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ruinedhero posted:In my situation I am looking for a 2x12 combo amp, tube based, for under $1300 that has a great over driven warm distortion sound right out of the package without the need for effect units. From personal experience, what would be a good recommendation? Peavey Classic 50 is available in various configurations. I have the 4x10" and the 1x15". It does not have the best, punchy clean tone in the world; but it does have plenty of gain out of the box. It has a lot of clarity, and to be frank I think it's basically a Vox circuit. Put any overdrive pedal in front of it and it sounds amazing. My first thought, upon trying that, was Van Halen 1 for $700. Your mileage may vary.
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Jul 5, 2010 06:17
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Crossposting from the new gear pictures thread: I've been buying poo poo for four months to get a Blues Jr. MK III and then install many of the mods from the rather robust mod community. You see, my Dad has the Oxblood one with the Swamp Thang speaker and he's a total gear snob who just treats it like a novelty: (Quote: Why would I mod my Blues Jr. when I have a perfectly rebuilt Blue-Line Mesa/Boogie MKIII right here?") Ok, he has a point, but we play very different styles of music. I played his and he complained I was playing too loud, but I was thinking, "Wow, a little beast of a tube amp. I need one or two of these." I wanted a project and his Blues Jr. sounded pretty good; but then I learned about all the mods for this amp and I thought, "I know how to do this sub-assembly work and I can kinda afford all this stuff. It sounds like fun. If it doesn't work out, I'll try something else." I bought a brand new stock MIM Blues Jr. MK III Lacquer Tweed amp and recorded demos of it. I waited patiently for the BillM Audio mod kits and other parts and necessary tools that I didn't already have to arrive as I set aside the funds to order them. Meanwhile, I thought the stock amp sounded pretty good. It had issues, but it did some things quite well. From BillM Audio (Andrew Machrone) I bought the "Basic Kit," the "presence control mod," little additions like the standby switch and Switchcraft input jack, the audio-taper Master and Reverb pots, as well as all new JJ Tubes, the TO20B Output Transformer, and to top it off I took out the Jensen C12N and put in an expensive Celestion G12H(55) Heritage speaker. Once I had all of that (it took almost four months) I did all the mod work in the last couple nights. I took a ton of videos and pictures while doing it. I thought it might make an interesting YouTube video for the Blues Jr. mod community, if I didn't destroy it. I'm a hard-rock guy but I have always wanted to have a great Fender clean tone and now, I have that. I really have that, after the mods. In fact, after the mods, I don't even know what to do with all the tone controls (like, after the Twin-stack mod the middle control is amazing, the bass is huge thanks to the Basic Kit and TO20B OT and the new speaker; and I don't think I'll need that fat circuit anymore due to the added bass from the Basic Kit, OT, and speaker. Also I can use Treble or I can dial in Presence now (did I mention that presence control sounds awesome)? I haven't cranked it hard. After the seven hours of modding, it powered up on the first go (OMG) and yeah, it's definitely a different amp now. Here's the stuff I posted in the "Post Pictures" thread, but I can answer questions here as it seems more appropriate. My history is that I've done boutique hand-wired and PCB assembly work before, so I felt comfortable taking on this project. There were still some very hairy parts to overcome. First impressions: The cleans are amazing and in-your-face. The tone controls are now overwhelming, but the overdrive is a little bit wooly/hairy for my taste. I like a tighter distortion, but like I said I have barely played the thing. I haven't even put a pedal (like an OCD or my Tube Driver in front of it yet). Crosspost: quote:I spent seven hours performing atrocious, wonderful surgery on my Blues Jr. tonight. Still hasn't melted down or done anything weird. This is what it sounded like before the mods. I'll record "after-modding" clips once I get a handle on this incredible new tone stack.  Please stand by for "after" clips, it's going to take time to get used to this and decide how to set the controls. Dr. Faustus fucked around with this message at 07:07 on May 23, 2017 |
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May 23, 2017 06:21
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Loco posted:
First, to alleviate the volume problem, I put the amp in a coat-closet that isolated it best from my neighbors (except the nice lady who lives below me... she heard "music" coming from somewhere and had no idea what it was until I told her it was coming through the ceiling of her closet.) She said, "Oh, it's you? Go ahead, you're fine!" - we're good neighbors) and I worked fast to get these clips done. I have tried micing the amp with my dynamic mics but I don't have a good mixer so I bought this amazing ART PRO MPA II and two cheap microphones: an MXL 2008 large-diaphragm condenser and an MXL R144HE Ribbon mic. This it what the recording setup looked like: Mics (I need to stress that this mic placement took me a long time to work out, and that the idea was to capture the sound of the stock amp so it would be instructive when compared to the modded amp. This was difficult but I think I have the mic-placement is reasonably fixed.):  Mic Pre-amp (actual settings used to record the clean part):  From there the output of the ART mic-pre went directly to an old, crappy Lexicon Lambda recording interface. In Reaper, I only used a master limiter on the master bus and no other plugins were used except for the doubled Van Halen part, which got Lexicon software reverb. Here are the amp settings for clean:  For dirty it was the same except the preamp gain was full-on and I think I cut back the mids a tad. I don't have a pic of that, but when you hear the -click- I'm turning on a Fulltone OCD pedal to boost the gain and here's that setting:  Not much else to tell. The ART is amazing and the mics are just mediocre but the ART brings them to life. I want to stress that while I wanted to EQ it and normalize the file in software, and maybe use hardware/software compression, put the appropriate phaser and chorus on the Van Halen/Mr. Big bits, my friends talked me out of it. What you hear in the demo is 100% what the mics/preamp picked up with no post-processing except the reverb I mentioned above. The clean Van Halen bit is doubled and the delay is a tc electronic Flashback X4 modulation delay in front of the input of the amp. The chorus-y sound is from the modulation of the delays plus the fact that I double tracked that clean part. No other chorus was used but some reverb was added in Reaper. It seemed appropriate.  The amp was bone-stock at the time. Since then I have performed major surgery on it and I want to make a YouTube video about that, or I could just do a Dr. Faustus effort post. It sounds amazing in the room, but I haven't put it in front of the microphones yet. The mics have not been moved and the mic-pre settings are not changed so I just have to put the modded amp in its footprint on the carpet; but the changes to the modded tone-stack+presence control may mean radical changes to the amp tone settings (see my previous post about the presence control and the new low-end). I'll try to get to that Sunday/Monday when I am off work and hopefully people won't complain that I'm being loud. It's a holiday Monday so who knows? Here's a clip of the stock amp with my Fulltone MDV-3 in front, doing a fun Pink Floyd "Breathe" clip on an Ibanez RG471AH with DiMarzio Eric Johnson humbuckers and a DiMarzio True Velvet. Reverb is added in Reaper: The guitar (not a Strat!):  The Fulltone MDV-3 'Vibe pedal:  The clip:  If you have any specific questions that I did not address, please post them and I'll do my best to answer.
