Fresh From the Time Capsule

Someone on a forum asked for photos of my damaged Powerstat 116 autotransformer. Since I have them, I’ll put up a blog post. Here she is.

It looks so good, it’s freaking me out.

It looked perfect on Ebay. Naturally, the Postal Service was not satisfied with that, and the seller packed it so badly the boys in blue had no problem wrecking it. It must have landed on the socket side, because the rim of the socket was shattered, and the terminal board lost its lower corners.

I have been dithering about keeping it or sending it back. I am told the plastic stuff is Bakelite, which is very hard to mend, supposedly. I got a lame response from the seller, so I tried to put it back together with super glue for plastic. Surprisingly, it worked. Here you can see the mend. The cracks are highlighted because there is excess glue that needs to be taken off.

I couldn’t make myself give up on it, because it’s so strange to see a product roughly 60 years old, looking this good. And I paid about 20% of the cost of a new one.

Actually, there are no new ones. The models that came after this have three prongs. I can get a replacement terminal board, but they don’t stock these old 2-hole sockets. I’m going to have to modify a Home Depot receptacle and cram it in there. I hope the machine still looks pretty when I’m done. I shouldn’t care, but come on. That’s a neat-looking variac.

Nerd Resurrection

I’m practically giddy.

First of all, I got my Garnet Herzog clone working. The Herzog people released a couple of schematics which are widely available as a PDF. If I had to guess, I would say the originals were drawn on cocktail napkins, and they were intended to be practical jokes. The one I used was just plain nuts. But I worked hard on it, and I got help from experts, and I prayed over it, and now the amp runs. That’s astoundingly cool.

Second: I just received my Schaum’s Outline of Basic Circuit Analysis. Ohhhhh…this is too much.

You can’t imagine what it’s like to decide, at the age of 31, that you want a degree in physics. This is especially true if you don’t know algebra very well and failed math in high school. Not that I know anyone like that. I feel like I climbed Mount Everest in a greased sleeping bag tied to a junk car. There is no way to describe what I went through, sitting at home with an algebra outline and a calculus outline in front of me while I tried to do my calculus homework. And getting into grad school…that was like parting the Red Sea. Granted, I got brain-fried and quit. But the fact that I was there to begin with…inexplicable. It’s as if the Jamaican bobsled team took a bronze.

Really, if you haven’t been there, you can’t imagine. If you think you know something because you got an A in calculus, you’re like a mule that thinks it can run in the Kentucky Derby. To a physicist, first-year calculus is only a little more impressive than addition and subtraction. It’s the kindergarten of real math.

I made it to a top grad school and then crashed. I have never felt so cursed, before or since. Nothing I did went right. Almost no one helped. People at the University of Texas worked against me, if anything. They were as unrelenting as stones. I believe they were eager to see me quit. And when I tried to pray, I felt as though my prayers bounced off a brass ceiling.

Of course, I was not much of a Christian at that point. I had the baptism with the Holy Spirit, but I rarely prayed in tongues, and I had no real relationship with God or Christians. I believe God blighted what I was doing; too many things went wrong.

I went to law school and graduated cum laude without doing much of anything. I had a great time. I drank a lot. I hung out in the law school courtyard, shooting the breeze with friends. When I got out, I enjoyed practicing, although it wasn’t my dream. It was definitely better than digging ditches, and had I gone on to become a full-blown patent attorney (possible because of my physics background), I could be charging $400 an hour right now. In fact, I could still do that if I had to.

I felt that physics was behind me, and that my opportunities in that direction had been crushed. The time and study had been wasted. The shocking amount of information and skill I had crammed into my brain would dissipate and lose its value.

Now I’m building guitar amps. People are asking me to do it for money. I have all sorts of electronics tools. And it all happened because I went to a church where the guitarists were interested in amp-building.

I have to get up to speed on electronics. I only took one electronics course in college, and it prepared me to build things like integrators. Small, useless circuits. I built current controllers and temperature controllers for diode lasers used in gas cooling research, but I didn’t really know that much about the circuits. I have to take the small, crumbling foundation that remains and build on it. Hence the Schaum outline and the REA Problem Solver that will be here later this week.

