The Amp Garage

Trace, I was just trying to inject a little humor into this thread with the fairy dust comment. Fair enough, life can always use some humor :) Alexander made a comment on a video about the crystal lattice structure of semiconductors compared to tubes concerning the flow of electrons. Not being an a...

This seems to happen to me all of the time. I find out some seemingly great way to improve my tone or make my amp more robust against oscillations and I can't seem to make it happen. I went to Aiken's site, downloaded the article on cap polarity, went to my scope, performed the test, and there is n...

Anyway, back to the UF diodes, in an amp with a tube rectifier, would a UF diode make an improvement in the bias supply? An improvement would be a matter of taste and with matters of taste there can no right or wrong, just tone. Personally speaking I prefer fast recovery diodes in the bias supply b...

It's a blackface I rescued. It had been modded and I restored it to original values. I kept the blue caps, but I changed out the large ceramics and the big brown caps. I've kept all the original caps, although some that came with the amp do not look stock. The power transformer was stock, the outpu...

True words! Once I've tried the in HiFi circles high regarded Mundorf electrolytics in one of my British Purist - and was extremely disappointed of the result. I can relate to this as well. This is hard to put into words but in my experience; Having tried high-end products (IE: caps, transformers, ...

I know what you mean. I put some in my super reverb and the sound became sterile. It was harsh, colder, I didn't care for it at all. I put in the yellow Mallory's and instantly the sound had depth. What kind of Super Reverb was it IE: black face, silver face, reissue? What kind of transformers are ...

In the studio we'll split hairs between one mix and the next, it's all relative. What sounds good only sounds good until we hear something better. We measure what we can so we have a degree of repeatability.

If you do not mind my asking, who do you work for?


Many thanks
Trace

If you're blueprinting a vintage amp, you have to ignore the value designations and measure every single component. The difference between 100k and 78k in some places makes much more noticeable difference than what the composition is. I couldn’t agree more, well said. Heck, take a pile of 250k pots...

Try the Polypropylenes, as suggested above and maybe better go with F&T's or Sprague's as for the filter caps. I tend to hear and feel a pretty big difference between the F&T's and the Sprauge's. I prefer the F&T's as they feel more open and smoother, perhaps less grainy? It's hard to put into word...

There is a 'mystique' surrounding Dumble amps and people seem to think they need to use special resistors and exactly the same part numbers as Dr.D did to get a good sounding amp.It amounts to a lot of 'fairy dust' and BS. I have worked on a few Dumbles one was epoxied and the others were not. Gene...

Structo wrote:Don't forget the fairy dust liberally sprinkled over select components.
That's the key to the crystal lattice structure!

Forgive me if I'm over looking the obvious but I'm not sure I'm following you?


Happy New Year
Trace

I'm not sure I understand that statement.

Sorry it was a type-o



Trace

even the 5 watt ones don't run hot enough to discolor the PCB underneath unless there's a problem down the line. When a power tube shorts it can put a strain on the screen grid resistors and generally speaking it's not a bad to go with 5 watt screen grids (a little extra insurance never hurts). For...

How hard will it be to convert an MX60A for guitar? Am I getting in over my head? Is it worth doing? I'm very adept in electronics but have yet to tackle something this big. Thanks in advance! Bill Many a bogen has been rebuilt in my day (ha, ha) in all honesty look at it this way, it's better to s...

You can install some JJ 6V6's and rebias - keep in the mind the quality and reliability as of late with JJ's has not been good. Naturally your OT is not designed around 6V6's so there will be a tonal compromise there but aside from that, the amp will over drive a easier and will go into power tube d...