Michael's Story: A Christmas Tale

 EDITOR'S NOTE: This doesn't have a whole lot to do with guitar amps but it seemed important when I was mulling it over today. So tarry with me for a bit.

I lived in Signal Hill for a while back in the late eighties and one of my neighbors was a guy named Michael who lived with his boyfriend-whom I never met. Michael was a woodworker and painter whose passion was woodwork on old yachts and he had a tattoo of a paint brush on his arm-only one I ever saw. It was the eighties, and he also had HIV and was on the raggedest of ragged edges, holding on by his teeth and being thankful for every good sunny day at the marina and every cold beer on the back porch.

I suspect Michael is gone now, because it was the eighties, and we hadn't yet learned to think about HIV as another chronic illness to be managed. It was a death sentence, pretty much, in those days. I would be the happiest man in the entire world to find out that I'm wrong, but the odds were long and the stakes were high.

 It was a white knuckles sort of thing, y'know. I knew it and so did he.

So I was sitting in my car today, parked at Walgreens, thinking as hard about Michael as I'd ever thought about anything or anybody

I used to think how and why you got sick was important and had a moral dimension. Not any more. Maybe it matters at some point, but then you get sick and it just doesn't matter anymore because you're on your way somewhere, nobody can stop it, and nobody knows for sure where that is.

What a fool I'd been.

And it isn't up to any one, much less a sinner like me, to pass judgment or turn away from people because of some preconceived half assed idea of moral dimensions.

Wherever you are, Mike, rest easy and Merry Christmas

Simple Tools: Detecting Oscillation Above The Audible Range

There are a lot of folks around who think that a scope and a signal generator are the answer to every problem large or small, and you should have one before you go to brush your teeth or eat breakfast.....where was I? Oh, I remember.

On a website which shall remain nameless, a person had a problem that was related to tube rattle and a poster suggested it was "hyper sonic oscillation" and that the guy had to have a scope and a signal generator to suss it out.

Problem is, most amp owners, unless they're going to get into the trade, don't have a scope or a signal generator and wouldn't know what to do if they did have one.

Here's what I answered.

You don't need a scope and a signal generator to detect any high frequency oscillation above the audible range. All you need is a little common sense and some simple tools.
Here is what you do.
Hook up your bias checker and start at a low level with no signal input. While you're doing this go and get a transistor AM radio with an antenna (remember them?). Tune it between a couple stations and turn it up about half way. Lay it on top of the amp with the antenna extended.
Then advance the volume in your amp until you're reached full tilt.
If there is any HF oscillation going on two things will happen.
First, your bias current will go crazy and all the frequencies radiated by the oscillation will make your transistor radio hiss like a cobra.
I figured that out all on my own while building a tube matcher and have since used that trick on several amplifiers. I'm sure the old radio men knew all about it too. 

The moral of the story is this. All of the problems we have with guitar amps today have existed ever since there have been amplifiers with tubes. Most of the old radio men like Everitt Lincoln have passed on to the great ham shack in the sky, but they knew that there were plenty of ways to skin any cat you might come across. This is one I figured out on my own but I am sure they were using it too.

Revoicing a middle seventies Fender Bass Amp

Back in the early seventies Fender produced a number of eminently forgettable amps based on Super Reverb architecture. The Bassman 10 is one of them, and the Bantam Bass is another-which is the subject of our disquisition.

The original CFA 7003 Bantam came from Fender with, of all things, a trapezoidal shaped Yamaha speker with a styrofoam cone.  Think I'm kidding? That was the day that the crack truck collided with the LSD wagon and both overturned outside the Fender factory no doubt.

To say the Bantam in its 35w configuration was not a commercial success may qualify as the understatement of the twentieth century. The speakers lasted a week or so.

However we're not here to second guess what some marketing mavens cooked up out of spare Super Reverb cabinets and chasses. Yes, Virginia that is the plural of chassis.

The one I have came to me with a Jensen P15L speaker installed and a Fender Twin Reverb output transformer, which made it into a passable amp for guitar with more volume. Kinda like the Fender Pro they never built.

