Newguitarsmell,
I am right there in the trenches with you trying to learn. I have trouble translating some of the terms, abbreviations, and jargon used by more experienced and learned tubers into plain English I can understand and use. What is a grid dropper? What is a condenser input filter vs. a choke input filter? What does HT mean and what is the difference between point "B", "B+" and "B-" what is the difference between earth ground, star ground, single point ground, chassis ground, floating ground, and electrical ground? So many term are used interchangeably or the same things drawn differently by different people and called something slightly different. Why do some people call amps single ended while others say class A or whats the difference between push pull vs class AB. After 6 months, I feell= like I am just now starting to be able to understand some of this strange foreign language but I certainly don't speak it fluently. Maybe enough to buy a cup of coffee or ask directions...
I work best from pictures and illustrations. So far I have found this article to be one of the most useful as it has a great set of illustrations with it that are well labelled.
https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/17116-how-tube-amps-work?page=4On the advice of Sluckey and a few others, I got an amp that is fairly basic, just to rebuild/modify/learn before I start building amps from scratch which is my goal. I paid 100.00 for the Airline 8504 which is about the same as a used Epiphone Les Paul Jr. used to sell for if you can find one now. My first goal is to make sure it is up and running in fairly stock form. Then maybe do some mild mods to see how it changes the sound etc.
My first project was to get a schematic, redraw that schematic line by line (this helps me fix what is tied to what in my mind), identify each section of the amp (power section, preamp section, tremolo section, phase inverter, output section. Identify every component represented in the schematic and how it functions in the circuit. Filter capacitors vs. coupling capacitors, vs bypass capacitors vs. tone capacitors etc. and the same for resistors. Learn the different material compositions of resistors and what effect they have on sound and where they are best used.
To do this, I went through the amp and put little stickers on all of the capacitors with their number designation on the schematic. This was fun in its own way and now I have a picture reference rather than just a schematic on paper. Next I plotted all of the resistors with their color code on the schematic. That lets me clearly identify where each one is in the amp and what/how it connects to. Since a lot of schematics don't show the grounding path but rather just use a ground symbol, it can make tracing things for a newbie challenging. All of the wires are not always shown on the schematic.
I have spent a lot of time tearing old equipment apart. Salvaging each part and in the process identifying what it is, what it was used for, what it can be used for and filing it away. This has helped me learn a great deal. For instance, a couple days ago I was salvaging resistors. Orange drops, brown drops, green drops, blue drops, etc. then I started sorting them all by value. .056uf, .082uf, .15uf etc. then came a green drop with marked .001K
Gotta figure that one out... do resistors come packaged in green drops...
The small capacitors that look like resistors with painted on stripes always seem to fool me.
It's hard to find some of this stuff on web sites or in books and FAQ's. Some I think just comes from experience and making mistakes and learning from them.
I will say the folks on this site have been very helpful and kind to me as a newbie asking stupid questions. Of all the references out there, it amazes me how many times Google ends up pointing me back to el34world and how much info is contained in the schematic library etc.
My wife bought me a book on building tube amps for beginners. Will get the name of the author tonite if I can remember. and post here.
Topic: Recommended books for learning amp electronics? (Read 6331 times)