Hello all,
My name is James. I am a computer systems engineer and project manager. I am entering my 25th year working at the same company. I am a married empty-nester with 2 kids. I am a musician. At times paid, other times just for fun. I like to make recordings in my humble home studio. Guitar is my primary instrument but I dabble with a lot of secondary instruments; bass, drums, keys, harmonica, mandolin, viola, vocals, etc. I am into motorcycles; dirt bike (Kayo K2), adventure bike (Suzuki DR650) and 2 street bikes (Harley Heritage Classic, Triumph Speed 400).
Regarding tube amps, I'll start with what I am not. I am not an electrical engineer. It is something I want to learn more about. I know enough to test the components and have a basic idea of what they do. I have managed to build 2 amps previously. I was stubborn in that I didn't use kits. I picked an amp model, downloaded a couple layouts for comparison, bought parts piece meal, and managed to build them without burning down the house or killing myself. They even sounded good. The first was a 30 watt 5e3 and the second was a 50 watt Marshall 1987 Plexi. It was all just an adventure in learning something about electronics and to see if I could do it.
Now I am trying to build a High Power Princeton Reverb 2x10. It is based off the Weber 6a14hp. I am again avoiding buying the kit. The previous 2 amps I built my own cabinets. They were both built strong but ugly. This time I bought a cab from Weber along with the chassis, transformers, and face plates. I bought most of the electronics from Hoffman and bought the Hoffman Princeton turret board. I was going to abandon that turret board, due to space concerns, and instead have one custom made by Hoffman but I decided to try and make this one work. It will be tight but the quality of the board is exceptional and the layout, as far as I'm able to tell, looks like a major improvement as well. And whats the worst that can happen? I can muck it all up and have to backtrack some.
I am going to have some very noob questions to ask. I try to figure things out myself by doing some research, forum lurking, and looking at amp gut pics to see how other people did things. Sometimes I would just really like an opinion. For example; the layout will show a lead to ground but when I look at other amp guts there is nothing. I assume the part is grounding to chassis but want to make sure that logic is correct and that it is the right approach.
My soldering technique needs improvement. I stick at it until I feel good about there being a strong connection but sometimes the solder doesn't flow the way I think it should and it ends up on the ugly side. Sometimes I luck out and it comes out perfect and only takes one try and happens right away. Somethings only come with experience.
Looking forward to chatting with some of you excellent amp builders and hope you will being willing to help out a novice like myself!
Topic: Everybody starts somewhere! (Read 4801 times)