This Hurts My Eyes!!

[dorrisant]

It's a Wild Thang from Dan Torres. Can't find much info about the circuit. Looking at it and listening to it tells me why.

Not the fugliest I've seen but awful close.

Yes, the PT is hanging on by two bolts. It's a combo too. Smh!

PT wires pass through 1/4" holes with zero grommets. There are other holes with grommets, so why not all?

It is amazing how some with zero skill make so much money, while some of us create works of art only to get low ball offers. I guess I do not know how to sell water to a drowning man.

[Reeltarded]

she's a beauty

[Colossal]

Man, that is bad.

IMG_0302.jpeg

[maxkracht]

Kinda reminds me of some Gibson amps from the 60's, but without the charming space race theme.

[alnight]

Wow! Thanks for posting this. Makes me feel like the junk I build is actually pretty good after all...

[solderhead]

Yeah, that looks really bad.

But is it fair to blame Torres? In all likelihood that circuit has been modded/repaired by somebody else. Some of the front panel pots and the pilot lamp look like they could have impact damage. And that transformer definitely looks like a Hammond that got dropped during shipping -- the feet are bent and appear to be hanging from loose bolts. The feet on those 270 series transformers are made of woefully thin sheet metal that is really flimsy and they will fail if the box gets dropped.

I can't say who is to blame for the work, but I think we're looking at shipping damage.

[jcsifu]

I come from the area Dan was in (Torres Engineering) when he was still in business, and remembering all the "work" I've seen from him as well as the known quality issues that we in the area all knew of, I would still say this doesn't look like all him. The wiring looks like what I've seen before from him, plenty of janky wiring and mods he has done, but it looks like the chassis was dropped to me.

[dorrisant]

Yeah, that looks really bad.

But is it fair to blame Torres? In all likelihood that circuit has been modded/repaired by somebody else. Some of the front panel pots and the pilot lamp look like they could have impact damage. And that transformer definitely looks like a Hammond that got dropped during shipping -- the feet are bent and appear to be hanging from loose bolts. The feet on those 270 series transformers are made of woefully thin sheet metal that is really flimsy and they will fail if the box gets dropped.

I can't say who is to blame for the work, but I think we're looking at shipping damage.

Nope. Two owners (that play together) babied it. It was picked up from the owners house. Tape on the chassis was the tag for the original owner. Never been worked on other than changing filter caps and I know who did it. He is not at all a hack. The PT was like that from original delivery. But don't shift the blame from the builder just yet... All the builder did was attach flat washers on the feet to try to trap it above and below the adapter plate.

I have seen quite a few Torres Engineering piles to not think that this shit splatter came from under his roof. Do some poking around on the web, or not.

Don't worry. I'm pretty much going to do as in Dave's post... G&R. I don't even want to keep the TX set. At least not for what this customer wants... A Princeton with a CFD. I'm thinking to put some LNFB in a couple of places in the preamp. I'd put it on a rear panel switch. He plays steel more than anything. I just don't see doing a CFD with those 6BM8s. They are too crowded as is. Two 6V6s with that preamp and the CFD are going to draw more current than the rating on the PT. Maybe I'm too concerned about it. If I do all of that, I might as well cut out the bottom a reconfigure with an aluminum plate. Right?

[alnight]

Makes sense to me. At this point, is it even worth trying to salvage that chassis vs having an aluminum blank bent up?

[solderhead]

> Nope. Two owners (that play together) babied it...

I'm in 100% agreement that the amp looks bad. But I'm having trouble believing the story that came from your customers. Many facts just don't add up.

It's not clear from your description that your customers are the first owners of the amp. It sounds like the owning partners could be the second or subsequent owners. The amp has got to be old -- you've told us that it's been recapped, and your photo shows that the transformer was made in 2000. So this amp is 20-25 years old now and it has likely been around the block a few times. It has had plenty of opportunity for accidents to happen. For some part of my analysis I have to dismiss the premise that the amp has been babied for 25 years and that it's present condition reflects the as-delivered condition from the manufacturer 25 years ago.