The P15L was not a great speaker although being well able to soak up the extra 20w or so of power being generated. Gerald Dishon, my accomplice, produced a JBL for me from only he knows where, and that put the thoughts of crossover networks to rest.

I hauled it out yesterday for some noise and I said "This just has to sound better." I had revised the normal channel of a friend's Bassman 10 to look like standard AB763 a/k/a Super Reverb.

On my own Bantam which is the subject here I went a little farther. After routine maintenance I gutted the normal and bass channels and built them to look like an AB763 Super Reverb on both sides. The easiest way to do this is to just remove all the old stuff, nobody'll miss it and it only takes a few minutes. Then following the AB763 layout you can duplicate all the tonal stuff as you wish.

One thing I've been puzzling over is whether, since I have plenty of room for expansion as the real estate boys say, if I should incorporate a second gain stage or a vibrato circuit stage before the phase inverter gets involved. I'll mull it over tonight.

Film at 11 as they say.

The Snowden Effect

Right about now you're probably scratching your head and thinking "Well, I dunno, Lester, what in the hail is this Snowden feller doing right in the middle of this yere ampolifier blog or whatever this here Dougloid feller thinks it is?"

Good question. It's a phenomenon that I have decided to call the "Snowden effect" and it has, in fact, something to do with guitar amps and maybe  bass amps as well.

Let me explain. One thing that we often see in this part of the world is this: someone appears, they've got a rare guitar amp from a long dead maker about which published information is scarce .When asked for technical details they say more or less-if they say anything at all-"Well, I'm sworn to silence because a friend of mine is tooling up to make these things, and he intends to charge an arm and a leg for them, you wouldn't want me to shank him now, would you? And don't think you can reverse engineer it either, because you'll never acquire the soul of tone that only I possess."

Classic cock tease.

Well, this is, like it or not, the age of information leakage, and if you want to keep something secret you can't go showing it off like a new Buick. Sooner or later the information gets out. A case in point is the amps made by an eccentric and marginally socialized guy named Alex (or Howard, come to think of it) Dumble. The secret was well and truly kept until two guys reverse engineered it by removing all the potting compound with dental picks and Dremels and documenting the whole thing. And in doing so they spawned a new industry of D-clones. Here's a site where the info's been collected.

Another prime example is the Standel 25L15, the innards of which were a closely guarded secret until somebody spilled the beans and Ted Weber, the Hoosier Speaker guru, came as close to reverse engineering it as anyone's likely to ever get. The schematic's not on the Weber site any more and they don't plan on offering any kits but the cat got out of the bag.

 I also saw this phenomenon with the Fender Woody Princeton and lately an amp none of us were aware of, the National Professional. It does look tasty enough that I started a long term project file and I'll be out there slurping up every scrap of information I can lay hands on.

I do have an amp in transit, an Ampeg 7020, for which I know of no documentation. If it's got the schematic inside I'll publish it. Or maybe I'll just be a tease. No. It'll get published.

Never fear. "Murder will out, as we see day by day." So saith Geoffrey Chaucer, and it was as true then as it is now.

Putting Harmony In Your Life: Reviving A Harmony H-322 Amp Part I.

The irrepressible Dirk Newton brought me this barn find amp he'd discovered on one of his sojourns, and after a while he decided he didn't want it as much as he wanted some folding money so it came my way. It's an interesting piece of single channel gear that sports volume, treble and bass controls,  two fixed bias 7591 power tubes and four 8" Jensen 5w speakers. I'm always a sucker for oddballs and orphans so I was all in on this. The first task was to see if it passed signal and it did-barely-with a raft of junk tubes scrounged up around mi ranchito.

That all happened a while ago and today I decided to see what I'd acquired. The Mullard GZ34 rectifier tube will just about pay for this rascal.

Here are some images.The before and after stuff should be pretty clear, and the amp had had some significant bodging before I got there. The first task was to replace the electrolytic capacitors, rationalize the sorry excuse for a bias system, and replace whatever else came to mind. Constructing a bias board on some vulcanized fiberboard with eyelets and stuffing it with a diode, resistor and Fender style 10 k bias pot was no great task. It allowed me to dump the old fashioned selenium rectifier which was pretty much dead anyway. That's the funny looking gray thing next to the old pot.

