High Voltage Hijinks

Guardians of the analog said:
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Reality is that this also applies to pedals for me. Between having to get a new car, health insurance increases this coming year and the price of literally everything else in life increasing, I'm tapped out until something gives. I'll just live vicariously through the troubleshooting section.
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Cost of daily life does hit hard. I am always amazed how much half a cart of groceries costs.

Some people do parallel builds: one for you, one for sale (with a close to 100% markup on component costs). So end result is 1 free for you ;) Could you do that or is it too much upfront?
 
Asdrael said:
Cost of daily life does hit hard. I am always amazed how much half a cart of groceries costs.

Some people do parallel builds: one for you, one for sale (with a close to 100% markup on component costs). So end result is 1 free for you ;) Could you do that or is it too much upfront?
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I basically don’t buy groceries unless they are on special these days…. transformers on the other hand - money is no object ;)

I’ve thought about building a 2nd for sale but people can’t afford what I would charge lol.
 
Guardians of the analog said:
I don't live month to month, but I refuse to start because building 1k+ amps and other gear is fun.
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One good part of getting old… kids are now adults. Also I raised them right (they are proper adults who take care of themselves). Having a great wife, who I share expenses with, but have separate finances, helps too.
 
I was starting to wire heaters on the T when I had an idea. I like to line up my heaters etc and keep it simple and stupid. Because I line up 2 and 7 on the octal sockets it makes my heaters a little bumpy because as the 7 wire passes the 2 pin (and vice versa) they have to bump out a little to go around the pin. I realized that since the Beltons have two terminals vertically stacked per pin, I could run the "pass" through the unused pin. I widened the terminals ever so slightly and abracadabra...

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18 gauge buss wire and Teflon tubing.

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Don't try this with PVC lol.
 
Amazing work @Hal Harvey

Guess I made some progress with my buzzing amp. Opened OT and noticed piece of insulating paper was between shell and outermost laminate. Maybe laminates were just loose and caused some buzz? Couldn’t test it as I noticed cracks in OT legs. Added some metal epoxy putty for support as a quick fix. Now I’ll wait curing and give it a go next day.
 
JohnnyCreepy said:
Amazing work @Hal Harvey

Guess I made some progress with my buzzing amp. Opened OT and noticed piece of insulating paper was between shell and outermost laminate. Maybe laminates were just loose and caused some buzz? Couldn’t test it as I noticed cracks in OT legs. Added some metal epoxy putty for support as a quick fix. Now I’ll wait curing and give it a go next day.
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I am crossing my fingers for you.
 
The Amplified Parts sale has me thinking. I have another preamp transformer and chassis doing nothing.

Maybe 3 gain stage->CF->TS Jose with a switchable 2 gain stage Langner front end. X88R driver-CF at the end would be four tubes.

Also thinking parallel power supply instead of cascade. I feel like my parallel power supply builds have been quieter. Anecdotal perhaps.

That would kill two birds for me, I don’t really want to build a full Langner DCP-1.
 
In your case -knowing you have some ptp under your belt- I would make some building blocks and mess around. And then link one to the others, building block style.

Parallel and series V1, one or two gain stages, CF tone stack.. and see where that gets you.
 
Asdrael said:
In your case -knowing you have some ptp under your belt- I would make some building blocks and mess around. And then link one to the others, building block style.

Parallel and series V1, one or two gain stages, CF tone stack.. and see where that gets you.
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I was kind of thinking I’d make the Laney AOR pre I built my experiment box. The higher gain modes in it are noisy AF (bad design) and I feel like the lower gain sounds, while good, I have well covered.

You do make a great point though.

It also reminds me I need to build some high voltage decade boxes. Maybe a box with pairs of 10K, 100K, 1M pots. Caps maybe a couple of boxes, one with smaller values, another with larger potentially polarized caps.
 
I've been getting interested in circuits again and decided to crank back up again by rebuilding one of my amps. Reminds me of the Happy Days episode where the Fonz goes blind and Richie helps him get his mojo back by completely disassembling his motorcycle and having the Fonz rebuild it blind.

Anyway, the amp is a 4-tube AC15-ish and I reworked it into a Dr. Z Stangray with an EF86 preamp, 12AX7 phase inverter and 2 EL84s. I gotta say, I REALLY love this configuration. The tone controls make it extremely versatile, especially when running dirt pedals into it.

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Hal Harvey said:
@Asdrael those transformers come yet?
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No. I have been doing more modelling of the chassis etc and some minor adjustments on the PCB. I am toying with the idea of simply getting them printed again as the shipping will be covered by the chassis anyway, and I don’t like a few things in my current PCB version.

jubal81 said:
I've been getting interested in circuits again and decided to crank back up again by rebuilding one of my amps. Reminds me of the Happy Days episode where the Fonz goes blind and Richie helps him get his mojo back by completely disassembling his motorcycle and having the Fonz rebuild it blind.

Anyway, the amp is a 4-tube AC15-ish and I reworked it into a Dr. Z Stangray with an EF86 preamp, 12AX7 phase inverter and 2 EL84s. I gotta say, I REALLY love this configuration. The tone controls make it extremely versatile, especially when running dirt pedals into it.

IMG-2162.jpg

IMG-2167.jpg
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I really like the idea of a tone control instead of TMB for clean channels, especially when used for pedals. Yes I suffer from option paralysis 🤣 Nice work there!
 
Guardians of the analog said:
View attachment 106451
Reality is that this also applies to pedals for me. Between having to get a new car, health insurance increases this coming year and the price of literally everything else in life increasing, I'm tapped out until something gives. I'll just live vicariously through the troubleshooting section.
Click to expand...

This is why I am so hesitant to start dipping my toes into amp building as referenced earlier in this thread. A 300 dollar (if I’m lucky) donor Origin amp is really 500 for me in Canuckistan. Less population = less deals my friends. Might just stick to the ceriatone route 😂
 
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