But based on the premise that some hack builder (whose name I cannot bring myself to speak) actually built the amp that way, I agree that we're looking at poor workmanship. If that's the case, then this story is a fair indictment of the builder's skill, but I think that some degree of fault has to lie on your customers for having purchased a piece of 25 year old garbage. Did they even look at what they were buying? Nobody is sufficiently naive that they could fail to recognize that a problem exists when the power transformer that looks that bad. Did they inspect the used amp when they were buying it? Inspection on delivery is the duty of the customer and any due diligence failures cast a poor light on the customer and the veracity of their verbal history. In this scenario at least some fault should lie on your customer for buying a 25 year old used amp in such poor condition.

One has to consider the possibility that your customers just aren't being honest with you or with each other, or that at least one of them doesn't don't know that the amp was dropped. There is the possibility that one co-owner isn't willing to admit to his partner that he dropped the amp.

I don't place a lot of faith in people's claims that they 'baby' their amps. Everyone says this and nobody ever wants to admit fault ... it's as if they think that if they proclaim their innocence that will keep the repair bill lower. So people tell lies. All the time. I can't tell you how many times I've had a Twin Reverb come in for service during the 70s-80s (back when they were popular -- yes, I've been doing it for that long) where the reverb transducer coils had been fractured by people who 'babied' their amps. Twin Reverbs are HEAVY amps. We all know how that type of damage occurs. When an amp comes in with obvious impact damage then the physical exam becomes what's important and when the physical exam refutes the history that's been presented by the customer then a verbal history that lacks veracity has to be discounted.

Hammond iron has been poorly made for as long as I've been familiar with Hammond, and that goes back to the 70s. The L-brackets are so thin and support the weight so poorly that it's commonplace for properly mounted Hammonds to get bent over on even a minor impact. It's entirely possible that some kind of minor impact damage occurred that someone isn't being honest about, or that someone didn't recognize as being significant. Transformers don't get mangled like that without a little help from someone.

Then there's the problem of how the transformer is mounted. Looking at photo #4 the right foot looks like someone mounted the transformer foot to be standing on a hex nut, though the left foot does appear to have a flat washer. But on the left side the bolt is either loose, or there's a hex nut or some other spacer that we can't see. Looking at photo #2 it's obvious that someone has pedestal-mounted the transformer on hex nuts that are loose. Suffice it to say that mounting a transformer to be standing on hex nuts is improper and any tech who has service this amp should have addressed the transformer mounting problem.

Photo #2 clearly shows that even the patch plate on the chassis is bent from impact damage. Even the OT is bent outwards. These photos tell me that not only has the amp suffered impact damage, it's suffered impact damage more than once as the force vectors are not in alignment -- different parts are bent in different directions.

Love him or hate him, I can't blame the builder for crummy transformer mounting on an amp after the amp has seen 25 years of abuse in the field and has been serviced by multiple technicians. There's just no accountability as to what happened to the amp over that long of a time period. If that amp came in for recapping service, it would be incumbent upon the person servicing the amp to address the problems like unstable transformer mounts, lack of grommets, etc. with the customer -- and not to let the amp out of their shop until the electrical safety problems had been addressed. Releasing an amp to a customer that has an unstable system ground, or doesn't have through-hole grommets could be a grave liability problem for the shop servicing the amp. It sounds to me like more than person who has serviced this amp has failed in some of their obligations. If an acquaintance of mine had serviced the amp and let it out of his shop looking like that, my opinion of him would be irrevocably compromised.

I'm still inclined to believe that the amp has suffered impact damage that has either gone unrecognized or has been denied by someone.

Looking at photo #3 the chassis faceplate appears to be obviously arched inward. Now I can't be certain about this, because a cell phone camera is an extremely poor choice of tool for close up photography, as cell phones use wide angle lenses to allow extreme depth of field for close ups and everyone knows that by design every wide angle lens produces severe perspective distortion when used in that context. I suppose that the Motorola One 5G Ace could be causing enough perspective distortion to deceive my eyes and cause me to reach the wrong conclusion, but as they say 'garbage in garbage out.' It's a shame that in the age of technology, photography is becoming a lost art as cell phone cameras become ubiquitous and people choose to adopt an inferior photographic tool out of convenience. (In reality, the fault for this analysis has to fall on me, as I'm trying to use your image to derive more information than it was likely intended to convey.)

