Steve B from Austin TX

[stephenjbassett]

Hi folks,

Steve B from Austin, TX.  Purdue EE, spent my career building and managing computer chips with billions of digital and analog transistors, but enjoying tinkering with my amps that have fewer ~transistors (tubes) than I have fingers.  I've been building my own guitars, fiddles and mandolins and speaker cabinets since highschool but have time now to tinker with my amps.  I recently turned a perfectly good 15W 6V6 Fender Super Champ XD into a couple of used transformers and scavenged components while "upgrading" it to switched fixed/cathode bias and adding a rheostat in the power supply chain to emulate a tube rectifier.  It all worked, though the tone variation wasn't worth the effort.  During that mod I zapped the 5V digital and 12V analog supplies, which weren't designed very well to begin with.  After the bias wire solder joint let go, I fried something else, so I'm rebuilding it from scratch into the "SuperChump SB" to remind myself that I should have started from scratch to begin with.

This new head design will use a switchable solid state rectifier with a 5AR4 tube, a two-channel preamp (one opamp-based solid state using my own regulated +/-12V supply, the other an EF86), and a typical cathode-biased, pp 6V6 power amp.

Between Rob Robinette's pages and this site, there's plenty of advice and sharing of what works and, equally important, what doesn't work.

[EL34]

Welcome to the Hoffman Amps forum

There are many different boards on this forum for different topics.

The Tube Amp Building - Tweaks - Repairs board is where you can post amp questions.

That board is listed here.
https://el34world.com/Forum/index.php?board=13.0

Thanks,
Doug Hoffman