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May 26, 2017 07:06
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That sounded amazing, may I ask how you recorded that? What was the tone stack?
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Loco posted:Thank you for the details. I've been in the process of recording my own stuff, and find this information useful. Both clips' clean tones are very pretty and full-sounding (and I listened with a subwoofer, thankfully). Can't wait to hear the mods in action.  I have a friend who's working on a huge eight song project and he's using a bathroom to mic up using one dynamic mic and one condenser (and this guy plays LOUD as he wants to capture power section distortion), and the condenser was having issues with the sound pressure levels until he backed the condenser off a good two feet from the 4x12. I think he spent several hours on it, but it paid off. He's sharing raw tracks with me as they are recorded and he's getting an amazing tone. For me, the problem is trying to get decent lows out of an open-back 1x12" combo. The amp really is quite small. The mods have opened up the bass so much. I can't wait to get it isolated and recorded. To my ears, I suspect that low-end splat is still there, but ironically (?) it seems to get better the more I scoop the mids. Check out BillM's "TwinStack mod. It's a simple jumper on the mid pot that I think is the reason cutting back on the mids seems to help so much. I never knew Fenders had such a clean mid-scoop. I did that mod along with the others. I tested it: when you turn Bass, Middle, and Treble all the way down the amp is silent. If I'm lucky and my neighbors don't complain I hope to have something to share by Tuesday.  P.S. - Thanks, Bahbhi. That MDV-3 is awesome, I don't know why I never bought a 'Vibe before. P.P.S. - gently caress it, I'm just going to paste this here. It seems relevant to the one gripe I've had with this amp: quote:“One of the easiest mods you can do your Blues Junior is to convert the tone stack from standard operation to Twin-style operation. Here’s the deal: The Twin is renowned for its bell-like clean tone. Part of that is having enormous power and headroom on tap, but the way the tone stack is wired contributes to the bright, Twin clarity. In the Twin, you can turn the bass, middle, and treble to 1, and get no sound out of the amp–all frequencies are cut off. We're gonna find out if the mids control can be used to remove the "splat" in the clean tone, which I would definitely also call "muddy." Stand by for updates. Dr. Faustus fucked around with this message at 07:43 on May 28, 2017 |
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May 27, 2017 21:03
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EDIT: poo poo. I switched from headphones to speakers and the new clip sounds *darker.* I'm at a loss, I have to look at what's different. Sorry to waste your time. Maybe it's just my speakers, I don't know. My ears are probably too fatigued to try to figure it out right now. I wonder if the mic placement is off a bit from last time? Check this out if you're curious but skip it if not. I am totally confused by what I am hearing right now. It was so clear in the headphones but through the speakers it seems totally backwards from what I thought I was hearing.quote:Bumping the thread, sorry. I put down some clean tones today and I need some feedback. Happy Memorial Day Monday to you all. I'm back with today's updated "clean" clip. The mics didn't appear to be in the same place as before. I tried to put the ribbon mic closer to the center of the cone to capture the highs, and moved the condenser mic off the the side to get more mids and lows. This is the problem with making too many changes at once: I also messed with the amp's tone stack, too. I pulled back the bass, added mids, and turned up the treble and presence a little. I was in a hurry and should have done things in steps. I wasn't that patient because I wanted to record clean and dirty this "weekend" (I'm off Sun/Mon.) I won't get a chance to try again until next Sunday. I didn't touch anything on the mic preamp. Here are the amp settings in this clip:  I played the Strat-style in the beginning, as usual. Then I switched to the JEM77FP @ 1:14. God I love that JEM sound. I wanted to include a chorused clip; but instead of using a software plug-in, I put the tc electronic Corona Chorus in front of the amp. Then, for the Satriani bit (Circles, from Surfing With The Alien) I left the chorus on and added the same delay from the tc electronic Flashback X4 that I used before. I took a pic of the settings on the pedals. Nothing drastic, but I think they sound darn good:  I can't say for sure but I'm afraid I lost too much low-end this go 'round. I was trying to avoid that "splattiness" in the bass and I think I neutered it a little too much. When I compare the clips, the bass just seems to be lacking. Otherwise I think it sounds pretty good. So the chorus and the delay were printed at recording through the amp, via pedals plugged into the input. Post-processing consisted of just two things: removing the usual recording hum with Waves X-Noise, and adding ambience with a very simple Sony reverb plug-in from Sound Forge, set to a medium Hall. I wanted very much to normalize this clip, but decided against it to preserve the original dynamics of the recording. After hearing it, I also wanted very much to add in some bass, too; but I refrained. This is a demo and my friends have set parameters they want me to follow (don't use post-processing to make the amp sound better/different than it really sounds.) I think the mic placement is right on, but I think I pulled the bass back on the amp too much. Live and learn. Here's the result. It's attempt #2 to record the amp clean and have some fun with it. Feedback is welcome, as always.  Dr. Faustus fucked around with this message at 02:24 on May 30, 2017 |
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May 29, 2017 03:39
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There's always a chance some tube grommets could help, but I'd be more worried that the angle of the amp makes a difference. Can you try moving the tubes to different sockets and see if the artifacts remain? How old are those tubes? Can you swap them out (one by one) for another known good tube? I'd try that. Everything I've read is that tubes only go downhill and the answer is often "Time for new tubes." I'm just a layman, though.
