Moved the HV part of the power supply over a bit to make more room (separation) from the signal level stuff. Added a small plate for the guitar input jack and added a plate for the control pots. Just a "Gain" and "Master Volume" pot for now. Provisions for the tone stack pots when I get that far.
The few G&L I have held felt very different than their Fender brothers. All great workes inspired by Leo Fender. This bass showing his Music Man influence, very cool.
My bassist friend says it plays very well (he said the neck is straight and the action is good). He also said this was a pretty big step up from Fenders back when it was purchased in the 80's. Not sure what to make of that. I do know Leo Fender at some point started Music Man. I know a guy who plays a Music Man bass and I have a Music Man HD One Thirty tube head...
I can say this thing weighs a ton, twice as heavy as my Fender Stratocaater! I'm excited to learn something new. FWIW I haven't played guitar since about 1986 and even back then I was just a garage band hack who knew nothing about music theory, just power bar chords
Last night I proved out my 12AX7 tube preamp circuit using the little 50 watt class-D power amp board and my Fender Stratocaster. Sounded pretty good with the 8" Celestion guitar driver I had just sitting on the bench. Got stupid loud actually.
Next up is too build the tone stack and hear how that can change the sound. Unfortunately I don't have the linear potentiometers and capacitors I need to build that.
Initially my goal for this project was to build this with only parts I already had in my parts bins. Guess that is out the window now LOL...
So if I have to place an order for some components and pay for shipping why not build a tube output section too??? Initially I was thinking a simple single ended 6V6 output. Unfortunately I don't have any SET output transformers and output iron has gotten stupidly expensive lately. I do have an output transformer, the tubes, and most of the parts to build a push-pull EL84 output. Bingo!
My transformer doesn't have UL taps so I need to decide if I will make a screen supply or wire the EL84's as strapped triodes. More to follow.
Ok so this thread is almost a year old. It's my thread so I can revive it right? Long story short I don't need another guitar amp and certainly not another guitar tube amp project. But it's cold outside and tubes are fun to play with during the winter months. Scaled my plans WAY back. Just building a single tube overdrive effect pedal for my Son's solid state practice amp. I started out with grand schemes in my head to design it with at least a 250 Vdc B+ and all that jazz. After adding up the costs to go high voltage vs low voltage I decided on a low voltage design powered by a simple wall wart power supply.
After about a 10 minute google search I realized that I don't even have to design a circuit from scatch. There is a highly praised diy circuit called the "Tube Caster". I'm building mine with a 12 Vdc wall wart instead of the typical 9 Vdc version. I'll experiment with various different parts but the heavy lifting has already been done.
My cheap and dirty prototype is just a piece of 0.083" aluminum plate I saved from our scrap bin at work and a free cigar box. This prototype is probably 3 maybe 4 times larger than what the final enclosure should be. For a prototype it's pretty nice to have extra room when swapping parts in and out. The basic circuit looks like 5 different tubes will work in it: 12AU7, 12AT7, 12AX7, 12BH7, and 5965 tubes.
Surprising to me, 4 friends here in town (2 from work and 2 from Church) that play guitar all want to borrow this tube overdrive when the prototype is done. That should give me a lot of direct feedback on how it sounds and what might need to be changed. Should be really good feedback as none of them will have paid anything (so no buyer's bias). I know them all pretty well and think they know I won't take any negative critiques personally.
So with the above said I found a smaller cigar box and cut that aluminum top plate in half. I will also be painting that top plate and the plate that holds the power, input, and output jacks. Sometimes things just sound a little better when they look a little better
Weird, the pictures didn't post in the order I intended but that's no biggy.
I lightly sand blasted the top plate then sprayed it with a couple medium coats of high temp engine paint. Let it air dry for 30 minutes then cured it in one of our ovens at 350 F for 2 hours.
The back plate with the jacks is just chem filmed aluminum plate.
Not my typical neat wiring or solder work. Just wanted to get it put together and have a listen and get some feedback before I commit to building it right.
Comments
Moved the HV part of the power supply over a bit to make more room (separation) from the signal level stuff. Added a small plate for the guitar input jack and added a plate for the control pots. Just a "Gain" and "Master Volume" pot for now. Provisions for the tone stack pots when I get that far.
Looking good! Wish I lived closer. I have some cool old medical test equipment enclosures that would be perfect for a small tube guitar amp.
Look what I got! It's in much better shape than the picture makes it look like (poor lighting):
Just borrowing it from my Church. I have a bass player friend willing to give me lessons.
Nice , thats pretty much a Fender.
The few G&L I have held felt very different than their Fender brothers. All great workes inspired by Leo Fender. This bass showing his Music Man influence, very cool.