Here's what concerns me. If I connect a straight line across each end of the faceplate, the chassis looks like it's suffered front-end impact damage. Look at the green line in this photo. (click to enlarge)

shit-amp.jpg

In the center of the amp there's quite a bit of gap between the faceplate and the register line. This is either indicative of significant impact damage to the amp or severe perspective distortion caused by the camera. One would need the amp in-hand and a straightedge to determine this. But even if what appears to be faceplate damage is in fact photographic artifact, that doesn't change the impact damage that is so obvious throughout the rest of the amp.

My hat is off to you for taking on a project like this. I would have just refused it.

With all of that said, I want to echo your point that it is amazing how some people with marginal skills can be commercially successful, while true artisans get lowball offers for what are works of art.

[M Fowler]

Typical Torres junk.

Mark

[MeanMrMustard]

Relays love being treated like that. Like abused spouses rationalizing “deep down he/she really loves me.”

[dorrisant]

solderhead,

To clarify, the amp was originally purchased years ago and my customer's bandmate was the original buyer. He tried to like it for years and never did. My customer, 1st buyer's bandmate, thought he might be able to get it dialed in for what he wanted and never could. So this amp was a two owner. My point was that the only time this amp was shipped was when it was originally purchased. I asked about it because the owner and I were basking in the glow of this wonderful build and I had to ask if it were damaged in shipping. He gave me the story and said he didn't recall complaints of that from his buddy, but who knows and who really cares.

My point was that no one worth their salt would have let that amp leave for a trip to a paying customer with the transformer hanging by two screws and a prayer. This means the builder is not worth their salt. If you sent this pile to me, you can bet your ass you'd be getting a call immediately. I know that the mounting ears are a bit on the thin side with Hammond TXs, but you gotta get at least 3 if not all four screws to hold in something solid in order to call yourself just a repair guy. My personal opinion is that you should be able to palm any of the devices, excluding tubes, and shake the living shit out of the amp with said device. If anything wiggles too much, you're not done, it needs to be fixed. As it was, it never would have taken much to move the PT to a compromised position. I'm sure Torres knew that it was subpar and didn't give the slightest shit, because it "looked good from his house".

So, speculate all you want, but the builder of this thing should have never been allowed to pick up tools to build anything more complicated than a doghouse, and I would be worried about the dog that had to live in it.

What backs up the story of the two owners is all of the horror stories I've read, every time I've read about Dan and his debacles. Also, I've been around for a while and I've seen several choice samples of his work up close and personal. This amp has all of the tell-tale signs of his butcher shop. There are several that I have completely rebuilt and never showed the original to anyone at the customer's request. A lot of DTE's customers are embarrassed to admit in public that they got scammed. I can understand that. This customer didn't care if I went full blast about it.

All of this to say that this is not the real point of my post. My point was to show a before and after condition... More about what Volition Amps can do when it comes time to polish a turd. I have a lot of posts and many of those are complete rebuilds. Take a look if you can spare the time.

Also, why would I do all of this that I propose to this amp? Because that is what the customer wants and paid for. He has seen me do the same for others in the same musical community. Also, he considers it somewhat of a collectors item to have me do what I do to it.

I'm sorry if I come off sounding a bit harsh, but I am a very good builder and it does bother me that hacks like DT fleece people and bring down the truly good builders with them. Please don't try to make excuses for shitheads and we will get along just fine.

Also, keep watching here... I'll post what this fugly duckling turns into.

[martin manning]

Also, keep watching here... I'll post what this fugly duckling turns into.

Should be very entertaining!

[M Fowler]

I didn't know better when I was young and sent a Silver face Super Reverb to Torres for his superior amp designs ha ha.

It took me until I started working on amps many years later to discover why the amp sounded so odd. It was out of phase do to Torres gain mods.

Mark