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May 30, 2017 03:43
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philkop posted:Worried that the angle might make a difference how? Just curious. Like it might be bad for it over time? The easiest way to check would be to swap tubes around and see if the artifact goes away. You know, I was just discussing this with my Dad a few days ago. He told me about his Blues Jr. throwing weird vibrations on just certain notes. He swapped in new power tubes and the issue disappeared. I don't know if you have spares sitting around and I haven't even asked which tubes you have, so your mileage may vary. I was just concerned that you associate the anomaly with the angle of the amp (on a stand.) If you can swap tubes then please do. See if the problem persists. That's what I'd do in this situation. quote:Also, Good luck with your amp. I'm sure there are folks here who are actual gurus and not just monkeys like me. I just think the 1st rule of "Is my tube bad?" is swapping them around, especially if you can get access to some comparable tubes that haven't been in your amp before. Solved my Dad's issue with one simple tube swap. Cheers and thanks! P.S. - My gut tells me you've got a dodgy tube. The amp is probably fine unless one of the sockets has a bad connector, but that would probably present a different problem. I don't know the amp's age, type, or tubes; so take that with a grain of salt. Dr. Faustus fucked around with this message at 04:40 on May 30, 2017 |
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May 30, 2017 04:35
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I bought three JJ Tubes 12AX7s (Slovenian) instead of going totally boutique crazy. Mullards are highly regarded. I like bright and jangly distortion so I went JJ. At $11/per that cost $33. I would do that just as a matter of course. Now, my Blues Jr. only uses two EL84s (it's 15 watts) but my Peaveys are 50W amps and they need a matched quartet of EL84s each. That gets more expensive. Luckily when you buy a matched pair/quartet online you can trust them to work together in a complimentary fashion. Which model of the Nomad do you have? There's a lot of opinions online about that amp. Carvin does that to people. Some love them, some hate them; but I bet there's a really cool amp there. Is it a head, or a combo? (I am not trying to speak down to you, here; I'm just thinking out loud): Re-tubing an amp is super easy and if you're not changing the values of the tubes you don't need to worry about the power section bias. I'd highly recommend changing them all out, preamp and power amp tubes. "It's the only way to be sure." Buy them online and handle them carefully, and the amp will probably respond quite positively (unless the tubes in there are already pretty new, then there's some other problem). There are some who care and some who don't, but I have oily skin and I don't handle tubes with my bare fingers. I use a very clean cloth. The idea is that residue on a tube may create a hot spot on the surface of the tube which could. possibly, affect its lifetime; but some people think that's stupid anal bullshit and others swear by it. I just consider it an abundance of caution and I don't touch the tubes. The Carvin amps are really great if you're using them for the right kind of sound (which, is, of course true of any line of amps.) Other questions: What year was it released? Any signs of physical abuse? Capacitors have a lifetime after which they pretty much all need to be replaced. The time frame is probably over 15 years, and a real concern around 20-30 years. If it's been modded I assume it contains some more robust/newer components than the stock amp had. Looking forward to some real amp gurus coming in and giving you better advice.
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May 30, 2017 05:44
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philkop posted:E: Listened to another one of the clips. Dude. Not sure if you do it on purpose but I love a buzzy guitar. Sounds like your guitar is setup similarly to how I set mine up. Just on the verge of buzzing if you want it to. I agree that this new recording just isn't showing off the change in character of the modded amp. I am going to take the blame because the tone stack is so radically different now that I pulled the bass back too much based on what my ears were telling me. I don't have reference monitors so it's a nightmare trying to guess how a recording will sound on other systems. I'm really disappointed with myself. I should have put more work into making sure what I was recording was what the amp actually sounds like. I failed this weekend, I'll have to make another run at it. It's good practice and my left hand is strenghtening back up from all the playing I've been doing this month. I have picked out a nice pair of monitors but probably can't afford them for another couple months. In the meantime I'll just keep at it. The mods really did strenghten the low end and added a smooth, buttery thing to the chime of the amp. The presence control is awesome. I definitely need more time with the new tone stack and also need to revisit mic placement. After The War posted:So... guess what I just bought?
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May 30, 2017 22:15
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philkop posted:I always keep some Sony MDR 7506 headphones around that will get you some decent reference quality. Other than that I have some Eris e5s, so nothing special. I'm just stuck because part of the fun of this project was supposed to be demonstrating if the mods do anything. I can hear that they did, but my recording would make you doubt it. That's why I'm so disappointed. It's easier to make incremental changes, but tougher to take that next step when you do so much at once (I'm not just micing up a new circuit, it's a totally different speaker, too.) First world problems... Dr. Faustus fucked around with this message at 04:11 on May 31, 2017 |
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May 31, 2017 03:46
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After The War posted:Got it set up, went for the impedance knob... and realized I had bought the MPA 1 by mistake. No mid/side for me.  Dude. My dude. Sincere goondolences.
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Jun 3, 2017 04:49
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RE: Fender EQ I wasn't aware of how they worked either until I started reading about modding the Blues Jr. It's part of the blackface family of amps (Deville, etc.) and it always passes some mids even with all the EQ knobs down. By jumping two lugs on the mid eq pot, it functions like the rest of the Fenders. I did that mod and tested it: With bass mid and treble all the way down (=1), no signal comes out of my amp. I'm going to experiment a lot with the EQ. I have a very good looper in the Flashback X4, so I'll try that loop trick to play with the EQ while a loop plays. Sounds like fun to me. I'm also going to try the "turn the EQ all the way up and let all the signal through" idea and see what that sounds like.
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Jun 3, 2017 22:32
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It's the mod I posted previously: http://billmaudio.com/wp/?page_id=58quote:Twin-Like Clean Tone: TwinStack Mod
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Jun 4, 2017 04:18
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This is a "no real news here" white-noise post, so skip it if you're inclined. Last weekend (my weekends are Sunday/Monday) I came up with a strategy for making a better Blues Jr. Before Mods/After Mods comparison. Bear in mind, I'm still recording the very clean settings, which I wouldn't use in many real-life applications. All I did was import the "Before demo" .wav file into my Reaper project and recorded some clips of the same guitar and then compared them. I found where the frequencies were that were different so I could dial-in the tone stack on the modded amp to get roughly the same volume and bass as the "before" clip. The focus turned out to be "fat circuit: In our Out?" (It's "In" on the "before" clip.) Mids: scooped, low, middle, high, full? Treble vs. Presence: Which sounds better? Which records better? I'm still figuring that out. The part that really disappoints is that my Strat-style with the Texas Specials just splats all over through this amp, clean. I am now pretty sure this is a clean-headroom artifact. What I like about this amp is its nod to British distortion, so I can accept this won't give me true Fender tube cleans in some applications. I've never had it before, so I'll look elsewhere if this amp can't do it (without the 6V6 octal socket mod and P24 Power Transformer.) The fun part hasn't even started yet! With so many new variables I recorded many small clips but they were just to A/B the modded amp against the "Before" clip. Little by little I am starting to capture the bass/mid/treble of the new circuit and speaker. I may move the condenser mic out closer to the edge of the speaker cone and even back several inches from the grill-cloth, and am trying to keep the ribbon mic near the center for accurate highs. I haven't run into any phasing issues. I want you all to hear what I hear. I stopped using the headphones to compare. I'm sticking with the bookshelf speakers because they seem to expose the differences in frequencies right away. The two guitars in the original clip have been re-stringed and I'll do final setup on those before I record. Temperature fluctuations down here in NC play with these necks, which are both Maple (one with a Maple fretboard and the JEM with its Rosewood fretboard.) So this post is completely pointless except as a progress report on a project I can't resume until Sunday. Stay tuned, if you care to. P.S. - This is just for the clean sounds. I can't wait to turn the preamp volume up full and get some o'that, then put the OCD in front and get nuts. (Or maybe I should put the Tube Driver in front, or do a clip of each.) Not going to include the Boneshaker in this bit, as the Boneshaker seems to be more of a preamp replacement than a gain/overdrive pedal. I'll try to restrain myself from using too much outboard gear because this is supposed to be a useful guide to before mod/after mod. I could do a separate Boneshaker thing later.) I'll add these somewhat impressionistic pics just because I have them to hopefully makes this post a little more interesting:   
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Jun 8, 2017 07:30
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peter gabriel posted:As someone who is looking at Blues Juniors for open mic stuff I appreciate your post philkop posted:Don't underestimate the power of pickup height adjustment. Especially with the Texas Specials. I've had them before and they work well at a few heights.
