Hi,
I've had only the most modest electronic tech background, a novice ham when I was a kid and then involved in a few circuits in my career as a Computer programmer and Analyst since occasionally, in the early days, you had to get involved in the hardware when you were programming. Then in my final job, after the ARM chips came out, I built a massively multiprocessor web server for a rather large high traffic website my family had.
Have always been a musician though since 5th grade (I'm 71). This year I decided to get my old tube amps into shape knowing nothing had ever been done to them. I recapped my Princeton and my Super Six Reverb (like a twin only with 6 10s). That was a lot of fun and so I decided to build a Blond Bassman (6G6-B). The thanks came in where I used the forum here to study heater circuits and after chasing every red herring possible with a multimeter and Oscope, I realized that my problem could be in the heater wiring. After a lot of chopsticking, I found that the second preamp tube in the bass channel, had a poor soldering job (my own fault) when I bound the pin 4 and 5 on the 12AX7. I could get the problem to go away with enough pressure, then created new heater connections on that tube and now it works perfectly. Had I not read the heater thread here from 2019, I'd still be scratching my head as to why I only could get preamping to work so far in the circuit.
I found this site by heavy use of Rob Robinette's site while I was building and learning. I think my next build is going to be the Blackvibe (no trem or reverb) as my Super Six is far too heavy to gig with, and has far too much power. As I've gotten back into playing, I started to use an amp modeler (Zoom G11) and only needed a large clean amp to go and play places. The Super Six is too large though, and the Blackvibe sounds like it would be perfect. Before I try the build I have more theory I want to master (or really just understand). But I'm anxious to build another soon. I have also got into building cabs and put together a head cab and 2x12 speaker box for the Bassman, and want to try something even smaller with the Blackvibe. I'd like to build something very small like a princeton sized chassis to make for the lightest possible head to carry around. Even turning the head of the super six into a head cab, is still quite heavy. I hope to build something that can power two fairly light 10s and have a very portable rig that still has good clean headroom. The main difference I'd like to implement is to use a solid state rectifier like my other units use and cut out on one tube for a smaller chassis footprint.
Thanks Again, great forum
Topic: Hello and thanks (Read 834 times)