old thread

[Funkalicousgroove]

My favorite PIO's are only $5 ea, but they only sell them in Japan. I did complete my deluxe with the Mojo caps and it is Fantastic!

I didn't suggest PIO because I am snooty, I suggested them because the original Astron coupling caps in tweed fenders had a paper dielectric, and the PIO (cheap or expensive) sound closest to them.

I am not a proponent of silver solder, '0' AWG cable or any of the other audiophool stuff, I just find that tweed fenders sound closer to the real deal with PIO caps.

The yellow Astron .022s can still be had for around $10.00 each. They seem to last nearly forever and stay on value which is more than I can say for the Astron electrolytics. Many of the Astron electrolytics are long dead with crusty white boogers growing out of them.

The high end parts debate is endless. Every other amp forum has the never ending threads on "Which tubes which transformers which resistors which capacitors which speakers" resulting in the full spectrum of subjective opinions. The usual conclusion is that for instance MM iron is the best and anything else is garbage or AB carbon comps are the only thing you can use or your amp will be junk. I just freakin' hate it when someone chimes in with an opinion like "PIOs are the only way to go" because the uninformed will read that without knowing why where or how and take it as gospel. Then some chucklehead sees a gutshot of my amp and disses it as total shite 'cuz that's what Funk said on The Forum. I dont't suppose that benefits any of us unless my amp really IS total shite... and it isn't.

I think you take what you read too seriously. IMHO means In My Humble Opinion. Furthermore, Yellow Astrons are one of the biggest culprits I have seen for DC leakage, so if it's all the same, why not go with a hermetically sealed cap that most likeley will not suffer the same demise.

At any rate, my statement was "IMHO the ONLY caps that go in a tweed are Paper-in-oil type" You sir have mis-quoted me.



Utervo stated that he wanted to build a 5F1, what if everyone seeking an opinion on a 5F1 took what YOU posted as gospel:

The speaker you want is the Weber SigS. The ceramic version is an upgrade from the desirable early '60s Jensen C8R. The best setting on a Champ IMHO is dimed and it sounds a little more crisp through a Weber Sig.
So what's the difference in your suggestion and mine? One set of standards will do fine!

The 5Y3 rectifier is limited as to what it wants to "see" for filters. The stock 8 microfarad caps are ridiculous, use 22 microfarads each for all three. Go no larger than 22 microfarads with a 5Y3 rectifier. In theory a 5AR4 will work with the 2 amp / 5 volt filament winding, in practice a 5AR4 may blow the fuse on a stock Champ. I like to have 3 amps available on the rectifier winding so I can use anything for a rectifier. If you use a 5AR4 and never go back to a 5Y3 you can use up to 50 microfarads for the first filter cap.

Ignore the stock values on the 6V6 cathode bypass cap, bigger is better up to a point. 50 microfarads / 50 volts is good, 100 microfarads / 50 volts is better.

If you do this it is no longer a 5F1 champ, but Casey Jones' take on a single ended amp. What if everyone who read this took it as Gospel?

As I said earlier, one set of standards will do fine.

I did not enter this discussion to argue a moot point, simply to be of assistance if I can.. I hope the OP found what I had to say useful.

[CaseyJones]

My favorite PIO's are only $5 ea, but they only sell them in Japan. I did complete my deluxe with the Mojo caps and it is Fantastic!

I didn't suggest PIO because I am snooty, I suggested them because the original Astron coupling caps in tweed fenders had a paper dielectric, and the PIO (cheap or expensive) sound closest to them.

I am not a proponent of silver solder, '0' AWG cable or any of the other audiophool stuff, I just find that tweed fenders sound closer to the real deal with PIO caps.

The yellow Astron .022s can still be had for around $10.00 each. They seem to last nearly forever and stay on value which is more than I can say for the Astron electrolytics. Many of the Astron electrolytics are long dead with crusty white boogers growing out of them.

The high end parts debate is endless. Every other amp forum has the never ending threads on "Which tubes which transformers which resistors which capacitors which speakers" resulting in the full spectrum of subjective opinions. The usual conclusion is that for instance MM iron is the best and anything else is garbage or AB carbon comps are the only thing you can use or your amp will be junk. I just freakin' hate it when someone chimes in with an opinion like "PIOs are the only way to go" because the uninformed will read that without knowing why where or how and take it as gospel. Then some chucklehead sees a gutshot of my amp and disses it as total shite 'cuz that's what Funk said on The Forum. I dont't suppose that benefits any of us unless my amp really IS total shite... and it isn't.

I think you take what you read too seriously. IMHO means In My Humble Opinion. Furthermore, Yellow Astrons are one of the biggest culprits I have seen for DC leakage, so if it's all the same, why not go with a hermetically sealed cap that most likeley will not suffer the same demise.