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Jun 10, 2017 23:49
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Effort-post for a new page:philkop posted:- Pots and capacitors! Guitar sounding a little dark and dull? Hop up to 500K pots or even 1Meg! Neck pickup almost where you want it, but a little muddy? Connect a .047 (or so) cap in between the pickup lead and its selector. It cuts just a little bass and usually really sweetens up an otherwise muddy pup. My first non-poo poo guitar was my JEM77FP, and it's one of those guitars that just sounds amazing with the volume rolled back. Listen to the clip where I roll in the volume on a held chord. It has a shimmer that's just to die for. I learned about how that works from one of Dan Erlewine's books (pre-internet). Since then, every single electric guitar I've bought has had some form of "high-pass" filter cap put on the volume pot for just this reason. All of my guitars (the ones with humbuckers - exception being the Talman which has the Joe Barden Danny Gattons) have series/parallel options on the humbuckers (always on the bridge pickup, and some on the neck humbucker, if there is one) and it's really a huge part of my playing. I've basically been "rolling-off" to get my clean sound since the JEM. I really was hoping (and still hold a glimmer of hope) that this Blues Jr. would be better than my Classic 50s in that it would have decent crunch; while also giving me the option of true bell-like shimmering but loud sustaining Fender cleans. As I posted previously, the Blues Jr. is not giving me that so far (still better than the dark clean channel on the Peaveys, though). Going to try changing the pickup height on the Texas Specials first and foremost. All of my guitars have (mostly) different pickups, from low output to... well, I would simply say I lean towards less resistance for the clearer highs. I think the hottest pickup I own is a Crunch Lab. Funny thing about the Crunch Lab: I have it reversed from all my other guitars, where un-switched the others are all in series and pulling up a knob switches to parallel, but the Crunch Lab un-switched is in parallel and you have to pull up a knob to get full gain. I just don't need that much gain from the pickup for most of what I play. Each guitar is loaded for a certain style. My bridge humbuckers are: an original FRED in the JEM77FP, a Pearly Gates in the home-built Strat-style, a JB in the RG770DX, Eric Johnson DiMarzios in the RG471AH, DiMarzio Crunch Lab in the JEM70VSFG, and a SD Custom Custom in the "USA Custom Exotic Wood" uhhh drat... UCEWFMTB - yikes... that's "USA Custom Exotic Wood Flame Maple Translucent Blue," lol Ibanez). Even my very first p.o.s. Kramer Striker 300ST has a Duncan Custom in it, but that guitar is not playable. It still has the hi-pass cap on it, though! For neck humbuckers I only have SD 59's in the 770 and the USA Custom (cannot recommend that pickup enough!), a DiMarzio Humbucker From Hell in the Floral Print JEM which to my ears is much like a fatter '59, and whatever the stock pickup in the JEM70VSFG is... I think it's an Evolution neck pickup. It sounds good but it's maybe a little darker than I'd like. So, the capacitor thing you mention, I'm all about that. I absolutely hate losing the highs when rolling off the volume. With the right amp, who needs channel-switching, really? quote:- Action. Higher action leads to some nice sustain and what I can only describe as a more vibratey tone. Or lower the strings enough to slightly buzz if you try and get some extra stank on your notes when you want it. That's actually pretty hard to keep up with during change of seasons which fucks with the relief on my guitars. I've got my wrenches and my metal rule handy for final setups before I resume playing around with the amp recordings today, after I've slept. I basically want to find a happy medium between that extra stank and full sustain. I'm pretty picky about that and any guitar that can't be set up that way gets a fret levellin'. I like my low action, and that's not very tolerant of my light-top/heavy bottom strings. Since I'm still playing with the clean tones, I've also pulled out the Talman with the JBE's and the new Tele with the Lindy Fralins. I may have to demo those, too. E: gently caress it. Here's a picture of the two T-Types together. They've urged me on to learn totally new things (which I suck at even more): 
Dr. Faustus fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Jun 11, 2017 |
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Jun 11, 2017 09:30
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Hey bro. Bro. I've seen the cap+resistor solutions on Seymour Duncan's website and elsewhere. That's not how I roll, bro. I solder a cap from the lug to ground on the volume pot and that's it. Different pickups prefer slightly different values. But there ain't no resistors in my circuit (unless you count the potentiometer itself.) I mean bring a Faustus to pedantry competition lol (I'd love to go on but I'd rather not eat a probation. I've been a good little Faust.)
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Jun 15, 2017 00:51
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Dang It Bhabhi! posted:A pot is a resistor, you goob. (Also, there are many add-on hi-pass solutions that include additional caps and resistors wired in parallel, so I didn't know what we were  about, cut me a break I'M NOT TOUCHING YOU I'M NOT TOUCHING YOU!)philkop posted:I took a quick vid showing of the problem. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1yxllUApB24qbD0s8P8llBc2DnzQKteaMIA Any ideas? For actual content: My smuglord "I have a 'blue-line MESA/Boogie MkIII' right here  so why should I wish to mod my lowly Blues Jr.?" Father called me this week to tell me he's watched a video I shared of me doing the mods, and had to order and has now received Fromel's Blues' Jr. mod kit. You guys don't know my Dad, but that is officially "a thing."So for Father's Day I put the 100pF cap from the "phase-inverter oscillation" cure in his father's day card along with the instructions on where to solder it in. It goes over R30. philkop I watched your video specifically to see if your amp noise resembled phase-inverter oscillation, and to me it does not. I'm personally wondering about the tubes, and the wires that attach the tube sockets to the circuit. Here's BillM playing a Blues Jr. (with very bad phase-inverter oscillation) like a Theramin (then he says he installs the cap and the noise goes away completely): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jZCAts_EzA From this page: http://billmaudio.com/wp/?page_id=115 BTW this is my installation of that cap on my amp for more content:  I do hear your amp exhibiting some form of feedback/resonance, but It doesn't comport with Bill's noisy Blues Jr. Sorry, that's all I got.
