also makes for a hard time when it's time for either troubleshooting or modifying.

Phil D.

Merlin recommends bundling/twisting wires going to each tube stage. Keeps things neat and you get a bit of shielding from the cathode wire. I've never actually tried twisting each triode bundle, but I try to keep the grid and cathode together. Coupling between grid and plate could be good or bad, depending on your needs. Also, check out how Fender bundled wires going to the front panel. Tremolo wires are twisted together, reverb wires are twisted together, tone stack wires are twisted together, but each bundle is separated to avoid crosstalk.

I generally avoid bundling anything too tight unless I've made the same, or very similar, amp in the same kind of chassis and know what to expect/don't think I will make changes. There are different rules for a diy thing and a factory made amp where production speed is more important. You probably don't want to plan and test a wire harness for something you will only make one of.

[bepone]

I am mystified by those that are able to bundle amp wires like finely wrapped Christmas boxes. Still not sure which wires you can do that with and still maintain quietness in an amp.
I think it's time to start reading up on this as is sourced by this thread.

you need to draw a little bit on the layout, and understand about the sinusoide lets say positive half-common cathode stage , in the next triode stage became inverted-negative, and then in third again positive.. in this way you will see in the wires where will be positive feedback and where negative..