The Amp Garage

Stevem wrote: ↑Wed Jun 04, 2025 7:11 pm Since your wired up for the wrong wall voltage I need to ask how many amps the fuse is in that holder you got the shock from.

Your fuse you have in there should be a 1.5 amp slow blow.

I have the correct fuse.

Since you were reading 230VAC from your wall, you want the blue wire instead of the white wire on your power transformer. This explains the low heater voltage. You should also double check your power cord. You have the brown wire coming from the power cord connecting to the black common wire on the...

When reading and reporting voltages, you need to know if they are AC or DC. You will have AC and DC on the same wire in many places. In this instance, your meter was in AC which is why you weren't getting voltage everywhere you expected to. Your high voltage transformer winding does seem somewhat l...

I did some quick readings (all against ground) and it looks like problems all over the place: Rectifier V5.2: 7.5V V5.4: 161.5V V5.6: 162.2V V5.8: 5.7V (!) Power tubes V4.2: 2.9V V4.4: nada (!) V4.7: 2.7V V4.8: zilch (!) I did manage to shock myself for the first time. I can tell from experience and...

It’s still hard to tell, but in that last photograph of the output tube socket it looks like pin 6 side of that 1.5k resistor is touching pin 7. None of the pins on the output tube sockets should be touching each other. That resistor shouldn't come close to touching anything but the two pins it is ...

Are you using two shorting type speaker jacks it looks like. Also as someone mentioned your output tube socket wiring does not look right from what I can make out. Can you take more of a downward photo of them instead of a sideways? That would be really helpful for us. The kit came with only one ty...

With no tubes in the amp when you read across pins 2 and 7 on either output tube you should read well over 7 volts. With all the tubes in the amp you should not read less then 6.1 vac. I can’t tell from your pictures, but where is that green / yellow wire from the secondary of the power transformer...

It's been a while. As undisputed King of Unfinished Projects there's always a queue for consumption of my sparse free time. Meanwhile I did follow your advise, read up on proper turret soldering and invested in a 5mm chissel tip and a role of 60/40. I have to admit that the right tip and solder make...

Thanks for the many replies so far. Let me respond to all of the above in one post. Soldering has proven somewhat of a challenge. I'm used to soldering PCB's, but this was a totally different ball game. In my PCB world I rarely go over 300 degrees. I cranked my iron up to 400 for this project, which...

So I built my first amp, a 5E3 and my guess is that it's not the best kit out there, but oh well. The light bulb limiter did not light up, the power light did. Tubes are glowing softly, adrenaline flowing wildly. Guitar plugged in, slowly turn up some knobs and...nothing. No crack, no hiss, no smoke...