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Jun 16, 2017 06:02
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I was wondering what people have done with the chassis. I have a friend with an Ear Candy ported 1x12" that I want to try it with. It's definitely something I'm thinking about.
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Jun 16, 2017 20:02
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no dad im not gay! posted:Ported is good but the Fender tone stack and closed back anything usually ends up a muddy mess unless the bass is run at "0". Hell, even Super Reverbs are unbearably tubby beyond "3" on the dial. Trying a different cab is a good litmus test though. The stock cabinet being made of MFD and so cramped inside really lets an otherwise great modding platform down. I've been googling new cabinets/enclosures for the BJ3 and I just can't justify that much more cost. MojoTone has a 2x10" and here I am with a brand new $200 12" Celestion that I still owe $70 on. I'm drawing a line between what this amp (modded or not) can do and what it just cannot. I've already spent a ton of money on a $600 combo. It's amplifier worship, pure and simple; I did it as much for the amp as I did for the project. I wanted to do this and if it's not the Holy Grail that's ok because I always knew a one-channel 1x12" combo was not likely to be all amps for all times. I'm definitely gonna try that ported cab, because that's easy enough: I just have to meet up with my friend and plug in. << That was un-intentionally funny. So if I don't get the great clean headroom and amazing cleans, that's fine because I've never actually used them before. That merely means when this project is complete I can start another! E: I left out the part where it has great crunch and takes pedals well, which is enough reason for me to want to keep it. I'll make a decision on that after I learn the new tone-stack and figure out how to mic it. I always used to get "clean" tones by rolling off the guitar volume. I wanted a Fender Clean Tone™ but I suppose I'll have to wait. If it works like my Peaveys did, then it's drat cool because I can carry it around without needing a "spotter." Dr. Faustus fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Jun 17, 2017 |
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Jun 17, 2017 08:19
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Dang It Bhabhi! posted:Just remember it's the journey not the destination repeat that over and over until you've ship of Theseus'd this motherfucker. What part of the combo is the forecastle? Did I do it already?
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Jun 17, 2017 08:34
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IT'S A SERIES OF DEMOS Today I recorded an all new clean-sound demo of the modded Blues Jr. using, for the first time, my new pair of Mackie CR5BT monitors. I even a/b/c'ed them with my Sony bookshelf speakers and my headphones, and they all sound completely different. I wanted to get to the fun distorted stuff today but I was trying to be somewhat more meticulous about the whole process and ran out of time. Maybe tomorrow. First I'd like to get some feedback on the differences in the clips. I followed philkop's advice and lowered the Texas Specials in my Strat-style guitar (especially on the bass side) and, while the splat didn't go away, it sounded so much better that I actually attempted a section of "Pride And Joy" with just the neck pickup. On my end it doesn't sound fantastic like a Fender with a ton of clean headroom, but it sure as hell sounds better than it did before. For comparison, this is the previous configuration of mics and tone controls: Tone settings:  (Notice how low the master volume is here. This is before installation of the audio-taper pot.) Mic placement:  In this instance both the condenser and the ribbon mic are both kinda pointed near the center of the cone, angled to capture some of the lower frequencies away from the center as well. This is the result of that effort, which I've posted here before: In today's case we can only compare the clean section of this demo to the new demo below. After playing with the mics and the new monitors, I have moved the mics a little. I moved them away from the center of the cone but left the ribbon angled in a bit. I really tweaked the new tone stack: I nearly maxed the Treble and new Presence controls, left the mids pretty scooped, and left the bass up pretty high. Also, since I used it in the "before modding demo" I left the "fat circuit" engaged. I think the amp sounds pretty good here but if I were to move the mics some more I'd probably fiddle with the Treble/Presence and Bass controls, too. Here is the new tone control setup and mic placement:  Note the amp is at about the same overall volume as before but the Master knob is up around 5 to get to the same volume. It still maxes out at the same volume as before (theoretically, it's not like I've had a chance to try that), but you get more granular progression in volume on the lower side of the dial. That's the point of the audio-taper pot as most of you already know. And here is the result of the new recording, using the "reference" monitors as a guide. I *think* it sounds pretty darn good, but this is my first time using these and there may be frequency issues (especially in the bass) from them being in such a cramped space, nearly up against the walls (they're rear-ported so who knows how much bass I heard that was actually just reinforced by my walls and not actually in the recording? Welp, that's why I'm sharing it now.)  As before, it's the Strat-style with the Texas Specials, then the JEM77FP in the "one-up" pickup position (one coil of the FRED with the JEM single-coil together). The chorus and delay are from the tc electronic pedals in front of the input of the amp, and the reverb is a plug-in in Reaper.
