Wow! Lots of activity in the thread while I've been busy away for a couple days.
Further to the resistor code conundrum, found this on Rob Robinette's excellent amp site, a copy of Rob Hull's colour calc:
Definitely +1 on a nice DMM
If you have an Android phone, theres an app called ElectroDoc that has a ton of useful info, calculators, etc. Its a lot easier than googling it every time.
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Thanks for that.
I've been using Mila's Tools on my iPhone for converting microfarad to nanofarad etc, plus there are other unit conversions that are quite helpful such as imperial to metric etc... very handy. Couldn't find a screenshot of capacitance, so here's the logo to look for on the App store for those interested in getting it...
Very cohesive look to all your pedals, very pleasing aesthetic.
Did you produce the PCB for your Traynor Monoblock yourself?
Inspiring. I was going to build that on Perf, but if a PCB is available, that's preferred.
PedalPCB Chaos Machine nearly there... another one that fits nicely into my favourite larger enclosure (1590Q):
I've never had a 1590Q, but I need some and am a fan of this Hammond size!
GOOD NIGHT SWEET LITTLE PRINCETON
Latest and last installment of adventures in amp-building, well at least for the orphaned Little Princeton.
Last night: Replaced a few more caps for better ones. Did some more tube rolling, including a proper rectifier tube. All tubes made a noticeable tone difference, A/B-ing the caps, likewise — even some of the caps that I thought weren't in the main signal path but are in a circular electrical pathway ie replacing one of the caps to ground off the 6V6 — cleaned the bass up, gave it more definition.
I was pleased with the tone prior to the cap changes/tube rolling last night. We'd done some tube rolling previously and replaced a couple of caps with improvements in sound, but last night really capped it... heh. When your eyesight goes slightly off, perhaps you don't even realise it until you visit your optometrist for an annual checkup or are trying to get your pilot's license or whatever — you don't notice how bad the focus is as it deteriorates so slowly, then BAM! The ol' spice-weasel of optical corrective lenses sharpens everything up. For those of you with 20/20 vision, just take a camera, binoculars, telescope and mess with the focus, you'll see what I mean.
Well that's what it's like for the tone. It's nice and pleasant and sounds good — then you make a few cap changes and put in some good tubes and suddenly all those descriptors you've read about come to life before your very ears: "It was like a wet blanket had been lifted off my tone" blah blah blah etc. The notes rang more clearly, with less cluttering overtones obscuring the note and its pitch... like somebody whispering to you in a crowd and getting about half of what they say, then you go in a private empty room Far From the Madding Crowd and hear not only all the words being said, but every inflection with its sub-textual meanings, inferences and allusions.
When I started pedal-building, didn't know if it would take or if I'd stick with it, so I bought everything cheaply, dipping toes in the solder. I've since upgraded my iron, and I've been looking at Wima and Panasonic caps for a while now, but it's time to make that order. I may have to go over old builds or build some circuits anew based on what I've learned from this amplifying endeavour.
Rather I should say relearn, as I've long known that quality ingredients make a better bread. You can get bread cheaply, with lots of fillers that bloat your stomach, and then you can get bread that fills your stomach and fulfills your soul. You can go out of your way and buy bread from a boutique boulangerie and whether it's worth the high price or not varies from person-to-person. Personally, I can't stand wondrous bread (you wonder why it's legal to call it bread), but nor am I willing to partake in being took for a simple loaf of bread — somewhere in the middle you get a great bread-loaf for your buck. I'd encourage anyone starting out, baking or soldering to get the best possible ingredients they can afford, without getting into sniffing cork fumes.
So the decent bang-for-the-buck caps stayed in the Little Princeton, the mojo-reference tubes were culled and the scrappy vacuums pulled back into service. This little amp was orphaned by its owner due to its various problems, the difficulties passed on to me to rectify. The transformer was dead from the get-go, the chassis was created in a mirror image of what it should be, various other sub-standard parts ... all short-comings replaced or worked around and now Little Orphan Ampy is going back to Daddy Warbuzzcut who will have to find a new rectifier tube at the very least. Once that's sorted, it'll sound good even with the pre and power tubes that are in it. Up to Warbuzzcut whether to spend a bit on some tube upgrades other than the mandatory rectifier (which still works if you put a small block of "tone-wood" on top of it) and make it sound great.
I reinstalled the amp chassis back in its pine box, and bade it farewell.
Heaps of thanks to my Amp-Sifu for patience, pointers and pedagogy — and prompting, pressing, prodding, pushing, propelling me whenever my compelling passion for the project plunged.
Now on to my own amp's repair, the non-pedal build, and Godot knows what else ...
... see what sort of tone I can bake in.