At any rate, my statement was "IMHO the ONLY caps that go in a tweed are Paper-in-oil type" You sir have mis-quoted me..

"ONLY" in caps is explicit and excludes other possibilities.

Utervo stated that he wanted to build a 5F1, what if everyone seeking an opinion on a 5F1 took what YOU posted as gospel:

The speaker you want is the Weber SigS. The ceramic version is an upgrade from the desirable early '60s Jensen C8R. The best setting on a Champ IMHO is dimed and it sounds a little more crisp through a Weber Sig.
So what's the difference in your suggestion and mine? One set of standards will do fine!

The 5Y3 rectifier is limited as to what it wants to "see" for filters. The stock 8 microfarad caps are ridiculous, use 22 microfarads each for all three. Go no larger than 22 microfarads with a 5Y3 rectifier. In theory a 5AR4 will work with the 2 amp / 5 volt filament winding, in practice a 5AR4 may blow the fuse on a stock Champ. I like to have 3 amps available on the rectifier winding so I can use anything for a rectifier. If you use a 5AR4 and never go back to a 5Y3 you can use up to 50 microfarads for the first filter cap.

Ignore the stock values on the 6V6 cathode bypass cap, bigger is better up to a point. 50 microfarads / 50 volts is good, 100 microfarads / 50 volts is better.

If you do this it is no longer a 5F1 champ, but Casey Jones' take on a single ended amp. What if everyone who read this took it as Gospel?

As I said earlier, one set of standards will do fine.

I did not enter this discussion to argue a moot point, simply to be of assistance if I can.. I hope the OP found what I had to say useful.

I see your point. "Probably a Scandinavian Dude" wants to build a "Funder Chimp", the big clue to his intentions is that he calls it a 5F1. My point is that there's plenty of wiggle room in the circuit as long as you wiggle in more or less the right direction. Wiggle in the wrong direction and those nice PIO caps will unwind like a party popper.

If you read through what I wrote without a hatchet editing job I offer multiple choices. What to do and why. That's informative, educational and a productive use of the medium.

I'd still call it a Champ because nothing is added and nothing is taken away. The filter caps can be increased because that's a generally accepted mod for vintage circuits. Wouldn't you? The rest are suggestions which indicate which direction is prudent for changes, another direction might not be as prudent. Many of the components drift towards my suggested values in original amps.

Even though my background is in communications including technical writing posting on these forums can be a challenge. One of the first directives of technical writing is to know your audience (lot like rock 'n' roll that one is), there's no way to know your audience here. We have the complete spectrum from neophytes who really shouldn't be messing with this through experts who know this material at a glance with various specialists in between. Specialists may not know everything but they know everything about something... which is a leg up on those who don't know anything about everything!!

[Funkalicousgroove]

CJ,

I don't disagree that there are many things that can be done to Improve a tweed fender, and I do not disagree with any of your suggestions.

the plain and simple fact is that my opinion is not gospel, it is my opinion. I will never build another tweed fender with anything but PIO coupling caps, so in my OPINION which is not gospel, PIO caps are the ONLY option for a tweed. Opinions are like hats, try it on if it fits wear it, if it doesn't fit put it back on the shelf.

[v846]

utervo,

Just in case you haven't seen it there's some good info for a Champ build at Angela's ,well actually a 5F2 Princeton but some good layout, tips etc.
I did mine with mostly all used parts,transformers and 6" Oxford from a console (10 or 12 would be bettter) cc resistors, caps are Atoms and those Russian PIO. I disabled the the tone control in mine.

Angela Instruments > The How to Section >Angela Single Ended 6V6 Guitar Amplifier


David

[CaseyJones]

Funk, Well allrighty then!

But, darn it, I'm going to have to BUY some PIO .022s to check out your suggestion. That sticks in my craw because I "only" have a bushel of .022s on hand, I've got Astrons, I've got Mustards, I've got Mallories, I've got Spragues, I even have a big bag of ToneShop approved STKs. I have a shoebox full of PIOs but they're almost all .1s or .05s. Guess I'll have to stick the .05s in series...

How am I supposed to replace that Lafite if I spend my dough on PIOs?!

[Lonely Raven]

Interesting thread.

Thanks for some of the tips guys.

IMHO, my take on parts is...use your ear.

Funny how the 5AR4 was mentioned. Not knowing what I was doing, and just mucking around with what I had on hand, I wound up with a 5AR4, and many of the changes CJ suggested, just by using my ear. Made me smile to see those suggestions.

