Gibson EH-185 Build video series

[pompeiisneaks]

Hey all, I'm doing another build.  This time I'm documenting the Gibson EH-185. There's a thread over in amp building forum about it with associated schematic (I also have that thread linked in the video comment).

Let me know what you guys think :)

~Phil

[pompeiisneaks]

vidya two

[pompeiisneaks]

Number three is up:

~Phil

[pompeiisneaks]

Video 4, get the last of my parts from Doug and a few other treasures :)

[Platefire]

Looked at all four. I would say it's a good video documentation. I had a little problem hearing you on the first video, the other three where fine. Also when you were working on the board, I couldn't really see what you were doing. It would be nice to have a zoom in for a closer look on your board work. Good work! Carry on Phil. Platefire

BTW-What made you determine to build this pre-war Gibson circuit?? Any way, that's a new one on me. Never known anyone to reproduce that old of a circuit with a new build. 

[pompeiisneaks]

Looked at all four. I would say it's a good video documentation. I had a little problem hearing you on the first video, the other three where fine. Also when you were working on the board, I couldn't really see what you were doing. It would be nice to have a zoom in for a closer look on your board work. Good work! Carry on Phil. Platefire

Thanks, there's more on the actual board work etc in the upcoming videos.  It's also hard to see how good my view is until I'm already done, I have an external monitor, I need to just set it up so I can see better as I film.

BTW-What made you determine to build this pre-war Gibson circuit?? Any way, that's a new one on me. Never known anyone to reproduce that old of a circuit with a new build.

Mostly that my favorite artist, Joshua Homme was playing one on tour with Them Crooked Vultures.  It made me curious about how some of these older amps sound and work.  They're a lot simpler than what we've got nowadays, we'll see how she sounds. ;)

Thanks so much for the input.  I got a lot more done tonight.  Ran the heater wires, connected the rectifier and the A and B nodes, in the next day or so I'll be putting the board back in and wiring that up as well.

I pulled a MAJOR noob move and reversed my layout.  I'm going to have to send my wiring from the right side of the board to the far left preamp PI tube and vice versa... DOH, but I don't want to go over this all again, and buy a new chassis, so I'll cope.  I plan on using shielded cable on all input grid runs anyway and I'll try my best to keep the B+ away from that as well.  Then I'll just keep the grounding wires on another path as well, and I think I'll be good to go.

~Phil

[Platefire]

+++ on the shielded cable. I didn't use it on my earlier builds but now on everything--some even gone back and installed shielded--if there was any noise.

It's really easy to get confused about the orientation of the board in the chassis. I've always built my own boards and usually have to go over and over how it sits in the chassis in the operating position as opposed to the building position before I do the drilling to get it right. So it's an easy mistake, just have check and double check to make sure it's right.

[pompeiisneaks]

Yeah, you can see the oops in the latest video:

The actual amp is done, though, and sounds great :)

~Phil

[pompeiisneaks]

Here's video 6, showing the last of the build and me using the layout test process that is talked about so much here :)

~Phil

[pompeiisneaks]

Video 7 is up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA_NiXDwZTI

[pompeiisneaks]

Video 8 done, and amp done.  We've got audio of the completed amp here.  I lost the video, some weird full disk issue on the camera :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRTAH0Afyyg

~Phil

[murrayatuptown]

Very cool. Thanks for sharing your work.

I'll be watching the videos.

[pompeiisneaks]

As a note, you'll see I ended up doing the board all wrong and upsidedown/backwards so I had leads running all over the ways backwards and wrong.  I redid the board a while later to make it face the right way, and it made it much quieter.  No odd leads going the wrong ways across the amp, just short direct runs to the tube sockets now.

~phil