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Jun 26, 2017 01:02
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Yep, It's STILL A SERIES OF TUBES: Major scare moment today. I went to the Blues Jr. and cranked the preamp gain to 12 (it goes to 12) and plugged in my MIM Fender Tele with the Lindy Fralin "stock" Tele set (+2% overwound neck, +5% overwound bridge) and dialed in a cool sound for the iconic intro of "Funk 49." I was really digging it (although the modded amp does have a looser low-end distorted than it had stock... or there's just more bass so I notice it more.) I played through the intro a couple times and hit record. I got through the intro and the sound cut out. The sound. It cut out. My amp... it was whispering. It stopped shouting and started whispering. All the knobs worked, but the thing was quiet as a mouse. "OMFG what have I done?!" is what I am thinking. I was so sure my work was clean and perfect and now my amp is dead, where did I go wrong?!?! I tried several guitars and cords to make sure it was the amp. Then I pulled it out of the closet where it was cranked up loud, and set it on my desk. I discharged the circuit and removed the back panel. Visually, I see nothing wrong. No scorch-marks, no black spots on any tubes (I inspected every one under a bright lamp), I smell nothing unusual from the chassis. Everything looks fine. So I got the original 12AX7 tubes that I took out when I put the JJ tubes in, and I pulled out V1 from the tube socket. I put the stock Chinese Groove Tube in V1. Powered up the amp and, BAM: It's loud, large, and back in charge! Ok... I took out the GT and put the V2 JJ in V1, and put the GT in V2. Same deal. Amp sounds great. It's so loud. I put the original V1 JJ back in V1: amp's whispering, there's almost nothing there. Now, (the weird part) I put the good JJ tube from V2 in V1 and put the "suspect" JJ in V2. Amp sounds great! Ok. Ok. Half of that 12AX7 is still there. The other half must be gone. In the end I put the two remaining "known good" JJ tubes in V1 and V2, and put the stock GT in V3. I checked the bias on the output tubes: they'd settled in so I re-biased it back down to -3.4V from about -3.9. I reinstalled the panel and the amp seems to be fine again. The tubes were fine for weeks when the preamp gain was low, but V1 then gave up when I cranked the preamp (volume knob) to max, after about maybe ten minutes at volume. I'd played it at max before, but not for long, or as loud. I guess these things just happen. These JJ's weren't the top tier ones, they were like $11 a piece Slovenian tubes I got from Amazon or Guitar Center online. I forget. I ended up having a really long conversation with my Dad who just this week did the Frommel mods on his Cannibis Rex Blues Jr. He assures me my work is fine, and it was just a fluke bad 12AX7. I hope he's right. It was fun right up until the amp quit, and now I have no time to record the fun stuff until next weekend. Plus I have to reset the amp and mic placement and stuff for recording anyway. I wonder if another tube will die or what? I guess I'll order a new JJ for V1, try to buy higher quality this time. Or something. E: Typos and stuff. Dr. Faustus fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Jun 27, 2017 |
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Jun 27, 2017 01:13
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loving E/N post out of nowhere: The best part of the experience was when I put the stock tube in V1 and the amp came back to life. Up until that point my thought process went something like this: "I bought one of these amps and it dies in ten minutes and I had to exchange it. I could do that, because I hadn't messed with it. I got a new one and goofed around with it for months until all the parts came and then I voided the ever-loving gently caress out of the warranty, so if I accidentally ruined this thing I have to take it to a real amp tech to diagnose it while I make the last payment on it this month." Then I swapped some tubes around and all was well. Live and learn! I'm mostly disappointed I didn't get to record any fun full-tilt Blues Jr. stuff today. That was high on my list. (But on another note I took my dog to the vet for a teeth-cleaning and it ended up costing way more than I thought it would, and I found out her kidneys are failing because she's almost 16 years old and I have to put her on prescription food, and fish oil, and a vaso-dialator med to slow down a problem that's only going to get progressively worse. She's a good girl but she's getting up there in years. Plus I've had no sleep due to the vet stuff so overall it's been a rough day. And I still have all the prep to do for starting my work-week tomorrow: laundry, cooking, etc.) I really wanted to jam the gently caress out. VV That's not a bad idea at all. She deserves it and I write only when inspired. I think I'm inspired. Thanks. VV Dr. Faustus fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Jun 27, 2017 |
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Jun 27, 2017 02:28
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jwh posted:Remember, they're just fancy lightbulbs. They don't live forever. I don't know what kind of voltage Fender puts on the plates of the V1 tube, but it's probably pretty 'normal'. The only thing I am concerned about is what if (pure speculation) the amp makes a habit of burning up the tubes I put in V1? No evidence for that except this one, half-dead tube. And I'm really sorry about interjecting dog-chat in the thread. It's not a good derail. As far as a song goes, that's actually interesting to me because her actual story is an interesting one and I have come up with some lyrical ideas and themes that could make a for a song that you might not know from the lyrics that it's even about someone's pet dog. It could be about anyone. I like doing stuff like that so I will probably work something up. Sorry about the derail. She's doing fine for now.
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Jun 28, 2017 00:58
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^^Everything he said^^ I'd say that depends on the build-quality. For example, when the Blues Jr. came out it had knobs that were designed to rest on the actual control plate surface. You could push down or face-plant on one and it would be ok. Then people decided they wanted different colors or styles of knobs and they didn't come with that built-in stock-knob extension. So, you bend over to tweak the Mids and push a little too hard, say you overbalanced and leaned some of your weight on the control knob. Without that extra bit of plastic, now your pressure on the knob is transmitted straight down the shaft of the pot and the whole potentiometer breaks out through the back, killing the amp. Fender solved this by making the little extension below the chicken-head knobs into a stand-alone part that sits fits, like a bushing, into the control-plate and now you can use any replacement knob you like, as long as you have those little bushings to put under the knobs. Crazy, right? This is the kind of thing that happens when an amp company keeps chasing ways to cut costs, and I'm sure it varies by amp. So, with that example out of the way, I am going to say this: I practiced, gigged, and lived by two Peavey 50W combos. 1 Peavey Classic 50 (a 4x10" combo amp that I adore) and 1 Peavey Blues Classic (the exact same circuit and cabinet but with 1 15" speaker in it.) I loved my Classic 50 and wanted another, but couldn't find another 4x10" to go with it but a local store had a used Blues Classic 1x15". Having had some experience with multi-amp setups, I thought at the time, "Hey, it's two of the same amp, just with different speaker loadouts. This should give me cooler stereo separation and a little complementary sounds that come together better than two of exactly the same thing!" And I was right. The 1x15" actually had a harsher, more MESA/Boogie character to its distortion and also sparkled better than the 4x10" in stereo so if I ever bother to play the clean channel, the two amps together sounded better than either one alone. I tell this history because in all the many years I relied on this rig, these amps never failed. Not once. I retubed them once in like 1994 and they still have the same tubes in them and they still sound amazing (they're just too loud for my apartment, too heavy for me to carry around, and all the outboard gear I used to effects has passed away due to age and lack of replacement parts.) My recommendation is to have backup tubes, and a can of decent component cleaner/lubricant spray for your pots and jacks. Most tube amps can take a decent beating and anything that doesn't actually warp the chassis/break the tubes will probably cause a rip in the cover or slash in the grille cloth but tube amps are not, in my experience (my friends have tube amps of every stripe and we get together to play them from time to time) delicate flowers. Backup tubes, pot cleaner, and lots and lots of spare cables and power supplies for the rest of your rig and you're fine, unless you tend to drop them off the stage or out of the car/van/truck a lot. Invest in road cases if you can deal with the expense and weight. Tube amps are fantastic and they hold up for 20+ years, until the capacitors start to dry out and fail; at which time you've got a serious restoration on your hands. Tube sockets can be re-tensioned. Tubes can be replaced with ease (usually). Pots and jacks are always going to get dirty. The rest of this technology is drat-near bullet-proof. That's just my $0.02. P.S. - Sorry for your loss. You coined two great terms in your post: "Amplifiers: Dogs Are Basically Tube Amps When You Think About It" and "One-Eyed Terrier Shuffle." Thanks so much for the kind words and don't change a thing. If your tune is half as clever and funny (or bittersweet) as these, you're a cool dude™. E: loving typos as usual. Dr. Faustus fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Jun 28, 2017 |
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Jun 28, 2017 01:42
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So V1 died and I noodled around and ordered a replacement. Yeah, I pretty much went for the snake-oil. The hype. I put in a JJ/Tesla ECC83S "Gold" tube. I'll mic it up and see if it survives a recording session. In the meantime it's burning in. I took a couple pictures because I like these tube pics.  
