Friday, March 29, 2013

Bandmaster Build part 3

I finished the chassis a few days ago and road tested it on the bench while I was setting the bias. I lugged it upstairs and slapped it into my friend's 1955 Super cabinet that was vacant at the time and gave it a whirl. It sounds good, nice and quiet and clear tone. Metal film resistors are good for making a nice quiet running amp I think.

 I won't know how it really sounds until it's run through the three Weber alnico Signatures that were provided with the kit.

It was worth taking all the extra time to double check every connection on the board and each flying lead because I was not going to take the board out again.

Fact is, I'm trading a D'Evil for a Weber 5E3P Proluxe I used to own, and  I've already got a board half built and stuffed for a conversion to octal preamp tubes. Somewhere in this blog there's some information on how to make your own boards and drilling masks, and install and clinch eyelets.

Now, if the weather warms up a bit I have two tweed cabinets to shellac and tone.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for blogging your build.
    Great information :o)
    I've just started on my own 5E7 build and dry populated the fibre board last night. I'm in the UK so am not building a kit, just sourcing the parts as and where I can. I'm using NOS carbon comp resistors where possible so mine might be a bit noisier than yours. Please comment on how it sounds when you've installed it in the cabinet..

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  2. Cool. The cabinet that came with my amp kit had a defect that required its replacement. Spring is just starting around here and it wasn't until we had a 15 degree c day that I could work on the finishing. I built a fixture to hold it so I could apply the shellac and found that one side was significantly bowed in so Weber is getting me another cabinet gratis. The best way I found to do the underside of the board is to take the layout diagram on the Weber site and invert it so that you can see exactly where the underside wires go. I like metal film resistors because they're quiet, but I have a customer with a 5D4 Super and I've been chasing a noise for a few months. Turned out it was one of the plate load resistors, and I stuck a couple metal film resistors in, and he says it sounds different.

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