sluckey's Deluxe Lite - BF-Tweed 2x12 Super

[Papa Jim]

It looks great.

[BobL]

Getting the board in here, I forgot how brutal these narrow panel tweed chassis are to work in. Tight tight.

[BobL]

Welp, got a working amp.


I must be learning, because this is the first time I've built something and didn't have to troubleshoot some sort of problem the first time I tried to power it up.  Everything just worked!


Of course the reason is that I took my time... I forced myself to work in chunks, stop, go over what I did the next day to find any mistakes, then move on to the next chunk.


Amp is pretty dang loud, but on initial play, seems to have a lot of the same mojo that I love in the Princeton.


I ended up going with a pair of WGS speakers in here - an ET65, which is their sorta Creamback speaker, and a G12C/S, a smooth cone C12N sort of speaker.  Seems like a nice combination.


I somehow got my cutout and faceplate measurements messed up, so it's not *quite* as cool as it could be, but who's going to look at the controls other than me? :)








Couple clips. Just phone audio, so... yeah.


http://www.boblefevremusic.com/temp/TwinSuper/twinsuper_clean_2.mp4
http://www.boblefevremusic.com/temp/TwinSuper/twinsuper_dirt.mp4

[sluckey]

That turned out really nice. Great sound too.   

[BobL]

That turned out really nice. Great sound too. 

It's all in the fingers, right? ;)

[davidwpack]

Nice! I used the G10 C/S on my last cabinet. Paired it with a 12" Scumback. Those WGS are nice aren't they?

[BobL]

Nice! I used the G10 C/S on my last cabinet. Paired it with a 12" Scumback. Those WGS are nice aren't they?

Yeah, I'm impressed.  Pretty warm for a new speaker.

[BobL]

Took this to rehearse with the band last night, and it did pretty good.  Spent a few minutes with the volume up around 7, and good grief did it sound great... so loud though. :)


Found it a little gainy, so this morning I spent some time messing w/ the R14, which I had removed.  Clipped in both a 470K and a 270K and compared to nothing.  No resistor wins for cranking the amp to get power tube gain, but for actual usable volume, the 270K was the winner.  It cut gain and some high frequencies that were a little harsh, smoothed the whole thing out a bit, and brought the actual volume down a bit, which was good as it lets me push the volume a bit more.


The way I run my rig these days is using pedals to control volume and gain and retain headroom, and the 270K let me do this nicely. It ain't old school, but it's sure as hell useful live where I'm singing and there are parts going from loud to soft to lead and back and forth many times per song.


Definitely need to break the speakers in some more... considering grabbing one of these $50 variacs I see on ebay for that.

[SILVERGUN]

Definitely need to break the speakers in some more... considering grabbing one of these $50 variacs I see on ebay for that.

Variac is not necessary. An appropriate low volt transformer will work fine. Use a filament or rectifier winding off any PT.
The process doesn't require perfection. If your math says you can use 12V and wind up with 6V then so be it....just run it longer without fear of burning it up.

Congrats on the build, it looks and sounds great!

[BobL]

Definitely need to break the speakers in some more... considering grabbing one of these $50 variacs I see on ebay for that.

Variac is not necessary. An appropriate low volt transformer will work fine. Use a filament or rectifier winding off any PT.
The process doesn't require perfection. If your math says you can use 12V and wind up with 6V then so be it....just run it longer without fear of burning it up.

Congrats on the build, it looks and sounds great!

Online you can find tone generators... I'm also wondering about just plugging one of those at 60Hz into the amp and turning it on and letting it run for a few hours here and there.


Any reason not to just do that? Wear and tear on tubes?

[sluckey]

Might find out how tough your amp is. 

A variac ***AND*** a 12.6VAC/4A with center tap are two might handy things to have if you think you may stick to this hobby for a while. Lot more uses than just burning in speakers. My variac is a permanent fixture on my workbench and my 12V tranny is in my test equipment cabinet.

Want to know the primary impedance of that good looking OT you salvaged but didn't write down any info? Grab your variac and 12V transformer.

Wanna measure and record the voltages of that amp you just built? Plug it into your variac and keep the line voltage at 120VAC. Do the same 20 years later when you are troubleshooting that amp.

Wanna bring an old garbage find amp up slowly to try to rejuvenate the old tired filter caps?   Variac time.

[shooter]

Variac time

in the way back days we used one of this guys bigger brothers to ramp a bruker MRI everyday    One we used was 480 3ph 100A/phase

[PRR]

Break-in your speaker with the same MUSIC you want it to play for a living.

Straight 60Hz will "loosen up" a speaker's suspension but does not "work" the many paper-resonances in the cone.

Back when I installed classroom recordplayers I had a packet of Mozart and Bach LPs, cuz it was a conservative school. For guitar I would think to run your personal Guitar Gods trax through it. Or, since they are not you, just PLAY it a lot with your own fingers.

[tubenit]

The soundclips and playing are excellent!  THANKS for sharing!  I'd be very happy with an amp sounding that good. 

With respect, Tubenit