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Jul 2, 2017 08:54
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no dad im not gay! posted:This became so common in my shop with JJ's last year that I stopped stocking them. Lots of JJ preamp tubes that tested low, intermittent, and or shorted right out of the box. Had a hellacious month of warranty work with amps that returned with low, or no output. The amp would work consistently before being cleared to leave and come back a couple weeks later. My supplier chalked it up as a normal event but it was something like 6 out of every 10 tubes affected in the 12ax7, at7, au7 etc family. Hadn't had a problem with JJ up until then but I've since moved onto Shuguang preamp tubes. Those have their own issues with increased likelihood of microphonics early on into use, but they consistently peg my tube tester with good emission ratings and have a similar mid-high tone to JJ's albeit a little grainier. I kinda doubt my amp is eating V1 tubes (why would it? The mods I performed don't affect them AFAIK?) but I'll be sharing clips and talking tubes after this purchase/installation. I've never heard of Shuguang preamp tubes but like I said, I just came back to tubes. I recall buying Groove Tubes in the mid 90's and they were supposedly great if they were not Chinese. So much FUD, and that was over twenty years ago. The amp is full on and still burning in. The next demos I record will be full-preamp gain. You guys will be the first to know. I think my hang-up is that the V1 was fine for over a month, then went half-dead and scared the hell out of me. Then again, it was an $11 Slovenian JJ ECC83S. Maybe the others will croak, too? I'll report my results. Thanks again for your perspective. Things change.
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Jul 2, 2017 10:20
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Hi. I spent a large portion of my day off today playing with mic placement and setting the tone-stack on my modded Blues Jr. I relied on my new Mackie monitors to dial in the sound, but I'm still not sure if what I am hearing in the recording is what the amp is putting out. Details: I'm using a large diaphragm condenser mic and a ribbon mic to mic the combo. I've noticed that when I set them facing the speaker in certain ways, they actually capture very similar sounds (although the mic preamp gain settings are wildly different.) Today I moved both the ribbon and condenser mics closer to the speaker center because I just wasn't hearing the highs I thought I should. It wasn't ear fatigue. It might have been the new monitors, though. They seem very bassy (this may be due to their placement near walls) and the highs might be muted. You'll have to let me know. Procedural: I put the mics in front of the combo and cranked the preamp gain to full. Treble and Presence nearly maxed out to achieve that brightness and pick-attack. The "Fat circuit" is engaged (this adds lows and also gain.) You can see the bass is about 1/2 and this mids are way down. Why? Because this amp after modding seems to ride a fine line between a Boogie/Carvin "woofy/wooly/loose" low-end and a more British tight low-end, specifically based on what I do with the bass and mid controls. Reminder that Bill Machrone stated his surprise at how low the mid tone knob frequency was. The "Twin-Stack" mod allows me to dial that out completely if I choose, but I left some in to avoid a very mid-scooped sound. Now, whether that worked or not depends on what you hear. It sounds very full and bright on my Mackies, it has less lows and more highs on my Sony speakers, and sounds thin and bad in my Sony headphones. So I am at a loss. Here I present to you a new clip of the amp, with the tone stack as pictured. It's a bit of "Sombody Get Me a Doctor (Faustus)" from Van Halen II. No pedals. Just the JEM77FP (That's an original DiMarzio FRED pickup) and the amp, with the reverb added in Reaper. No EQ or post-processing such as normalization or additional EQ at all. This is all mic-placement and the guitar and the amp. My question is about the monitor mix I hear and especially the EQ. Are you hearing what I hear: It sounds full and bright and surprisingly bassy on my setup. How about on your end? Pictured: the mic placement and tone-stack settings:  The recorded clip:  Can I trust these monitors? Is it too shrill? Mids lacking or over-represented? Decent bass, too much bass, or no bass at all? If this sounds to you the way it does to me, I can go full-steam ahead next weekend, and begin to wrap up the modding project and start making music with my new amp. If not I'll need to evaluate how to compensate for the differences between what I am hearing and what I think I am recording. If you take the time to respond, you have my sincere thanks. P.S. - This is the same amp with the new V1 installed as posted above. It played for hours with no issues.
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Jul 4, 2017 00:15
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Yeah. Me, too. I thought I was clear enough, but I guess not. I'm trying to see and hear what I can accomplish with this 1x12" open-back combo. In my post I even asked for thoughtful input on what frequencies you heard or missed, given the recording setup. "kinda wanna hear that though a larger cab" does nothing to help me decide if I can record it better with different mic-placement or tone-stack settings. quote:Can I trust these monitors? Is it too shrill? Mids lacking or over-represented? Decent bass, too much bass, or no bass at all? Dr. Faustus fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Jul 4, 2017 |
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Jul 4, 2017 06:26
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Thanks, guys! That's exactly the kind of feedback I needed. I have a Tube Driver (back when Korg was making them) which I love, but more recently I bought an OCD (v4) with the 18V power supply and it's like magic. It's the best "more" pedal I've ever played. Right now I'm demoing the amp solo, but just wait until you hear it with the OCD in front, just as a clean boost. It's awesome. Surprised by the lack of bass. I must be getting a lot of bass reinforcement from my rear-ported monitors reflecting bass off the walls. I need to move them (and maybe move that condenser mic.)
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Jul 4, 2017 20:23
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Wark Say posted:The OCD basically kicked the Tube Screamer off my board. While I still rent them out or use them with my JCM800, the OCD is basically what I take on local gigs. If I had to make a comparison, the Tube Screamer is like a crazy dude who's always sporting a poo poo-eating grin, whereas the OCD is the guy who's all calm and stuff... until he flashes you a "You have no idea who you're loving with" grin and boom! Knocks you on your rear end. I played a few songs with his band a few years back. His guitarist had the same Classic 50 that I had used forever, and he asked me if I wanted extra gain. I said, yeah, a little. He said, boost or distortion. "Boost, please." He reached down, pointed out the OCD, and said, kick that on when you need it. I started the song and the dude rushes in, tweaks a couple knobs, and rushes back out. The sound out of the monitor was blowing my hair back and the tone was just fantastic. That was when I knew I had to have one. It's so versatile and it can be very transparent if you need it to be, or it can give you very useable brightness if you like, and the drive goes much higher than I can ever see myself needing. I love the drat thing.