Hell yeah bro! That's a heck of a learner bass right there. Hopefully the set-up is decent.
My bassist friend says it plays very well (he said the neck is straight and the action is good). He also said this was a pretty big step up from Fenders back when it was purchased in the 80's. Not sure what to make of that. I do know Leo Fender at some point started Music Man. I know a guy who plays a Music Man bass and I have a Music Man HD One Thirty tube head...
I can say this thing weighs a ton, twice as heavy as my Fender Stratocaater! I'm excited to learn something new. FWIW I haven't played guitar since about 1986 and even back then I was just a garage band hack who knew nothing about music theory, just power bar chords
As with anything, have fun with it. Best case, ya dig it and I'll be sending you one of my bass amp PCB's 😎🤘🏼
Last night I proved out my 12AX7 tube preamp circuit using the little 50 watt class-D power amp board and my Fender Stratocaster. Sounded pretty good with the 8" Celestion guitar driver I had just sitting on the bench. Got stupid loud actually.
Next up is too build the tone stack and hear how that can change the sound. Unfortunately I don't have the linear potentiometers and capacitors I need to build that.
Initially my goal for this project was to build this with only parts I already had in my parts bins. Guess that is out the window now LOL...
So if I have to place an order for some components and pay for shipping why not build a tube output section too??? Initially I was thinking a simple single ended 6V6 output. Unfortunately I don't have any SET output transformers and output iron has gotten stupidly expensive lately. I do have an output transformer, the tubes, and most of the parts to build a push-pull EL84 output. Bingo!
My transformer doesn't have UL taps so I need to decide if I will make a screen supply or wire the EL84's as strapped triodes. More to follow.
I'm very interested to diy a stereo tube amp some day so this is awesome!
Ok so this thread is almost a year old. It's my thread so I can revive it right? Long story short I don't need another guitar amp and certainly not another guitar tube amp project. But it's cold outside and tubes are fun to play with during the winter months. Scaled my plans WAY back. Just building a single tube overdrive effect pedal for my Son's solid state practice amp. I started out with grand schemes in my head to design it with at least a 250 Vdc B+ and all that jazz. After adding up the costs to go high voltage vs low voltage I decided on a low voltage design powered by a simple wall wart power supply.
After about a 10 minute google search I realized that I don't even have to design a circuit from scatch. There is a highly praised diy circuit called the "Tube Caster". I'm building mine with a 12 Vdc wall wart instead of the typical 9 Vdc version. I'll experiment with various different parts but the heavy lifting has already been done.
My cheap and dirty prototype is just a piece of 0.083" aluminum plate I saved from our scrap bin at work and a free cigar box. This prototype is probably 3 maybe 4 times larger than what the final enclosure should be. For a prototype it's pretty nice to have extra room when swapping parts in and out. The basic circuit looks like 5 different tubes will work in it: 12AU7, 12AT7, 12AX7, 12BH7, and 5965 tubes.
Here's a picture of where I'm at layout wise:
You can add a 5751 tube to that list. Care to post the schematic?
Will do. I'll draw it up tomorrow between NFPA 70E and 70B training
Yo! Tube amp pedal for the win ! I was searching for something like this about a year ago , didnt find much of anything a consumer could buy.
You would think there would be a market for a pedal like that. Maybe modeling pedals have killed off lots of good old analog stuff.
Craig, do you have any 12AT7s to try? If not, I have some that I'll probably never use.
I know the digital boards out there have plugins to emulate various pedals.
The modeling stuff has come along way. It's freaking amazing what some of those product can do.
Thanks for the offer Tom but I have a few 12AT7's in my stash.
Surprising to me, 4 friends here in town (2 from work and 2 from Church) that play guitar all want to borrow this tube overdrive when the prototype is done. That should give me a lot of direct feedback on how it sounds and what might need to be changed. Should be really good feedback as none of them will have paid anything (so no buyer's bias). I know them all pretty well and think they know I won't take any negative critiques personally.
So with the above said I found a smaller cigar box and cut that aluminum top plate in half. I will also be painting that top plate and the plate that holds the power, input, and output jacks. Sometimes things just sound a little better when they look a little better
Got a little bit done today...
Weird, the pictures didn't post in the order I intended but that's no biggy.
I lightly sand blasted the top plate then sprayed it with a couple medium coats of high temp engine paint. Let it air dry for 30 minutes then cured it in one of our ovens at 350 F for 2 hours.
The back plate with the jacks is just chem filmed aluminum plate.
‘Well done’
No guts, no glowy.
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Finished wiring the prototype this morning. Time to test it.
And she glows!
Not my typical neat wiring or solder work. Just wanted to get it put together and have a listen and get some feedback before I commit to building it right.
What caps are you using?