There's also a mystery capacitor of 1.0 uf 100v value and I've got nothing like that in the shop and it doesn't show on the schematic so I may eliminate it and just continue building to print. The wax paper caps are gone and the amp's loaded with disc ceramic caps which are usually pretty reliable.

The power supply electrolytics were replaced with a single JJ 40-20-20-20 can and bracket mount. Thus required opening up the mounting hole with my $10 set of chassis punches from Harbor Freight which are now $25. They're still a bargain if you've priced Greenlee punches lately. They work fine on aluminum and mild steel.

After all this I noticed on the schematic that it has a provision for a 33 volt supply and that's something I have to add tomorrow. It dumps 33v DC into the tube filament section which I suppose is for noise reduction. Another oddity about this amp is that it had not one but two so called "death caps" and as I was installing a grounded power cord these went in the trash.

Powering up the chassis yielded an adjustable bias that got me the required 19 volts. After I got done rethinking the power supply, I realized last night that I hadn't grounded the JJ can, so doing that yielded 450v on the plates-much more like it. I hooked up the 33v power source but there's still some hum. I think some grounded inputs and 100 ohm resistors may take care a lot of it.

The power and output transformers are marked Transco, a brand I've never heard of  unless it's the same Transco that makes neon sign transformers and sign ballasts. 

I also incorporated a pair of 1 ohm resistors from the cathodes to ground so I'll be able to measure how much current the power tubes draw.

According to the Tung Sol data sheet a class AB pair of 7591s, fixed bias of about 20 volts and a plate voltage of about 350 volts should yield about 30w of power although I'm reserving judgment until power up time- I would be pleasantly surprised if this amp was capable of that kind of power.

The goal is to evaluate the amp before I spend too much time on the cabinet, which is pretty shabby looking at this time.

EDIT: I finished the power supply this morning and got a good solid set of voltages and a usable bias supply. A pair of matched 7591s and some tweaks and I'll be in business-it's a good sounding amp.

Biasing a VHT Pittbull 100w head.

Initially this VHT amp of Fryette design came in for a sudden loss of volume. Fixing that was easy as my Hickok 532 tube tester winkled out the shorted preamp tube in a matter of minutes.

However, after pulling the chassis and inspecting it for damage-always done with a new customer with an amp failure complaint-and measuring voltages I got down to checking the bias, and what I found was a 20ma mismatch and a 65 ma draw on some tubes-about twice the limit.

Finding out information on these amps is not that easy because they're relatively low production and not often seen in these parts. Fact is this is the first one I ever opened up. But nevermind. It seems pretty straightforward and well built, but there's not a lot of information to be had and I understand Fryette is very protective of their trade secrets. A request to their customer service people has, as yet, gone unanswered but if you read their website you'd conclude that biasing an amp is just one step short of launching the Space Shuttle.

It took a little research to locate the bias adjustment pot, and remember it's the one located underneath the tube board. That's right, screw driver in the hole and not the one that's some kind of line out pot. The picture on the Eurotubes page incorrectly identifies the line out pot as the bias trim pot. Don't you believe it. It fooled me too for a little bit.

Even with the level turned all the way down, it was still waaaaaay too hot and the mismatch wouldn't pass muster.

As I was waiting for a response from Fryette and consulting with a couple of savants, some basic knowledge of bias systems came to my aid. The AC from the power transformer bias winding goes through a single diode where it is rectified into DC, passes through a 47k 1w resistor, and then is sent on to the tube board to be distributed by the bias pot.

It seemed that if I wanted to raise the voltage and thus lower the bias current at the tubes, I'd have to reduce the value of the 47k resistor-in this case to 33k.

Once that was done and the second set of JJ EL34s was installed-the first was far too noisy-bias was at 20 ma on the lowest setting, so I ramped  it up to a nice even 31 ma and that's where it stayed.

One point to remember. The standby switch should be in the II position when testing, and make sure the tube selector switch is properly set for the kind of tubes you're using-6L6GC or EL34.