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Jul 5, 2017 01:52
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I'm no amp tech but an amp blowing power tubes is seriously worrisome. When power tubes blow they often take entire portions of the power section with them, which can get expensive quickly. I'd recommend taking it to an amp tech before doing anything else with it.
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Jul 6, 2017 22:47
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Also, I know you addressed the 4-Ohm minimum but power sections don't like to see lower impedance than they are designed for. The saying I was taught was "Low into High will fly, High into Low won't go." Are you sure the power section is cool with seeing a 4-Ohm load? Either way, if it's blown power tubes I'd still let a tech test it out to make sure the rest of the power section survived.
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Jul 7, 2017 01:04
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That is some cool gear and I thank you for sharing it. I didn't mean to come off as dogmatic before, it's just that my own Dad has drilled certain rules into my head and he just recently embarked on and completed a many-month quest to repair his MESA/Boogie MKIII which, upon blowing a power tube, also blew out several resistors and other components in the power amp section of his combo. He took it on as a fun project and spent a lot of time sourcing caps, resistors, etc. and even spent a lot of time on the phone with techs from MESA. (He also owns a pair of Fender Champs, but I don't know which ones. They have different speakers, that's all I know.) The difference between my Dad and myself is he's an actual engineer and doing something as crazy as re-capping, reconstructing, and slightly altering an amp that, to him, is a prized possession is a thing he (as a retiree) really enjoyed doing. He was the first phone call I made when my Blues Jr. went quiet on me when a basically brand-new V1 died and I feared it was possibly due to my mods on the amp. He helped me figure it out but V1 is a preamp tube and the work I did was mostly on the tone-stack and the output section, so I was very relieved when my power tubes were fine and simply swapping out V1 for another 12AX7 brought it back to life. I could take on a simple mod project, I thought; and I think I did but... Speaking for myself, had it been a power tube blow-out I'd be saving up money to take the amp to a tech and that's why I keep saying that. That said, it looks to me as though you have your amp needs covered and I hope you get your Champ sorted.
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Jul 7, 2017 07:19
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It's Sunday, so it's time for another Faustus Blues Jr. demo clip! (groan) I keep trying to mix it up, so this is a little more Van Halen stuff, bits of Drop Dead Legs. I just recently learned how to play it right and there's a bend in there that I have trouble with on my light-top/heavy bottom strings. I really tweaked the tone stack and with the bass up the amp really does get very loose in the low end, so I tried to keep it tight. I also maxed the Treble and upped the Presence a little more, and I'm wondering if it's too ice-picky. So, I give you "Dirty Demo #2." Since I needed to Detune to Drop-D I used the Strat Style which has a fairly appropriate Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates in the bridge. The clean-ish intro is the pickup in parallel, the rest is the same pickup in series. No added gain or EQ. Reverb added in Reaper. The timing is off a bit because I was just playing the riffs, not grooving with the drums which is what this song is so very good at.  Any comments are welcome. I feel the highs/presence are a bit much, but maybe you'll hear something different. Dr. Faustus fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Jul 10, 2017 |
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Jul 9, 2017 23:58
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I post a serious amp circuit question but of course anyone may respond: One thing I noticed and have commented is that my post-mods Blues Jr. is better in a lot of ways but in this one way, it bothers me: If I turn up the bass EQ knob, the low-end gets, as I described it to Andrew Machrone of BillM Mods: “loose, woofy, woolly, wubby, flubby." It's true. The amp had tight "British" low end before the mods and now it's demonstrably loose. I also compared the new sound to "MESA/Boogie, old Carvins, and some Fenders." I asked him if there might be any one component to blame for this. He responded. quote:Your amp should not be wubby. None of that would cost me anything but time (lots of it, unless I hit the jackpot on the first try.) You guys who know amplifiers, can you guess as to what made the amp go all loose in the low-end when it wasn't loose before? I note, it's tied directly to the bass EQ knob: the more bass I dial in, the looser it gets. Before I set off on a mission, can anyone help me figure out why a previously tight Blues Jr. is now... not tight? I like to play with full pre-amp gain and get some crunchy rock tones. It's ok but not great when the low notes go all flubby. What causes that?
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Jul 15, 2017 07:58
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Considering what I just committed myself to with this new Strat, I will not be looking at anything that might tempt me to spend yet more. Looks like it wouldn't fit the little Blues Jr. chassis anyway. It's smaller. I don't own any cabinets! GET THEE FROM ME!
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Jul 23, 2017 00:31
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Dang It Bhabhi! posted:Hand-wiring vs a pcb? Makes a BIG difference? The main rationale for hand-wiring being superior is that you can make the wiring non-linear/non-parallel to "reduce inductance" but to be honest I doubt any of that would pass a double-blind listening test. Although on the flip side (I've told this story before), the owner of this company did catch a mistake just by listening to a preamp: We'd used the wrong brand of stranded wire. I'm not kidding, we used two brands of stranded wire in this preamp, and one was for the rest of the assembly and another was just for the selector switch/input jack connections. They were both the same gauge stranded wire, same materials as far as I could tell. The unit was built, tested, the bottom installed, and burned in overnight. He put it through his listening test through his products and these insane speakers, and brought it to us with the bottom still on it. He told us we'd probably used the wrong brand of wire on the selector switch and I thought he must have peeked or something, because no way you could hear something like that. I was wrong. He was right. We had used the wrong brand of wire and he had not peeked first. That kinda blew my loving mind, man. I enjoyed that work, but it sucked earning $7.25/hr to turn out 70-watt power amps that cost tens of thousands of dollars (just the powert tubes alone were $1k/set). I didn't learn anything about amp circuits, just the solder-jockey/assembly work. So in my estimation a well-designed PCB is no better or worse than hand-wiring but that's just my $0.02.
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Jul 29, 2017 21:05
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To be honest I was not even thinking about the practicality of working on hand-wired circuits. I assumed the debate was "which sounds better" but please forgive me, I worked for those guys and had to deal with it. In terms of practicality, it's a lot harder to mess up a connection on a turret or something than it is to accidentally lift or destroy a trace on a PCB. Cutting/drilling PCB, scraping and repairing traces; these are things I would rather not have to do. I wasn't thinking about that part when I replied.
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Jul 30, 2017 07:14
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