At least it's not 12:40 AM.

I figured I'll save it for saturday morning so that I'll catch them with terrible come downs after chewing their faces off to bad dubsetep until 5 AM

Like a gentleman.

So we finished our first customer fullstack build

I like it, because I could totally put those in my living room and my wife would dig it. She doesn't restrict my gear purchases, with the exception that she demands that they be pretty.

Very fine looking work.

Thanks man. I really must get a decent camera to snap the things we make. Phones just dont do it justice and they're pretty hard to photograph anyway!

For realz. Especially when you are doing custom sorts of finishes and stuff. You will want to keep records of what you have done and sent off into the world, ideally nice-looking records.

Pretty hott cabs yo.

Those look like they are made out of taste and class. What speakers are in 'em?

Thanks doods. They're loaded with my all time favourite - the hot-100

Action shot

Looks like some seriously classy stuff, bro. I dig the understated, almost military like aesthetics. They look like they are about to go the fuck off and hurt you.

Thats the idea! Just been commissioned to build a teal burst 612 as the next job.

Its winter. I need a winter project.
Just turned out a board for a cathodyne phase inverter and bias circuit for the amp I've been building since forever. First time working with PTFE and I very much doubt I'll return to garolite or FR4 as this is much easier to work with. For a start you can cut it to size with a box cutter! I have a little offcut which is big enough to get 2 PTP meathead clones on which I'll have to make too

anyway, pics. I'll populate it tomorrow.

The white board is classy too. I haven't really been looking at amp building stuff for a while, but where did you come across PTFE as sheet/board material?

One of the amp kit places uses it and a few doods on ax84 and MEF use it too. Its got great electrical insulation properties and its really easy to work. Its not cheap, although I scored enough to make 4 or 5 100W amps for £20 from some guy on ebay who has a house full of it for some reason. It does look snazzy too. Larger boards will need a few more standoffs though as it is more flexible.

With a heavy heart I realise that my proto-rig just isnt (quite) going to do what I want it to do as fitting everything I want to do into a fairly mundane sized guitar amp chassis is going to be a pain in the ass and compromise optimum layout. So... I'm still going to build this but only as a poweramp. The rest of the chassis will be empty and I'll pull the unused preamp sockets. Sort of wasteful but if I were to do this project again I'd either build it in a huge chassis (which would be a dick ache to move) or I'd split the pre and power amp into separate entities, which I suppose it what I'm doing.

So whats next you may ask? I'm going to buy a 2-3U rack chassis for building preamps in. I have priced up a custom toroidal PT with the following specs:
Primary: 230VAC
Secondary 1: 6.3VAC @ 1.8A
Secondary 2: 285VAC @ 90mA
Secondary 3: 15VAC @ 70mA

This will only run about £40 shipped from toroidy.pl and there is enough juice for 6 preamp tubes there which is more than enough. 15VAC is for switching and other low voltage supplies (LEDs and that kinda shit) if I want to include those in the build. 285VAC will give me about 400VDC so I have options for trying lots of different plate voltages by dicking with the dropping resistor value from the reservoir cap, this could also be VVR scaled too but its probably not worth the effort and heat build up in the chassis. The PT is also quite small (85mm diameter, 34mm tall) and there is bags of space in a rack chassis.

As it is I need to reserve one of the tubes for the output buffer. I may replace this with a MOSFET buffer in the future if I need the bulb back. Still 5 pres is a lot to play with! The other advantage of this system is I can try it with any amp with an FX loop. Let the fun and games commence!

That shit looks fugging huge.

Wayyy back, i was thinking of doing a single spacer for some preamp shit, but eventually decided against it because i decided THAT was too big.

You may have mentioned it, how are you doing the inside? Are you just going to build it out from scratch for every preamp you play with, or are you going to try to wire some things up permanently so that preamp circuits could be plugged in sort of modularly with quick connects or the like?

I'm going to guess that's 3ru? Something about the way it looks tells me it's not 2, but it could be perspective.

It is 2U but just looks bigger because of the wacky angle of the photo! I figure take the extra space it affords and then I can drill holes wherever I need to add controls. Its destined to be quite an ugly beast once its seen 4 or 5 designs go in it! I'd rather the tubes and PT had a bit of room to breath too and the PT is 34mm high so by the time its mounted it'll be close to 40mm which is pushing the internal dimensions of a 1U chassis and if the mounting bolt touches the top of the chassis it'd make a magnetic short and kill the PT!

Its not going to be all that modular but I have enough space to fit two preamp boards in at any given time realistically so I can test a few out at once and then take notes. I'm mounting the preamp tubes on an L bracket with flying leads for now. If the pins on the sockets start to look a bit chewed up I may well add a row of terminal strips in too. I dont have all that many preamps I want to try out anyway.

Dirt:
Nitro/QR - this covers my high gain marshally front
D60 - similar but drier
Something Engl'y - I need to make one childish preamp at some point in my life although I doubt I'll ever use it

Mid/Pedal friendly:
AOR low gain
Something sunny

Clean:
VH100R - this is pretty much the best pure clean I've ever tried and i don't see much reason to deviate from it too much. it doesnt take pedals very well though.


The output buffer is going to be permanently wired in though. For now its going to be pretty much just a Soldano X88r output buffer which will give me a good range of signal swings. I may well swap this out for a MOSFET buffer though as it'll be more transparent and it'll free up two triodes.