Hoffman Amplifiers Tube Amplifier Forum

Amp Stuff => Tube Amp Building - Tweaks - Repairs => Topic started by: sluckey on April 03, 2011, 10:20:26 am

Title: spaghetti amp
Post by: sluckey on April 03, 2011, 10:20:26 am
Don't look if you have a weak stomach!

http://www.modsbydarrel.com/national_6800_guitar_tube_amp/index.html
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: Leevi on April 03, 2011, 10:28:49 am
At least it is "point-to-point"
/Leevi
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: RicharD on April 03, 2011, 10:29:44 am
Valco made some funky stuffs.
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: Bub on April 03, 2011, 10:37:45 am
Wow! One of the gut shots makes a great screen saver. I could look at that all day.
Schematics anyone?
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: jojokeo on April 03, 2011, 10:43:29 am
That's one of those Gibbs reverb tanks that the Hammond amps use. I guess proper layout wasn't much of a consideration or worry back in the day? Or maybe it's proof that it isn't that big a deal?
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: kagliostro on April 03, 2011, 10:45:48 am
And we spent a lot of time talking about how to prevent hum !   :w2: :w2: :w2: ......................:l2:

Kagliostro
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: plexi50 on April 03, 2011, 11:17:30 am
I wouldnt know where to start looking for a problem if it had one
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: alerich on April 03, 2011, 11:25:13 am
I guess I won't be posting gut shots of any of my builds here then.  :smiley:
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: archaos on April 03, 2011, 11:35:51 am
I guess I won't be posting gut shots of any of my builds here then.  :smiley:

Really ?  :icon_biggrin:
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: sluckey on April 03, 2011, 11:42:20 am
Quote
Schematics anyone?
Nah. Piece of cake to draw your own!    :l2:
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: alerich on April 03, 2011, 12:17:43 pm
Really ?  :icon_biggrin:

Nope. No amp porn from me. They sound great (at least to my ears) but they can't compete with the boutique level stuff that's displayed here.
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: Willabe on April 03, 2011, 01:13:27 pm
How did they even get a soldering iron in there?

How does it even work with out osilating?


                   Brad       :icon_biggrin:
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: Tone Junkie on April 03, 2011, 04:36:18 pm
Oh my goodness thats a busy wiring job.  :l2:
Bill
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: mresistor on April 03, 2011, 04:42:45 pm
FWIW - there's Illinois caps in there that still look good.   :icon_biggrin:
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: jeff on April 03, 2011, 05:47:07 pm
Pass the parmesan.
What's the buzzer?
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: PRR on April 03, 2011, 06:57:19 pm
That's neat work. The larger Webcor tape recorders were much less organized. Before PCBs, tube TVs took the cake.

I wish (not!) that I could take a picture of my house wiring. Even to an old Webcor fixer, it's messy. So messy that last week I turned off a breaker, cut a wire, and heard the breaker snap. Wrong circuit. Just can't be sure where anything goes. Started a long-term project to organize.

At least the last wirer was honest. One of the disconnected wires has written on it "I dont know where this wire goes to!"
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: RicharD on April 03, 2011, 07:52:32 pm
>"I dont know where this wire goes to!"

I love finding things like this.  I've left a few note behind myself, especially when you find something really misleading such as a 2 directional feed thru box.  If you can't fix it, try to make it safe for the next guy.

I would suspect this is not the highest gain amp in the world + it's dual output.  You can break a few more rules as gain goes down.
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: DummyLoad on April 03, 2011, 10:39:47 pm
i worked on a grestch chet atkins that looked like that - not quite as bad though. it was a 6169. the compliment was called the fury whp's cabinet had 2 x12" and the chet atkis cabinet had 1 x15" and 1 x12".
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: kagliostro on April 04, 2011, 12:50:25 am
My uncle job was about methane pipeline protection against stray currents

so his job was to build or fix some units along to the pipeline that give a little voltage to the pipe to prevent it to be perforated,

there was one of that units that don't want to do his job and many technical worked for many weeks to try to fix it

my uncle fixed it in 3 days

he removed all the wires inside the unit and rebuild each connection, that was the only way to answer the question "I dont know where this wire goes to!"

Kagliostro
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: Frankenamp on April 04, 2011, 12:52:23 am
That's neat work. The larger Webcor tape recorders were much less organized. Before PCBs, tube TVs took the cake.

I wish (not!) that I could take a picture of my house wiring. Even to an old Webcor fixer, it's messy. So messy that last week I turned off a breaker, cut a wire, and heard the breaker snap. Wrong circuit. Just can't be sure where anything goes. Started a long-term project to organize.

At least the last wirer was honest. One of the disconnected wires has written on it "I dont know where this wire goes to!"

