Blackvibe has left the building

[pjd3]

Hey everyone, firstly I want to thank you all for an incredible amount of patience in helping me get through the building process of a single channel Vibroverb, (Robs 6L6 Blackvibe) - And I'd like to thank Rob Robinette for taking time to read and answer a handful of emails from me. Very generous all together.

I brought it over to Stan Day, one of the well known tube amp techs north of Boston. He flipped the chassis over, and gasped, "Oh Phil man". I waited in anticipation, preparing psychologiclally to take whats coming to me and he said, "Phil Man, Nice job buddy"! What a fricken relief. Well, at least my first amp build passed the
"initial visual inspection". Now to see if the sound and performance lives up to the visual.

I handed Stan over some NOS JAN Philips 6L6WGB's and Mullard 4024's and he will dig through his archives for a nice old 12ax7, ( he said it will be a GE, RCA or Mullard, something worthy). So, now I wait to see what kind of result he gets from checking it out and biasing it up. Stan knows good tone and what my applications are so, I trust.

Time to order a raw head cab and get it all stained and finished for the riggers of the road and a new chassis. This should be very interesting,

So today, I'm going to rip the chassis out of my Bogner Alchemist and strip the shit out it, get it ready for the next build. I'm trying to figure out what to do with it. Its got some nice bit transformers in there, and a big, long chassis. I don't know whether to go American or British. I heard Sluckey has some plans around for a 20 watt 6V6 plexi. Something like that sounds very enticing. For now I'll use the Bogner Alchy as a speaker cabinet for the new Blackvibe head build.

On we go. That was fun. Next.

Thanks you everyone!
Phil D.

[Mark]

Your post was Jul/2014, do you still own the amp?

[pjd3]

Hi Mark,

Yes, still own the amp and use it quite a bit to gig, almost every weekend. Its serving me well. There were a couple of issued right out of the gate with it, one of them being a soldering joint compromise (buss wire was old and tarnished and needed a good shot of flux, heat and extra solder for a worthy contact.

I build the amp in a Princeton Reverb chassis and just loaded the finished chassis in to the Bogner Alchemist cabinet. Its pretty ugly, I have plans on that changing over the next year or so after I have completed the Marshall amp I'm working on now. I decided to get all of my distortion, overdrive and time based effects from my pedal board and thats why the Blackvibe was attractive to me - 2 gain stages and high plate voltages all around. A nice clean Fender mono block that provides a good base for most pedals.

Phil

[robrob]

Congrats Phil on getting the Blackvibe up and running. I'm very happy to hear it is being gigged on a regular basis.

[pjd3]

And thanks for the generous website and guidance Rob. I've been dreaming about doing this since I've been 13 years old and this was a perfect amp for the kickoff.

I get compliments on my sounds frequently, Happy camper on the amp here!

Best,

Phil