Funny story I read a while back. Eric Clapton was donating or selling his tweed Champ, and Fender Custom Shop was asked to make a modern recreation of it so he'd still have *that sound*.

They carefully disceted it, measured every damn detail of it, and truly *cloned* it.

Eric took one listen to it, and it ain't right!

Long story short, after several retakes, retries, and component changes they finally got it right...by using some 100 year old pine from an old church or some such.

Now that I think about it, I might have heard that from Gerald Weber, so take it with a grain of salt.

Oh, lastly, I thought you could still get A-B Carbon Comp resistors, but if not...I found a batch of them at a garage sale...several hundred of all sorts of ratings. I wasn't sure if they would help me in any of my amp builds, but I picked the whole lot of them up for $20.

I guess maybe I should use them somewhere...

[Lonely Raven]

Funny, I swear I was told it was a Fender Tweed Champ, but I just found this on a quick google (trying to back up my story):







"Eric had what he considered to be the Holy Grail of amps (his favorite 1958 Fender tweed Twin amp). But since he only had one he was afraid of damaging it on tour" says Del Breckenfeld Fender's director of artists relations. "Our mission was to clone that amp, which was a quite difficult task. We first analysed Eric's vintage amp to the specs then we searched for old parts. After all that, it still didn't sound right. At that point, John Page suggested old pine wood. We found some that came from an old church's floor and that made the difference. We nailed it and we built a total of three. We built them and then subjected them to the acid test… Eric's ear. He loved them and declared them to be the exact replicas and gave one to BB King as a gift. " This amplifier is equipped with speakers specially modified for the distortion. It's impossible to find one of those amps for the moment because John Suhr left Fender. They are the only amplifiers that Eric wants to use. It tested all the other models (Bassman, Concert amp) but they do not function for him.

[Tubetwang]

Church floor?

100 year old Pine??

My mother in Law lives in an old church in the Townships...

Humm...

I've been wanting to build a Tweed Super...and have Jensen copper caps left over from hi-fi days...

Yeahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

[Lonely Raven]

So since we are on the point of components....

I saw photos of a Tweed...something...Deluxe or something. But all the E-caps in the filter section were replaced with Solen Fast Caps! Huge things that barely fit in the chassis.

What would this do to the sound? Too fast and tight?

Probably last a long time.

[muchxs]

"Eric had what he considered to be the Holy Grail of amps (his favorite 1958 Fender tweed Twin amp). But since he only had one he was afraid of damaging it on tour" says Del Breckenfeld Fender's director of artists relations. "Our mission was to clone that amp, which was a quite difficult task. We first analysed Eric's vintage amp to the specs then we searched for old parts. After all that, it still didn't sound right. At that point, John Page suggested old pine wood. We found some that came from an old church's floor and that made the difference. We nailed it and we built a total of three. We built them and then subjected them to the acid test… Eric's ear. He loved them and declared them to be the exact replicas and gave one to BB King as a gift. " This amplifier is equipped with speakers specially modified for the distortion. It's impossible to find one of those amps for the moment because John Suhr left Fender. They are the only amplifiers that Eric wants to use. It tested all the other models (Bassman, Concert amp) but they do not function for him.

The harmonica amp guys say, "It's the handle!" That's their joke, it gets a little silly when you have guys micro-scrutinizing every part and trying to build a literal clone. It's partly a matter of knowing what the properties of the original parts are and replicating them, some of the original parts prove difficult to replicate. That's where the specialists come in:

Send the iron to Mercury Magnetics. If you insist that the original sounds best get a close replica of the original. Two of my associates are transformer specialists and no, they don't work at Mercury. They've come through for me on some pretty tall orders like cloning McIntosh outputs.

While you may agree or disagree with Ted Weber the man knows his speakers. I can tell Ted, "I got a JBL D130 removed from a nicotene stained stained Vibroverb that smells like a bar rag that just missed getting drowned in New Orleans", he'll send me a speaker that nails the tone if not the odor.

The Fender "built from planks salvaged from a church floor". It's a good idea on one level and it's a really bad idea on another. 100 plus year old wood is usually only finished on three sides, that leaves one rough side. It's almost never planed out level enough to make amp cabinets from. The wood needs to be checked over very carefully and then you're still taking a chance... a chance that there's a staple, a broken off thumbtack, even iron oxide from one of the old nails in the wood. You're screwed if there's part of a nail in there. Huh? I have a three knife head in my planer, each carbide knife costs over $200 for a total of $600 in the cutterhead. Ching a nail and I'm in at least $60 to re-grind the cutters plus an hour of downtime while I R&R the assembly, that's not counting the 50 mile drive each way to the specialist who regrinds the knives. Sharpening is not a home workshop job, it's a precision tool and it requires professional attention.

