The Amp Garage

I'm pretty concerned too, but am holding out for positive thoughts.

Tom has always been the first one to welcome people on the forum, and always has something positive to say.

Sure wish somebody at least knew Tom's last name or phone number.

The 8BQ5 works OK in place of a 6BQ5. Seems to break up pretty early compared to the 6BQ5 though. That would be expected. I have a good stash of sweet EL84's here, and will probably never mess with these 8BQ5's. So if anybody wants them.... One is a Tung Sol and is a little noisier than I like, but ...

Do you think running tubes on lower than spec filament voltage would promote cathode stripping?

I ended up with a couple 8BQ5's from a box of junk I picked up at a salvage yard. I found a few good tubes I can use, but I don't want to mess with the 8BQ5's. They are identical to a 6BQ5 (aka EL84!!!) except they have an 8 volt filament. Anybody want them? Free for the taking. They are not tested,...

Enjoy your retirement RJ! I'm getting really anxious to hang up my career too. Where in Colorado will you be?

Well, I never did find a schematic, but I just made a wild guess that the blown cathode bypass cap might be a 25uF/25V and the amp seems to sound fine with that value. Don't know if that is really the cap Tony would want in there, but if they won't release schematics, then I'll just go with my best ...

Hi Rooster,

Did you ever come up with a schematic? I have a Bruno TB18 that someone needs repaired and I can't find a schematic anywhere on the internet.

They must have some kind of secret proprietary sauce that VOX doesn't want everybody to know about.

ESD protection? Pretty fancy board to not have your smock and wrist strap.

Keep in mind that some tubes don't like to be mounted horizontally. And some need to be oriented a certain way if they are mounted horizontally. Check the data sheet. I know it is fine to do with some tubes, but I just hate to do it because I feel like the tubes are more fragile in that orientation....

Wow. I think I missed that decade. I was listening to Hendrix while all that was going on.

Good point about the woodworking in a different area.

Also, never do metal work (drilling, grinding, etc.) anywhere near your speakers - the tiny metal frags will end up stuck to the speaker magnets.

LED's are amazing. Very bright, low power consumption, they hardly ever go bad. A single LED bulb hooked to a 9V battery will just about blind you. I can't find anything wrong with them. We have been slowly phasing all the light bulbs in our house over to LED's. Now I need to figure out how to get a...

I've been thinking I need a separate bench just for disassembling and reassembling amps that I am repairing. Sometimes you need a lot of room to do that. A big table with lots of room and good light. And then a separate bench for doing the actual wiring/soldering, with a good magnifier light. I thin...

The Champ is really one of the sweetest, most pure, organic sounding amps out there. And so easy to build. Every amp builder should have one!

I just changed the 27k to a 47k to the 8 ohm tap on my JTM45/50/5f6A I was trying to debug. I got the idea from a comment on that thread from pdf64 (thanks!). I found that I liked the sound better with the 47k - more low end and very smooth. The 27k gave me a little more treble, more bite, slightly ...