UPDATE: As of November 8 the Fryette people have not responded to my request to supply information that I sent off to them. Not that I expected they would, mind you, but if you're in the market for an amp, you want the company to support it, right? Something to think about.

As usual, what you do with this information is solely your problem and your responsibility, not mine.

Biasing a Peavey 5150

The Peavey 5150 is another in a series of high gain amps beloved of metalheads and I rarely see them, because the owners are mostly not about tone. This once came in because all it would produce was a loud groan when powered up.

A little investigation revealed that one of the brand new preamp tubes was shorted so that got replaced in short order and I got sound but not muscle. A little more investigation revealed that the number 4 power tube had no screen voltage. So out came the tube board and all four screen resistors got replaced with some 220s rather than 100 ohm units, because that's what I had, and if 470s were good enough for Leo then......... It's worth noting that a plug lies right on top of  #1 so you can't get at it with a multimeter probe but nevermind. This is a good time to check everything on the back side of the tube board, including the two flyback diodes.

Although this amp is fixed bias, it's nonadjustable in the stock configuration, the level being set by R68 which used to occupy the space in the picture. It's mounted parallel to the adjacent electrolytic capacitor.  And they're usually biased way too cold.

A short digression.

In a guitar or bass amp "bias" refers to bias voltage, which is a negative voltage applied to the grid. This sets the operating level for the tube. Bias voltage can be obtained in two ways. In a fixed bias arrangement, the negative voltage is supplied by an external source such as a dedicated transformer winding. Even if there's no adjustment feature it is still fixed bias, and if it's adjustable like we did here it's still fixed bias.  The other ways is cathode bias, which uses a cathode resistor to accomplish a similar purpose by raising the cathode above ground potential. We don't have that here, and it is less efficient, more touch sensitive, and usually used in lower power amps.

To improve function it is necessary to incorporate an adjustment pot. I had a Bourns 10k pot that you see here. On one leg I attach a suitable resistor-in this place an 8.2k 1/2 w. number and cut a piece of spaghetti tubing to insulate the lead.. I take the center pin of the pot and wrap it around the unoccupied other pin and secure it with a dab of Mr. Kester's best solder.  Then I wrap about an inch or so of wire around the pin with some spaghetti covering and solder it in place.

To finish up the job, I set the resistance with a multimeter to about 15k as a good starting place, and then wrap the end of the two leads around either side of the capacitor and solder them in place.

Then I stick the Bourns pot down with a dab of superglue. Don't go crazy, you might need to remove it some day.

The next thing to do is fire the amp up with any good bias probe installed and flip the standby switch to on. If things start going sour shut down and do a rethink. But if you've got it right you should see about 25ma per tube.

Then it's a simple matter of measuring plate voltage and using the Weber bias calculator to find the right level you want. If they're new tubes always leave a little room for drift. At 481v on the plates I set it to about 34 ma on the hottest tube.

Biasing a Blackstar HT100

This amp arrived for a basic tube checking and rebiasing after three years of heavy service three nights a week. A couple preamp tubes were pretty well shot but the power tubes were fine. When I went to check them with my handy dandy cathode current checkers I found no cathode current but -95 volts on the grids. Whaaaaaaa?

Bear in mind that Blackstar don't think you or I know nuthin' bout these yere ampolifires, Lester. You either Jeeter. We've had this conversation before.

Doing a little research I discovered a reference to the fact that something must be plugged into the input jack to make things happen. It seems that with nothing in the input the amp acts as if it is on standby. I can't think of a reason for that unless you want to make people think that the amp is a lot quieter than it really is.

Once that was done the cathode current came up nicely on my two Harbor Freight dedicated multimeters. The procedure then is to adjust the bias balance control marked PR1-which is the upper one in the picture-to equalize the bias current and then adjust the level with PR2 which is the one in the bottom of the picture. These pics were taken from the rear of the amplifier.

As I understand it the HT60 is adjusted the same way.

Now you know.

