Life carries on…

Shit, I am so cash strapped at the moment and when I say that it means I have none and owe heaps… bugger!

Mean
while stuff like this goes on in the world

But life goes on. Had a bit of a chore cutting out the bottom of an old pot to use as a grill for the amp I’ve almsot finished. The blade kept getting aluminium on it so I’d have to stop and take the blade off and cut off the melted on slag with a really sharp knife.
deco
Still needs finesse but I like it and it may be something I could work on and get castings done which could be used for all sorts of things, guitar amps inc.

I’ve built an enclosure for the reverb amp and thats mostly done but I’ve been going hell bent building a tiny tube amp and I don’t just mean tiny in output. The chassis is 40mm x 82mm x 230mm and attached to that or inside are 3 inputs, 4 pots, 4 switches, 2 transformers, 3 tubes and a metre or so of wire plus caps and resistors etc. Its very tightly packed and I’m digging the solutions I have to come up with the get it all together. The output tubes a 6BM8 and the amp’ll be almost the same, in that regard to a 1961 Gibson GA- 5T skylark.

I got the Single ended output transformers from Johnny Pain, bassist of the H Picasso’s, when they were inside an Akai 2 track reel to reel, which decided to blow its power transformer the first time I plugged it in. The PT I’m going to use came from the last gutted chassis I got from Ben at Radio Spares and had a label on the back with the tube compliment and with a little looking up I figured it was good for about 1.5 Amps of filament power so it should cover the tubes I’m using. Just so happens as well that once tested this transformer puts out almost exactly the same B+ voltage as the skylark, within 10V anyways, so I’ll have me an interesting little amp.

The speaker will be mostly for show if it sounds like shit but it’ll have an 8 ohm line out so it’s kinda beside the point and just a bonus if it sounds any good. Okay, I’ll get a photo.
skylarkish
I’ve been back hangin’ at music electronics forums, which is a continuation of the Ampage forums of lore, and a mod came up for how to get more ‘Crunch’ from a 5E3 fender amp and some clever chap came up with a single switch to stack the two channels. I modified it slightly, and got a comp’ from one of the good ol’ boys, so I’ve got one channel with high and low impedance inputs into a 6AU6 pentode, and one other hi channel with a 6AV6, which is basically half a 12AX7, that can switch into the other channels input and make it two stage. Given theres also the third stage, which is the triode of the 6BM8, before the output that should be more than enough to get this thing howlin’.

Doesn’t look like such a tight fit in the photo eh? Well it’s actually inside that aluminium box section chassis where alot is goin’ on and I hope when it comes to the final marrying up of the circuit board to the pots and tubes… I’ll even be able to do it.

2 Replies to “Life carries on…”

  1. Happy accident, I can’t even see magic in there. I cn kinda see how it might be there, at least all the letters… but no, its happy magic!

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