Ezekiel tells us of the valley of dry bones. The symbolism applies to just about anything God touches. Living water means prayer in tongues and living in the Spirit. Dry bones are Jews and Christians who lack the Holy Spirit. The nation of Israel was dry bones before the Jews returned. I was a pile of dry bones before I turned back to God. Now the flesh is returning. The lost opportunities are being dusted off. Salvage is underway.

I almost feel smart again. Maybe God will help me to recover to the point where I understand math and physics again. That would be amazing.

I have to go get batteries for my HP 32S calculator, for the first time in 16 years. I hope the drugstore has them. I saved the manual. It’s in the garage. I used to play that thing like a fiddle. I may be able to use Mathcad again.

Continue in your own way, which leads nowhere, or follow the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night and cross into your own Promised Land. Whether you act or not, you will choose, and you will live with the consequences.

I am Controlling Transmission

Tonight I got my Herzog clone running. It still has a few bugs in it, but it functions. This is really neat. I never dreamed I’d be doing this. Look at all the stuff God is allowing me to do.

Today I wrote about going through dusty items from my past. One such item is my $50 Hitachi oscilloscope. This is one of the coolest things I own. It amazes me that I know how to run an oscilloscope. I felt I needed it to diagnose the amp.

Here’s my tidy workbench.

You know you’re in full-blown mad scientist mode when you fire up an oscilloscope in your garage.

From the Tomb I Arise

People sue me all the time. I haven’t written about it, but I’ve been sued 5 times over the last few years. Most of it has to do with real estate. All of the lawsuits were ridiculous. None went anywhere. I believe two are still active, but they’re hopeless. I have relied on God to deliver me, and he came through every time.

I have refrained from countersuing and from reporting anyone to the authorities; I believe that if you want God to deliver you, it’s important to avoid getting in there in your own strength and mud-wrestling like a moron. You can’t glorify God by delivering yourself.

I was praying about one of the cases in my truck, maybe in 2009, and I felt a wave of faith rush through me. It was so powerful, I grabbed the center console and held on. I felt as if I were being washed away in a flood. From then on, I knew that suit was over, regardless of how it looked. I mention it now so God can receive his glory. I think it’s extremely important to credit God in front of other people when he helps you out.

I had a dream which I believe was about one of my enemies. In real life, my involvement with this person really got into gear in an event that took place next to the kitchen sink. Seriously. One night years later, I dreamed a big female roach was on a canister by that sink. It was about six inches long. It had two arrays of eggs under its forelegs, like the missiles on a helicopter. It also had a big brown belly which reminded me a great deal of my enemy: a plaintiff with a round pot belly and skin the same color as the roach’s.

I hate roaches, especially when they come toward me the way this one did. I live in Miami, where you will see roaches occasionally no matter what, so I keep a spray bottle full of alcohol handy to blast them. It usually knocks them out so they can be dealt with at leisure. The alcohol didn’t work. The roach was enraged, so it took off (Florida roaches fly) and flew over my head, across the kitchen. I kept blasting it, trying to get it to go away. It refused to let up. It turned and started descending, facing me, and as it did, it dropped slowly toward the back of a fan.

You can imagine what happened. That big belly got sucked into the fan, and the guts went all over me. The roach destroyed itself because it could not leave me alone. I was covered with disgusting roach guts, but I was unharmed.

After that, I found myself wandering through an old apartment belonging to my parents. They’ve never had an apartment during my lifetime; the apartment in the dream doesn’t exist. It was full of dust, and I was salvaging old things that had been set aside and forgotten. Dust poured off of them as I picked them up.

The reason I mention this is that I feel like I have new insight on the dream’s meaning.

I recently ended all involvement with this enemy, at considerable expense. I didn’t have to. I was in no danger. I felt that the Holy Spirit wanted me to. I needed to close the door on a malignant relationship and get rid of any handles that could be used to get me involved again. Part of the reason, I felt, was that God wanted to clear the playing field for a new relationship. And today I found myself rummaging through dusty items from my past, because of new opportunities God is bringing my way.

I started building guitar amps a while back. A friend wants me to build one he can use professionally. I just repaired one of my church’s Vox AC30CC2s. The other day a guy in Texas asked me to build him a Bassman clone. I don’t know where this is going, but it’s starting to look like it means something.

