RobRob 5E3 Pedal build!

[Dan0h]

Ok, I caught the 5E3 bug and am becoming huge fan. Following success building Rob Robinette’s Black Vibe and JCM800 amps as pedals and how awesome they sound, I had to try his version of the 5E3. And it does not disappoint!

Amazing overdrive fat crunchy smooth creamy just inspiring sounding box. Does all the quirky things actual Tweeds do going from super clean to fuzz territory when on tilt. But the sweet Tom petty’ish mid warm crunch is where it shines. I found myself playing things I’ve never played before. The master volume makes this a perfect preamp. And the switch to jumper both channels is awesome (my only deviation from his schematic).
This is one of the few pedals that sound great on both of my amps and all of my guitars. Usually pedals tend to like one guitar and one amp better than others.

My only complaint is that this Amazon Hv board is a bit noisy compared to Mr. PPCBs Hv boards but it’s not a deal breaker. And a lot of the noise is when the Hv board is dialed to the max. Before I record some samples I need to fine tune the HV to get the best Voltage to the tubes. Although it sounds good across the range 120 up to 250v.

A note about the spaghetti nest of wires. One of my first pedals was an original big muff Pi from the 90s bought new in the 90s. And it had one of the gnarliest nest of wires and sounded Efing amazing, so I’ve always admired the guys that can take the time to make wire dress perfect, but I’m not that guy and have never had any adverse sounds due to nests. photos of my muff nest…. Added for your pleasure.

If I win the lotto I would love to have a Gibson 335 and a real Tweed Deluxe but for now I’m totally stoked to have a clone of the preamp. And it was fun to build. Fired right up.

 

[matmonster58]

Looks great! Where did you get the enclosure from?

 

[Dan0h]

Looks great! Where did you get the enclosure from?

$30 but I like them and they work great for tubes.

 

[Smrtokvitek]

Have you had any problems with oscillations? Do you follow any specific rules to make a layout?

 

[Dan0h]

Have you had any problems with oscillations? Do you follow any specific rules to make a layout?

Of the four, the only time I’ve had oscillation creep in is on my second black vibe build where I put an Arche Boost board in the front end - when engaged and when the black vibes master volume is max it isolates but I never use that max range anyways because is beyond too loud.
Outside of that extreme all of these have been dead ass silent. It might be the over sized resistors that helps with noise, I’ve read the larger wattage the better for noise.
In regard to layout they are pretty haphazard, pretty much like a breadboard. No rules just try to make it flow in the limited space.
I really want to build an amp but I keep getting stuck on the fact that I have good amps already and building the pre amp section of great amps and running them into my amps sounds great.
Good luck if you try it out. Just be careful 200+ volts is still dangerous.

 

[Dan0h]

I’ll take back what I said earlier. Turns out my Strat and super champ play the best with this one. The others sound good but the Strat really shines through this. Not sure if that’s how real tweed deluxe are, but I will say I’ve not seen any YouTubes of jazzmasters into tweed deluxes only strays and Teles.

 

[cooder]

Excellent! So did you just use the preamp section of builds and added the master volume to get it to pedal/amp input friendly levels? Or are there schematics and layouts specifically for these that I might have missed?

 

[Dan0h]

Excellent! So did you just use the preamp section of builds and added the master volume to get it to pedal/amp input friendly levels? Or are there schematics and layouts specifically for these that I might have missed?

Yes. I just pull from the amp schematics. Rob’s mod of the master volume is already there. But the others I just added it.

 

[HamishR]

Once you pull out some of the low end from a 5E3 - ie reduce the size of coupling and bypass caps - it can sound amazing with a Les Paul or 335 too. I LOVE my 5E3 used clean with a pedal and my Gretsch. The chime and character of those old tweed circuits is addictive. And when you get them biased just right they have a useful amount of headroom before glorious breakup. Because of higher wall voltages the stock bias resistor is way out of spec. If you build the entire amp I can highly recommend using a Mercury Magnetics PT with the slightly lower B+. Then the stock cathode resistor should be about right and the whole thing sounds a lot sweeter and the breakup is way more usable.

I'm really curious to try your idea of a preamp pedal now!