Bassman Build

[martin manning]

It would be interesting to get the Weber OT and do an A-B comparison with a Heyboer from Mojo (or some other cork-sniffer approved unit).

[M Fowler]

I've only had one Weber PT fail. The other transformers worked very well and tone test were good too.

I normally stick with Heyboer after Magnetic Components went belly up. But I admit I use a lot of Hammond lately. Heck I even had to open up my wallet for a Mercury Peavey Classic 50 PT, ouch.

Mark

[Chicken fingers]

Alright, so I ordered the kit late last week so hope to have it in 4-5 weeks! More to come then!!

[Chicken fingers]

It’s been a little while but I’ve been working on this amp slowly but surely. The kit landed about 5 weeks after ordering and is of very good quality. The cabinet and chassis look great, very good quality - the best I’ve seen in a kit so far. Attached is a picture of the board so far. I’m waiting on a few eyelets from Weber to finish - two were missing. A few other things I’ve been working on:

-open up octal tube socket holes 1/8 inch: the sockets that came looked really cheap and the belton sockets just a little larger. I don’t have a nice drill press and the Weber chassis is very good quality steel so it was challenging to open up with a hand drill and step drill bit.

-ordered better quality pilot light and fuse socket: the Weber parts are cheaper than cheap. I can’t spend all this effort and, with good conscience, put such cheap plastic parts in. Now way in heck would they last.

-ordered dog house for filter caps: F&T caps are too large to mount in the L-bracket in the chassis. So, I ordered a dog house from mojo tone and will mount to the back like original fenders. I will have to drill 4 more holes into the nice chassis… might be a good time to bug a friend with a drill press…

-Waiting on a replacement resistor from amplified parts: They mixed up 470 ohm and 470K ohm resistors in their inventory. A good reason to check the resistors with meter before installing…

[Chicken fingers]

Hello,

The picture attached shows the speaker jacks. My question is regarding the ground tabs. They’re pretty darn tight against the chassis. Do they need to be soldered in place or is there enough contact as they are? Or should I add a bolt with ground tab to connect to? My intuition is telling me they’re find as is - they’re really tight to the chassis. I was having a really hard time attaching a power transformer to the chassis with my 80W iron so I just added a bolt to solder to. Think I need to add

[johnnyreece]

If memory serves me correctly, the Weber tweed chassis are stainless steel and super thick, so nearly impossible to solder to. They used to include a brass plate like Fender did back in the day for the preamp grounds. Not really the best grounding scheme, though. The ones I've used had a threaded stud near the PT cutout that you could use as a ground point. I've never done the tweed bassman, though, so I could be way off. While the friction contacts will likely serve okay for your speaker grounds, I think most people would suggest a soldered ground, as fasteners tend to work themselves loose over time.

[Chicken fingers]

Thanks, you’re right better to solder them in place. You’re right about the Weber chassis, it’s super nice thick SS but impossible to get a good bond with. Yes, there is a bolt next to PT to solder to but it’s very far from this section in the bassman. I have another picture where you can see my red marker pointing to a bolt I added for the ground connection for one 6L6GC pin 8. Think I’m ok to use that to ground the speakers to or should I add another dedicated ground bolt?

[Chicken fingers]

Finished the build and the amp works great. I don’t think I’d buy another kit from Weber. The cabinet and chassis are great quality but customer service is not at all. The fiber board was missing multiple eyelets and I’m lucky someone responded to my email asking for a couple to be sent - they maybe respond to 2 out of 5 emails. I sent an email to ask if they could send me an extra copy of the schematic with the kit - email ignored and received zero prints with the kit (mojotone sends a nice printout…). They failed to send the eyelets and two weeks later I had to bug them again. Not enough screws and nuts were sent so I had to visit the hardware store, which is fine but all additional expense. The parts that came with the kit are complete junk so I purchased most of the components from amplified parts. The fiber board is wider than modern resistor leads so any that span the width needed extension. Why not just make the board fit modern parts? 1/2 inch narrower would fix a major flaw.

All things considered, it’d actually be a little cheaper to buy the MojoTone kit and they actually respond to emails with constructive help. Before I purchased the Weber kit, I had asked Weber and MojoTone for test voltages. Weber completely ignored my request then and after I bought their kit - no response. MojoTone happily sent me their drawing with many test voltages. I’m glad MojoTone did this because it helped my find a simple error very easily.

So - buy a MojoTone kit if you want to build a bassman. It is a cool amp