I keep many of my old math and physics books in the garage, on a suspended platform. I got a degree in physics and then went to grad school, but I got burned out and quit, and for a long time, I felt it had all been wasted. Lately I’ve been looking for ways to get up to speed on electronicis, and I’ve been ordering books. Today I had to go out in the garage and make sure I wasn’t duplicating anything I already had. While I was dealing with the dust on the boxes, I remembered my dream.

I used to think the last part of the dream suggested I was never going to recover the potential that was taken from me earlier in life. I was never going to get another shot at the missed opportunities. Now I think I may have been wrong. What’s a little dust? There was dust on King Tut’s tomb, and look at the riches they pulled out of it.

I just ordered an REA Problems Solvers book on electrical circuits, plus a Schaum outline. I got expedited shipping. I can’t wait to dig in.

I know there are very few people who will find this blog post interesting, but I felt I should put it up and let God have his glory. If you don’t document these things, no one will listen to you later on when they turn out to be from God. Never predict the past. God gets no honor from that.

The symbolism of the roach eggs is not lost on me. I could have been in real, lasting trouble, but for God’s protection.

If you have ears to hear, take something away from this. If not, sorry I wasted your time.

The Guess What

The Herzog clone is moving right along.

I shouldn’t call it a clone. It’s based on the Herzog schematics that are available on the web, but those schematics are pretty pathetic. I’ve had to fill in gaps, and there are things I want to do differently.

Here are the schematics, in case anyone out there wants to build a Herzog. Good luck.

HERZOG SCHEMATIC AT BUILDTHEMUSIC.COM

As you can see, there are two different projects. Here is what I’m told. The one on top is the first Herzog, and the one below is an improved version. The top one has a manual switch, and the bottom one is rigged for a footswitch.

There are many holes in these schematics, and there are things I just don’t like. I want to be able to use this machine as an amp, so I want a tube rectifier. That blows out all the diode nonsense in the bottom part of the screen. I want a footswitch, but I also want a manual bypass so I don’t need the footswitch when I’m using the Herzog as an amp.

Here’s how it looks at the moment. The board is in, the tubes are in, and the pots and jacks are ready. The components are not soldered yet, and there is no wiring. The tubes may be oriented incorrectly. I stuck them in there for mockup purposes, so it doesn’t matter if the pins are where they should be.

I have to run to Radio Shack to see if they have 5V relays, and then I have to go out in the garage and start tinkering again.

One nice thing about using bad schematics is that you have to learn about the circuits you’re building. If everything were going smoothly, it would be monkey-see, monkey-do. Now it’s more like monkey-figure-it-out.

I have some nice aviation wire on order. Hoping it will be here tomorrow. That would allow me to finish the amp without worrying about replacing wires later on. I want good wire in the heaters and any areas that are sensitive to noise. I have some RG174, but it’s small for heater wire (26 gauge).

I have to come up with a base for this thing. I may put perforated metal inserts in the ends (matte black) and mount it on some nice walnut or mahogany.

And finally:

The X-1 Needs to Cool Down

I’m making great progress on the Fender Champ/Garnet Herzog cloney thing.

Today I made the screw holes for the power transformer (I already had a hole made for it to sit in), and I installed the rectifier socket and output transformer. I also made a circuit board from scratch.

Sadly, I made a little boo boo while making the socket hole. I have a new unibit that goes up to 1 3/8″, and I was all excited about using it. I fired it up and drilled a pretty nice hole, and then I remembered…the correct size is 1 3/16″.

The hole was bigger than the socket.

I had to spend an hour an a half remembering how to use the lathe. Then I made the little tube platform you see in this photo.

Most people don’t know anything about tube amps. They’ll think there’s a scientifical reason for that platform. AND I INTEND TO LET THEM BELIEVE IT.

It looks very cool, so I’m not complaining.

This thing should be running by tomorrow night, if I can figure out what kind of relay to use for the footswitch. I may have to bypass the footswitch stuff until someone clues me in.

Anyway, it’s beautiful.

More

I figured out what the platform does. It repels microfleems that aren’t subradiante.

Monster Wattage is the Answer

Life just gets better and better.

