The Amp Garage

Yeah, I kind of figured the same thing about the 5b6. Too much early breakup for pedal steel. How loud does the cage amp gets before it starts breaking up? On the other hand, I play non-pedal steel. I have a '52 Fender T-8 custom and various pre and post war Rickenbackers with horseshoe pickups. On ...

Let us know how it works out! I ordered some parts for my build last night. Glad you could get in touch with some steel players. I'm sure whoever it is will find something he likes among your amps.

I found this quote from Phil Bradbury on the Steel Guitar Forum: "These are very close to the original tone stack used by Leo. With this approach you actually do get a bit more volume with the tone control as well. I do, however voice my signal side to accept (allow through) about 10 times more low ...

Thanks Mark. I think I have most of what I need for this one floating around in the basement.

I'm thinking of building a 5b6 as well. I play non-pedal steel guitar and I want to see why everyone over on the steel guitar forum is so crazy about this circuit without dropping $2500 (which is more than I will ever have to spend on one amp anyway). Mark, did you change the dropping string for the...

A lot of famous Nashville session steel players (Paul Franklin, Bruce Bouton) play them. Is it the first Tino Z book that has the 5b6? I too have been puzzled about the 50 Watts out of 2 6l6's cathode biased.

600v on the screens, 800 on the plates.

I went by Eurotubes in here in Portland this morning and asked the guys there about the ratings on the JJ KT77. They had a datasheet in a JJ booklet that I think might have been different from the one JJ posts online. If I remember correctly, the max voltage their sheet gave was 600v. Also, they poi...

The ripping paper distortion on the decay of the note seems to be a "feature" of this amp. On mine it seems to only be noticeable when the preamp gain is above 10 o'clock. It is actually kind of a cool effect for a low-fi trashy guitar tone. My solution in bright mode is to keep the preamp knob as l...

Well, I bumped the screen resistors up to 1k and that puts the screens a volt or two under the plates. I'm using this power transformer: http://www.edcorusa.com/p/670/xpwr074_120 For filtering I'm using 60uf at the first node and standard Rocket filtering after that. I'm using a 5AR4. Sounds pretty ...

It's also odd that the plates are at slightly different voltages. With a pair of Motorola 6bq5's I measure 300v and 302v. With Phillips Holland EL84s I have 305.5v and 308v.

With B+1 at 308 and B+2 at 305 I got 302 on one plate and 300 on the other. 303 on the screens. The Dynaclone definitely doesn't sound sterile. Tomorrow I'll have a chance to play it with a band and compare it to both a a full power Rocket using a Hammond OT and a 90's AC30 reissue. I'll post about ...

Update: I cleaned out the bias pot, replaced everything in the bias supply and the problem seems solved. The resistor on the bias board was the 1.2k from the balancing version of the bias supply. I changed it to 470r as is used on the ab763. Thanks again to everyone for the help.

I'm finishing up a new half power Rocket build. I have tried a couple of different pairs of power tubes and I measure 300-303 on the plates and 303-305 on the screens. I'm guessing my output transformer is dropping more voltage than my choke. I'm using a Triode z565-48 OT and an oversized potted cho...

Thanks everyone who has contributed to this post. Great information!