You can buy a 2007 replica of a 1947 Martin acoustic and it won't be the same, even a plank like a '57 Strat will be a whole different instrument than a Custom Shop Relic. What happens is that the entire instrument relaxes and gets played in. Some acoustics sound best just before the bridge pops off or just before the neck joint shifts. Getting the tension or lack of tension exactly right gets the tone exactly right. Maybe we're back to "It's the handle" but if Clapton and the Custom Shop team can tell the difference there must be a difference.

When they say "We nailed it!" I hope they didn't literally assemble it using nails!

[Funkalicousgroove]

Funk, Well allrighty then!

But, darn it, I'm going to have to BUY some PIO .022s to check out your suggestion. That sticks in my craw because I "only" have a bushel of .022s on hand, I've got Astrons, I've got Mustards, I've got Mallories, I've got Spragues, I even have a big bag of ToneShop approved STKs. I have a shoebox full of PIOs but they're almost all .1s or .05s. Guess I'll have to stick the .05s in series...

How am I supposed to replace that Lafite if I spend my dough on PIOs?!

If your astrons don't leak I'd use those till they go.

[CaseyJones]

Funk, Well allrighty then!

But, darn it, I'm going to have to BUY some PIO .022s to check out your suggestion. That sticks in my craw because I "only" have a bushel of .022s on hand, I've got Astrons, I've got Mustards, I've got Mallories, I've got Spragues, I even have a big bag of ToneShop approved STKs. I have a shoebox full of PIOs but they're almost all .1s or .05s. Guess I'll have to stick the .05s in series...

How am I supposed to replace that Lafite if I spend my dough on PIOs?!

If your astrons don't leak I'd use those till they go.

Maybe I'm just lucky but those yellow Astrons have treated me right. I've tested similar NOS caps and not done so well, for instance I'll check Sangamos, Cornell-Dubiliers, Micamolds and such and end up with enough leakage that the LC75 doesn't even want to know about it! A couple microvolts leakage at full working voltage doesn't bother me. I'd prefer zero, when I find it I'm keeping the amp I build with them.

[utervo]

Ok, thanks once again.

I'm wondering how the mods CJ recommend change sound and how from technical point of view? I think I'll go with the 12" Tone Tubby.

[CaseyJones]

Ok, thanks once again.

I'm wondering how the mods CJ recommend change sound and how from technical point of view? I think I'll go with the 12" Tone Tubby.

Tweed Champs can be a little on the dark side. The Tone Tubby is on the dark side. Dark plus dark equals more dark. I expect your clean tone would be pretty large.

Mods: I like to hear these things scream. They scream with the volume all the way up but there are things I don't like, notably the bass gets farty. Going bigger on the 6V6 cathode cap seems to help, some guys use a 500 microfarad in there. 50 microfarads at 50 volts is a conservative value.

The clean tone is pretty but there's not much of it. Guys ask again and again about how to get a louder clean tone from their Champ. That's easy, build something else! At least the bass doesn't start to fart out until you really start to drive it. A Champ isn't going to be loud and clean at the same time.

Dropping the value of the cathode cap on the 12AX7 gives the preamp a little more drive, it's not radical. It's not going to become a Trainwreck or a Dumble with a few resistor changes, sorry. There's not a big difference between a 1.5k and a 1k but there is a difference. 820 is as low as I go. What I try to do is balance hair with clarity. If the output stage is tight I can get away with a little more hair from the preamp. Changing the plate resistors from 100k to 220k moves the preamp more towards vintage GA-5 territory. Funk is correct, it becomes less a Champ. The original 100ks are almost never 100k, I expect they started close to 120k and drifted up to around 140k.

Steve from Angela says he "doesn't like slowing his little amps down with more filtration in the power supply", Gerald Weber says tweed amps are generally underfiltered. I agree with Gerald Weber.

Unlike a 5Y3 the 5AR4 rectifer is a controlled warmup tube. It takes longer to warm up than the 6V6 or the 12AX7 so you won't be stripping your cathodes passing voltage before the rest of the amp is fully warmed up. There's no standby switch on the stock circuit so this is worth thinking about.

Less a Champ: Similar Supro circuits use ceramic caps. I didn't mention that, did I? You could try it the Funk way and use the paper in oil caps, it's only two capacitors. Of you could try it my way and use whatever junk you have! I like my girlfriend warm and breathy, I like my amps spitty and mean. I tried a spitty and mean girlfriend once, she was fun up to a point but it got old real quick!

It's only a handful of cheap resistors and two or three capacitors, change them and find out.

[Structo]

Hey how about some bananas for that Chimp!