I received the parts for my new 5-watt Herzog/Fender Champ clone, and today I started working on it. I had such great results with the heavy aluminum channel on the 5f6a clone, I decided to use 4″ aluminum square tubing for the new project. And I’m using a tube rectifier, just in case it makes a sonic difference when I use the rig as an amp. I’m told it won’t, but it will still look cool, and that’s important.

The next photo shows the chassis after I trimmed it with a table saw. I just made a rectangular hole for the power transformer, using the milling machine, but I’m too lazy to take a photo. Now I’m waiting for my giant unibit to arrive so I can drill the tube holes instead of using a hole saw.

My buddy from church settled on an amp: the Trainwreck Express. This is one of those legendary small-shop amps, like the Dumble Overdrive Special. A little outfit in the Northeast made them, and then the maker died. Now people go over them with microscopes and try to copy them.

It’s supposed to be a high-gain amp with a temperamental circuit. They say the overdrive goes nuts with a small twist of a guitar pot. It’s said to be better for rock than blues, but my friend says it’s what he wants.

Next week we’ll order parts.

I’ve learned a ton since I made the 5f6a, so this new amp will have new intelligent features in it, like heater wires that are arranged correctly to minimize hum. I’m referring to the Champzog. The Express is another story. People are telling me to do exactly what everyone else has done, if I don’t want trouble.

Here’s something amusing and possibly useful. The Express is a head (like all Trainwrecks), and it’s traditionally made of lacquered hardwood. Someone found that you can go to Woodcraft.com and order a nice dovetailed cherry drawer for $56, in the exact dimensions of an Express cabinet. Good info to have.

I love it when new amp parts arrive. I want to pour them out on my bed and roll in them. But I’m not that mental yet.

I’ll bet anything I end up making more amps for the guys at church.

Time to unwind with a Coke. This has been a phenomenal day.

5 Pounds of Sustain

I’ve decided on my next tube amp project. I wanted to make a low-powered Bassman 5f6a clone, but my 40-watt amp sounds so beautiful at low volume, I think a smaller one would be a waste of time. I decided to do something a little more unusual: a Herzog.

This is the effect Randy Bachman used to solo on the Guess Who hit “American Woman.” You get a creamy, compressed, overdriven sound with infinite sustain.

How did he do it? Amp maker Garnet Gillies took a single-ended 5-watt design similar to the Fender Champ, slapped a resistor across the output, and ran it into the input of an ordinary amp.

There are two well-known Herzog schematics out there, and neither one really makes sense, but they are authentic. I pored over them and asked other people for help, and today I ordered parts based on my conclusions. I plan to make a 5-watt amp head which can be turned into a Herzog effect with the flick of a switch.

I know there are other ways to get this effect, but my guess is that they don’t sound the same. The Herzog has two tubes in it. I would be surprised if you can duplicate their sound with solid state electronics. I’ll bet the analagous pedals are not quite as good. And they definitely won’t drive speakers.

The Bassman is beyond amazing. I can play it with the volume at 2 and get beautiful, warm sound. It loves pedals. It sounds great on its own. It’s perfect. Better than I hoped.

I’ve noticed that the dynamics go way past any other amp I own. It’s actually a problem. If you pick lightly, you get a very quiet sound. If you pick hard, you get popping notes that fracture your skull. The trouble with this is that it exposes every mistake. Things I used to get away with are suddenly right out there where everyone can hear them. My other amps evened out the volume, and I didn’t know it.

This is a great quality for an amp to have, because dynamics are a big part of playing well. Nat “King” Cole was an astounding jazz pianist, but he played everything within a very narrow volume range, so he never got the kind of acclaim Oscar Peterson got. Vladimir Horowitz doped the hammers on his Steinway so he could cheat and get a wider dynamic range. Art Tatum could go from a whisper to a roar instantly. Variations in volume keep the listener engaged. They make music less boring.

The amp makes a little noise, but still, you can hear tiny details. If I run my finger up and down a wound string, you can hear every winding.

I can see why so many amps were based on this circuit. My guess is that if you don’t care for metal death distortion, this is as good an amp as you can get.

It’s a little hard to think of new projects after hitting a home run on the first try. But I’ll keep going. After all, there wasn’t a whole lot of original thinking in this amp. The physical design is completely unique; I did all that, apart from using old circuit board layouts. And I chose the components. But the actual circuit is 95% Fender. And Ma Bell’s engineers designed it before Fender got ahold of it.