Sounds like Fox & Hound time...
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: plexi50 on April 04, 2011, 09:50:07 am
Lots of nice pic's. I cant find them now! I wanted to add a part that was missing!
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: John on April 04, 2011, 08:11:01 pm
http://www.modsbydarrel.com/national_6800_guitar_tube_amp/0%20290.html

One of the niftier 404 pages I've seen though.  :worthy1:
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: sluckey on April 04, 2011, 09:30:14 pm
The link was tied to this ebay auction (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&_trksid=p4340.l2557&rt=nc&nma=true&item=110667277955&si=%252BgX030GSbhos6g1HhHwPW59S4Oc%253D&viewitem=&sspagename=). Nothing lasts forever.    :grin:
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: billcreller on April 08, 2011, 06:54:55 am
I always called that "rat's nest wiring"  :icon_biggrin: My old National, isn't nearly that bad, since it's only 5 tubes!  I've built 6 clones of it, but only one with that wiring mess.  Rolled the schematic over into turret board layouts for the rest, which really spoils us for changing parts and finding problems.

 That one in the pics would be fun to work on !
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: birt on April 09, 2011, 02:48:51 pm
i have a philips AG9015. the cool thing about this rats nest is that the service manual has a layout drawing, with all those wires!

http://frank.pocnet.net/instruments/Philips/AG9015/AG9015.pdf (scroll through the pdf to find it)
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: jeff on April 16, 2011, 09:28:04 am
 I know poeple throw around the term LOL pretty loosely but that last page really made me laugh out loud.
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: Platefire on April 18, 2011, 10:34:31 am
That is one of the busist ones I've seen. Kinda resembles the mod I just did on my Revere 5DC3 or in the same spirit. Hay! this is a tube amp tradition we got to keep going now  :laugh:
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: Rich on April 18, 2011, 11:27:55 am
At least you can see and get at everything.
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: kagliostro on August 12, 2016, 06:44:43 pm
If the National 6800 was called Spaghetti Amp, how we can call this Zenith chassis, ratatouille ?


(http://i.imgur.com/lxkU91i.jpg)


 :l2: :l2: :l2:


Franco

Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: sluckey on August 12, 2016, 07:01:19 pm
That looks like every tv set from the early '60s.
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: super&plexi on August 12, 2016, 07:04:36 pm
As fsr as the Ratatouille amp goes, it must be quiet,  I can only see one filter cap at the top middle!   I don't know about the spaghetti it won't let me view it but I'm guessing it has a tone perfect for Sergio Leone movies.
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: HotBluePlates on August 13, 2016, 11:55:40 am
That looks like every tv set from the early '60s.

This suddenly puts "Muntzing" into perspective...
_____________
Muntz: "Why do you need all these parts? What does this circuit do over here?"

Engineer: "Well that's a high gain stabilized stage for long-range.."

Muntz: [SNIP!!]

Engineer: "Hey what's the idea?!? Why'd you cut that out??"

Muntz: "The t.v. seems to work fine without it. You're killing our margins with all these parts & wires..." SNIP! SNIP! SNIP!

Engineer: "Great you just killed the picture."

Muntz: "Oops, put that last one back in..."


Apparently Muntz sold t.v. sets mainly to urban markets with nearby transmitters. Beautifully engineered circuits with lots of parts to help reception of distant stations had parts cut out seemingly at random to find the minimum parts necessary to make the t.v. work for local recpetion and to just cross the warranty finish-line.
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: shooter on August 13, 2016, 09:39:13 pm
Quote
That looks like every tv set from the early '60s.
yes it does!  I did some TV repair in the late 70's and actually loved chasing around inside the oldies moldies, getting them outta the 'ol folks car...... :think1:
Title: Re: spaghetti amp
Post by: PRR on August 14, 2016, 01:04:36 am
> Muntz sold t.v. sets mainly to urban markets with nearby transmitters.

No fool.

RCA/GE made sets with 100 mile range. Who lives 100 miles from a city? Some hundreds of farmers or loggers. Meanwhile IN the 10-20 mile area of the city is 100K-5Meg potential buyers who don't have any use for 100 mile range, 10 miles is often ample. Hundreds of times more buyers who can enjoy a half-price set. (Not half because as you shrink the little stuff, the massive CRT becomes the sticking-point; also Muntz was doing fine without cutting profits as much as circuits.)

Some of this later became a problem. Muntzes had poor selectivity. When there was one TV station in town, OK. Three stations could be spaced 3-6-10 and a Muntz would get just one (unless another was very nearby). But when 12 was allocated above 10, and the wind was blowing right, baseball would crap-up educational TV. An RCA would nail the station you wanted.