Elams1894 has been at it again!

[Jay]

Unread postby bbrunskill » Thu Nov 27, 2014 8:14 am
I watched a couple of his videos. Guy is a genius. makes some amazing stuff!

Agreed - I think he is the best DIY'er on the forum. I like the way he makes his own jigs rather than going to Stewmac.....

And full marks for designing the valve amp - I would not know where to start

JB - did you PM him to say we are discussing his latest handiwork. He might like to chip in....

[GrantB]

Hah...I can relate, callingcard!

[Slowy]

I find it amazing but creepy - so under control.
If it were me in my shed I'd be digging through my toolbox trying to find something, endlessy fucking around marking something out, head scratching, foul language, stepping outside to pee etc...

He has a Video Edit function.

[tubeswell]

Excellent construction technique

[elams1894]

Thanks Jeremyb for the sahre. I didn't get round to posting it here on NZguitars so really appreciate the share.

Dovetails look great
Amp all together looks weird
Sounds ok at best. Guitar is suitably out of tune for rock the casbah too.

Thanks StrummersOfThunder. It is no secret I cant play to save myself so not surprised it didn't sound great on the clip. Here is a clip of the same amp with my friend playing. He is much better than I and it shows the sound of the amp better. It does have balls, I just can't play is all.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt6ysax7xQ0[/youtube]

Unread postby bbrunskill » Thu Nov 27, 2014 8:14 am
I watched a couple of his videos. Guy is a genius. makes some amazing stuff!

Agreed - I think he is the best DIY'er on the forum. I like the way he makes his own jigs rather than going to Stewmac.....

And full marks for designing the valve amp - I would not know where to start

JB - did you PM him to say we are discussing his latest handiwork. He might like to chip in....

Thanks JVPP! Hope you are doing well and that vintage amp is doing good things!

I watched a couple of his videos. Guy is a genius. makes some amazing stuff!

Thanks dude, really appreciate that!

amazing internals, hideous externals!

Yes, the look isn't everyones cup of tea. Looks like a 70's bread bin IMO hahahahah. Just wanted to use carbon in some way.

What are the red resistors? They look like dales, but dales are pinker

The red resistors are PRP, US made stuff, they are pretty good but I really like them for the long leads most to be honest, and the colour is pretty cool.

amazing internals, hideous externals!

Totally this.
I love the way he did the guts, I love his precision, but I hate the way it looks and sounds.

Thanks TmcB!

attention to detail is spectacular though!

Thanks Bg, appreciate the kind words.

[elams1894]

The idea was to create a small, single ended circuit that was as simple as possible to preserve the tone signal, hence no tone stack. I may add in a contour pot however, just to give the option of bringing out the high frequencies. That only includes 1 resistor and 1 cap so isn't too huge. Red resistors are PRP (US) and green resistors are Kiwame (Japan). Caps are jupiter vintage tones (US) and wire is solid copper with cotton braid. I tried to use high end stuff. The PT is a Redfern ripped out of an old valve radio (it can handle up to 5 tubes max), and so is the chassis.

The hard part was get the amp as quiet as possible, in terms of hum and hiss. This took a lot of time and was hard as the crunch channel has 3 gain stages and there is quite a bit of balls there. I took a long time on the layout trying to get it as neat as possible. It is point to point in this layout (turrets as well of course).

It has an eL84 output tube and what you are hearing is about as pure a 3 gain signal you can get to an el84, so I guess one either likes el84 tone.... or not. I am a fan of the tube and the single tube gives a lot of nice harmonics. Its is neither mid scooped nor boosted... just straight in via .022 coupling caps, a .002 bright cap (on first gain stage) and .1 cathode bypass caps on stage 2 for crunch and stage 1 for clean. These caps are switchable to 25uf, which sounds best to my ears in clean mode.

I have extended this circuit to a 4 gain stage beast, which took a while to tweek, and I have some Holden 100w trannies that will complete this big amp. I hope to have that built in the new year.

Thanks again Jeremyb and thanks for all your comments, they are much appreciated.