My blues guitarist friend now says he wants a Trainwreck Express clone. Whatever. Once he figures out what he wants, we’ll build it.

Homebrew Amp Sends Sino-British Combos Packing

I took my new amp to church yesterday? The verdict? Amazing.

One of the guitarists asked if he could use it during services. Mind you, he was going to be putting it up against the lead guitarist’s $1200 Vox AC30. At the end of the day, the guitarists were telling me how great my amp was.

The sound is warmer than the Vox. It breaks up nicely. It sounds way better at low volumes. It has plenty of juice. They didn’t have to turn it past 12 o’clock, even with a single 10″ speaker battling against the Vox’s 2×12.

I put a new part in it: a humdinger circuit suggested in Merlin Blencowe’s book on power supply design. This is a trimmer pot between the heater feeds with the wiper connected to ground. It allows you to balance the voltages in the feeds so they’re identical. This gives excellent hum cancellation. Now the amp is really quiet.

I’m planning to build an amp for one of the guys, and he was leaning toward a Super Reverb, but now he’s thinking two amps, because he likes this one so much. It looks like I can do it for around $400, unless he goes for a Gucci tone-snob transformer set. That will add $300 to the job.

It amazes me that I can use this amp to practice in a small room. And look how God has given new value to the physics education I thought had been wasted.

Two of these would completely solve my church’s guitar amp problems, but I guess they’re stuck with the Voxes. They’ll never sell them and use homemade amps. People don’t like to rub their mistakes in their own faces. When you blow that kind of money on amps, the natural thing is to struggle to make use of them.

Life is sweet. The next project will begin as soon as I can get parts.

Amp Virtually Finished

This is too cool not to blog

Last night I got my Fender Bassman clone running! Here’s a photo. It’s gorgeous. I call it “Thick Al.” I asked for advice on a forum, and I referred to it as a “thick Al chassis,” referring to the aluminum, and someone thought I was giving the amp a nickname. Sounds good to me.

This is a 40-watt amp powered by 6L6 Sovtek Svetlana tubes. It has a 12ay7 preamp tube (V1), and then the signal goes through two 12ax7s (second stage and phase inverter). The rectifier tube is a Chinese GZ34, and it’s backed up by 4 4n1007 diodes.

It’s the exact circuit Leo Fender used, except that I didn’t follow his practice of always using the cheapest components, and I omitted the ground switch, added variable outputs, and used a 125V pilot light. If I had it to do over again, I would omit the standby switch, as a noted authority has convinced me that they are worthless.

The chassis is a 20″ length of 6″ Aluminum Association channel. I machined hollows in the back to make it easier to mount things. I made the circuit boards using a table saw and drill press. I polished the chassis with an orbital sander and 220-grit sandpaper.

It still needs something to cover the bottom.

A day or two, I did the “smoke test,” firing it up to see if it worked. I kept blowing fuses, and that’s when I learned that the cases of electrolytic capacitors are electrically connected to the innards. I had the filter caps mounted so the leads touched the cases, and that caused shorting. Hey, I don’t make capacitors. How would I know?

I got that fixed, and I built a current limiter to conserve my remaining fuses, and I found that the amp was very quiet and distorted. It took two days to find out that I had put 470K resistors where I needed 470 ohms. Two were on the screen grids, and one was on the phase inverter. I also had a 250pF capacitor where I should have had a 250uF, and I had the volume pots wired so they turned backwards.

Last night I got it running, but it was too late to try it out. Today I turned it on, and I had lots of noise.

I learned a lot about grounds. I had to move a whole bunch of them. In the process, I rewired the volume pots and also the presence and EQ pots (which, I now know, were wired correctly at the time). I replaced various bits of cheap stuff with good stuff, I put a tube shield on V1, and I turned the amp on again.

Still noise.

Then I turned on my Fender Blues Jr. Guess what? It was considerably noisier. That told me I had made it. I got some great suggestions for reducing the noise further, but it’s great right now.

I played the amp using my Epiphone Riviera P93 with Lollar pickups, using a Holy Grail reverb and the following distortion pedals: Plimsoul, Blues Driver, and Fat Sandwich.

