The Amp Garage

I think most of the issues mentioned are with design, not surface mount technology as a whole. (aside from the lack of markings on caps which is a massive pain when troubleshooting, though arguably this is a design problem with the PCB silkscreen.). SMD vs through hole is another pcb vs eyelet boar...

Plenty of tube amps and hybrid amps use surface mount. This can be done well but rarely is, in my experience. A large portion of the tube guitar market is recreating classic designs, or pretending to, and looks matter to crusty old guitar players. I have worked on a handful of pedals that use overs...

Hello everybody! I fear I'm opening a black hole but, just out of curiosity: what are the reasons why Surface Mount Technology doesn't catch on tube amps? I must confess I don't know if the newest guitar amps already use SMT technology (I'm thinking to contemporary designs with several channels, mid...

Hi Vorg, chokes are used to filter ripple in the power supply which only should occur in AC supplies. When talkin about pedals you usually have a DC supply which comes already filtered (best case, there are bad DC supplies...). In tube pedals you usually have a normal low voltage DC supply which ge...

Hello everybody, this is my first post here so I guess I should point out immediately that I'm a total noob in amp building, in fact that's the reason why I registered to this wonderful board: a huge learning curve I'm definitely willing to climb! Coming to the question: I'm seeing more and more tub...