The Amp Garage

I guess I was just under the impression that the Sprague Atoms were better caps compared to the IC’s as far as the axials go. I’m likely wrong as I really don’t know. There’s really no point debating that here. As far as the radials, I had never considered them. One for the difficulty you mentioned ...

But at under a $1 each, I'd just replace them. I could not find caps that cheap anywhere. I stuck with normal uf values in the spec and ended up close to $100 for all 14 caps plus a few spares. 10 20uf/50v caps where right around $50, I did buy vishay/sprague tva series for these so maybe there was...

Seems the tube being loose was mostly the tube or at least the short pins on it, which are 2/3 the length of the TAD redbase I installed. A little wiggle, but it’s not coming out or moving at all with the shield on it. It was marked with frosted letters “4U 7025 USA” with no other identifiers. I gue...

martin manning wrote: ↑Wed Oct 07, 2026 4:56 pm Do you mean using 22u as opposed to 20u at 25V? I would go with a good quality modern 22u.

No I meant 2u/25v. Not 22u. The schematic lists 2u/25v. I thought maybe a typo, but all ~5 revisions list 2uf 25v.

I purchased a completely original rd50. Sounds great. Maybe a bit on the brighter side than I’m used to. It’s never been recapped but doesn’t sound like it needs it. Sticker dates 83/11 so maybe one of the last of these guys. I was looking to just purchase caps and some of the transistors to have on...

Good luck trying to get it to help source parts for a Music Man 2475-65. Or to help understand the hand drawn spec. Google image itself was surprisingly good at that part though. My overall experience is thats it is great at well documented stuff like an AB763. Not so much at all for less famous les...

I haven't studied that schematic or layout, but the presence is best grounded with the PI cathodes. It is part of the power amp, so better there than with the preamp grounds. Not that it won't work as described, plenty of commercial amps grounded the presence to the pot case. Well I grounded it to ...

So about to finish soldering this Blackvibe build and have a question on the presence mod I see on the RR site. In all his layouts, they all have a preamp bus and star ground. But this one mod the cap and resistor are always shown grounded to the back of the pot. Is there an obvious reason for that,...

Following this good build trend you should see why it’s even more important not only for bypassing oscillating issues, but also tone wise to have minimal grid wire length in the preamp and tone stack section. From what you are saying I’m not far off then. Simply moving my board to the right snug ag...

Just wondering if there are any perceived issues here around my tube, transformer and board layout before I punch more holes. I’m using a blackface bassman blank and using a super reverb chassis for somewhat of a template. Here I’ve moved the rectifier and power tubes to the right and also moved the...

The reason was the low gain side to not overdrive the pedals and thanks for the response here, but I believe I’m abandoning this mod. After buying my parts my board stretched compared to the layout of the board on the RR site which must be designed with some pretty small caps in mind. As that occurr...

Finished my first amp kit. Came out great and I’m looking at building a Blackvibe. I’ve sourced all the parts. Plan on adding the presence and post PI master volume mod. Using a super reverb chassis and all of those input and controls will use the vibrato channel. There’s a lot of space so I was thi...

Thanks for the responses. If I’m understanding everything correctly. - More is better in the sense that, it’s cooler, more headroom, less sag. Maybe more longevity. - Lower is better in that it’s probably closer to the original sound. Not overly concerned with the latter and I wouldn’t know what tha...

Hey all. Fairly new to the game here and currently building a 5e3 kit while sourcing parts to build either a Blackvibe from RR’s site or just a straight up vibroverb. I see a few main options for transformers and am leaning towards mojotone and hoping I can get some validation that I am making the c...