The amp is amazing. The sound is very sweet, hot, and detailed. It has lots of punch, so you get a big reward for picking louder or softer. It’s less muddy than the Blues Jrs. Apart from the residual noise, it’s the perfect amp. And the volume actually works! A lot of amps go from 0 to 10 in ten degrees of rotation. On this amp, 3 means 3! It sounds good at practice levels! I don’t need my Firefly now!

I play it through a homemade cabinet with a 12″ Weber Signature speaker (super cheap). I can’t turn it up because the speaker is rated at 25 watts, but so far, it sounds beautiful. I just received a 10″ Eminence Ragin’ Cajun, and I plan to make a cabinet for it tomorrow. That will give me 75-watt capability, so I’ll be able to fire the amp up for real (probably with ear plugs).

I never expected to be able to use this amp. I built it in order to learn. But it’s extremely useful. A keeper. The ideal blues amp.

I just wish the selector switch on the Epiphone wasn’t going out. I have to get that fixed.

I love the way the amp looks. I was going to put some kind of roll cage on it, but I don’t really need one at home, unless I plan to get drunk and sit on the amp.

Now I need a new project. The guys at my church complain that their Vox AC30 amps are too loud; they can’t crank them and get good tube sound without blowing up the church. Maybe I should make an 18-watt EL844 based amp and see if they like it.

It’s amazing how God is taking the old threads I dropped and weaving them into something meaningful. This is a blast.

Amp Nears Completion

I keep plugging away at my new guitar amp. Because I chose to do an original chassis design, I ended up running into a lot of surprises, and they slowed me down. The next time I make one, it will be a breeze.

Here’s what it looks like without the tubes, power light, and switches.

I couldn’t figure out how to give it a nice finish. A thing like this is not easy to fly-cut. Today I decided to try a woodworking scraper and an orbital sander. WOW, did that work. The scraper leveled all the places that lifted up when I drilled it, and it reduced the scratching. The sander gave the aluminum a crazy finish that looks like Damascus steel. It has all sorts of wiggly parallel lines on it. And it only takes a few minutes to clean up the whole amp.

I have one ding that won’t come out, and there are a couple of fairly deep scratches I am too lazy to remove, but it looks great. Someone suggested an engine-turned finish, but that takes a long time to do, and it will show scratches badly. This is quick and unique, and if it gets scratched I can fix it in ten minutes.

The input jacks I ended up using are about a millimeter too big for the cavity I made for them. I did the measurement with smaller jacks. I guess I’ll have to fix that. The other jacks will work fine as outputs.

These knobs were labeled “bronze” when I bought them, but they look like copper to me. Whatever. They still look neat.

I might conceivably be able to play through this amp tomorrow. I have to get the circuit board installed and solder the connections to the pots, transformers, tube sockets, and whatever else.

The only cabinet I have is a 25-watt 12×1. I hope I don’t blow it to smithereens.

It’s going to work. Can’t wait to hear it.

I’ve been getting advice on Internet amp forums, and I can tell I’m irritating some of the people. Some think it’s cool to do a design this weird. Others seem almost offended.

I have never understood people who hate creativity, but they’re everywhere. If you’re a truly creative person, you will be persecuted your entire life, no matter how hard you try to get along with people. I’m surprised I haven’t been burned for a witch.

Neandernerd and his Cave of Even-Order Harmonics

I had to put the AC plug in my amp chassis today. I knew this might be a problem, since the chassis is 3/8″ thick and a bit floppy for milling. I had selected a three-prong receptacle that required a hole 1.1″ by 1/25″ in size.

I was able to use the mill to waste excess metal, but it was no good for making the contours of the hole. I tried everything I knew. Fein Multi-master. Rotary flex shaft tool. Files. Everything was slow and hard to use.

I decided to get crazy and try the drill press.

You won’t believe this. You can mill aluminum with a step bit on a drill press.

First I used the mill to reduce the thickness to 1/8″ in the applicable area. I was able to orient the chassis so I could do this easily, but orienting it so I could cut the hole was not possible.

Then I stuck a cobalt unibit in the drill press and went to town. I learned two things.

1. If you hang onto an aluminum workpiece and drag it by a unibit, it mills pretty well.

2. You can use a unibit as a very precise and quick nibbler. Seriously. You raise it a step, move the work over to it, and lower the step through the metal. I’m sure this is like #3 on just about any video of workshop no-no’s that will get you fired (right after using a lathe while wearing a grass skirt and dreadlocks), but it really works.

I only wish I had figured this out right off the bat. I could have wasted the metal with the unibit and then nibbled it to fit. I had to file the corners a little, but that was a cinch.

Here’s the obvious question: why didn’t I use a cord that only required a round hole?

Look, shut up.

Okay, I’m stupid. That’s the reason. Everyone uses computer-style receptacles these days, so I although I thought about an old-style cord, I forgot about it when I ordered the parts.

Never again. Trust me on that. An old-fashioned cord with strain relief is just as good. I think it’s better. No one is going to kick it out of your amp when they walk by.

The chassis is basically done. I have to drill a couple of round holes and get wood screws to hold everything down, but that’s it. Now it’s just a matter of soldering, adding knobs, adding a structure to protect the tubes, and turning it on.

I’m dead-set on wood screws. They won’t vibrate off like machine screws with nuts. They hold really well. And if I use short ones, they won’t protrude into the chassis and aggravate me like machine screws. And no nuts to fool with! I hate turning a screw with one hand and holding a slippery nut with the other.

I should have finished the amp today, but Mr. Amp Genius had to have his three-prong receptacle.

My mill is driving me nuts. The power feed failed, so I have to turn the dials by hand, and they’re getting so you really have to apply pressure to make them engage. Tips would be appreciated. There are nuts at the ends of the screws that–I think–may adjust this. I plan to crawl around under the table and see.

That’s the weekend! Yeah, dawg!

I can’t help it.

Yeah, Dawg

The hard work on my amp is all done. From here on out, it’s small strokes. Here’s what I got:

There are two hollowed-out places behind the front panel now. The first one is where I put all the stuff you see now. The other one will make it easier to mount switches and a light, although it really isn’t needed, since switches have long threads and the light has a long housing.

I may forgo a cabinet. I’m very tempted to turn this into an industrial-looking all-metal amp. Not steampunk, but closer to that than Fender. I would need to come up with a nice-looking cage to go over the top and protect the tubes. Hey…I wonder if I could fill copper tubing with epoxy, bend it to a suitable shape, and let it harden. By itself, copper is too flimsy. Although I suppose pipe might work. I have things for bending tubing.

I can’t wait to fire it up and see if it explodes. Maybe tomorrow. I won’t have knobs by then, however. Unless I go with Radio Shack.

I need a reasonably priced tool to check capacitances. I don’t know why, but capacitors are marked in ways nobody can read. My Fluke meter only goes down to nanofarads. I have a whole drawer full of capacitors, and I can’t read them. Even the Internet is useless.

I don’t know what I’ll do with a 30-watt amp. Put my speaker cabinet in an isolation box, maybe. My speaker is only rated at 25 watts, though.

I am loving this project.

And now I think I’ll embed a stupid commercial because it cracks me up.

Someone please tell me what a bro-stache is.

No, don’t.

Them’s Fightin’ Words!

A certain blogress grand diva has impugned my culinary skills by pointing out that my recipe for BBQ beans starts with canned beans and ketchup! Oh, the treachery! She says her beans have to be cooked from scratch!

You know, there are some things you shouldn’t try to cook from scratch. Try making Rice Krispies Treats from scratch some day. Not going to happen. I make my own guitars, amps, bullets, beer…but dang, I’m not going to make my own ketchup or grow beans again. The climate down here kills everything. I couldn’t grow tomatoes if I wanted to.

I respect the whole SHTF movement, but you pretty much have to take over a county if you really want to be self-sufficient. Even in the old days, people bought things like sugar, coffee, and flour.

Anyway, I will defend my beans to the death. They are totally righteous.

Get Knock on Door From Joyful Cops

Here’s what I got so far:

I had a lot of fun making tube socket holes in 3/16″ aluminum. I had to use a 1 3/16″ hole saw for the big tubes and a 3/4″ Forstner bit for the small ones. I should buy stock in WD40; I used so much to keep the bits from binding.

The stuff on top will be held down with wood screws. There is no need for nuts when the metal is this thick.

This is extremely cool. Can’t wait to turn it on.