Bassman 10 Normal Channel Conversion

A friend of mine bought a Bassman 10 from me a while ago and he's never been satisfied with the normal channel tone and wasn't into bridging the channels. The tone stack setup is quite different from other Fenders of the era and perhaps Fender was trying to do something with the tone stack that makes the amp more amenable to playing bass through it. Whatever the reason it didn't do much for guitar tone.

It's a sealed enclosure 50w combo based on Super Reverb architecture with a very strange speaker setup. The running impedance is 8 ohms but the amp uses four 32 ohm speakers to get this. The original speakers are as scarce as hen's teeth because of the weird impedance.

A brief  runup revealed that it was exactly as he had said-the bass control on the normal channel did absolutely nothing with a guitar.

After some thought it occurred to me that I could modify it to look like an AB763 normal channel without too much trouble, needing only the addition of five capacitors, two resistors and some nice yellow pushback wire. After comparing the layout to the board I had, I removed the components that needed to be replaced or substituted and wired from the right to the first cathode capacitor and resistor. I then cleared off the wiring for the volume and tone controls and the bright switch and wired them up according to the layout.

Of course it worked like a charm. I'm inclined to do the same thing with my Fender Bantam bass amp when I have a spare hour which according to the pictures I took of it has the same semi goofy tone stack.

The first three pics show the original goofy setup, the fourth shows the completed installation and the last shows what is involved from the AB763 layout diagram-thanks, Fender.

Cheapie Signal Tracer Mark II

Here's a drawing of a cheapie signal tracer that was devised by Bill Machrone, the Blues Junior guru and all around smart guy. The most expensive part is the amplifier speaker which will run you about $14 at da Shack. In conjunction with a signal generator it is good for what ails you.

Bogner Alchemist 2x12 Service Review

This service review is likely to be a little partial because I liked this amp so much and I was so impressed by the internal details I went out and got myself one by horse trading with a guy from over in Nebraska who needed something different himself.

The Bogner Alchemist is a 40w, 2 channel amp with digital reverb and delay onboard. It comes in three varieties-a 1x12 combo, a head and cabinet, and the one here which is a 2x12 setup. The speaker choice is at first a little odd, being a Vintage 30 Celestion below and a Greenback on the top. Reinhold Bogner, the witty proprietor of the Bogner empire says that it's for a reason. If you want to mic one tone, pick the speaker you want to mic. They're slightly different.

The amp's made in China in the Line 6 factory. Reinhold Bogner says that this allowed him to build something to his specifications, keep the price manageable and take advantage of the Line 6 broad based distribution and service network. He also says that a lot of the components in the Alchemist were brought in to China because some things were not locally available. The cabinet is made of birch plywood-no MDF here. Opening it up, capacitors from Sprague, Wima, Mallory, Nichicon, Xicon and Nippon Chemicon abound. The iron came from the Chuang Meei works in Taiwan and the transformers are well finished and beefy.

The chassis is constructed of .068 sheet steel, spot welded at the corners and powder coated. The circuit boards have nice wide traces and are well supported-no flexing when you push a tube into its socket. Another good touch is 4 plastic chassis screw guides that pop into the chassis and guide your attachment screws down into their mating holes.

And, except for the effects board there are NO surface mount devices like you find all over a Blackstar. That brings us to the subject of maintainability, and the complete build manual for the Alchemist can be downloaded here. The owner's manual is readily available too.

http://elektrotanya.com/line_6_alchemist_sm.pdf/download.html

That brings us to the power supply. The filtration is good, and all the power supply goodies are mounted on a separate circuit board, In fact there are six boards, each with their own function, connected by ribbon cables and hard wires. One thing's for sure-there is no shortage of fuses. There are the externals-a 2.5a slow blow 5x20 in the IEC socket, and an 0.5 a slow blow in the fuse holder. But it doesn't end there.  On the power supply board there are two more-an 8 amp 5x20 slow blow for the 6.3v filament circuit and a 1.0a slow blow for the B+ supply.

If you own an Alchemist make sure you order some 8a slow blow 5x20 fuses because they're not easy to find. Mouser Electronics has them.

Other nice touches include a shielded input with ferrite rings for noise suppression.

The glassware that came with the amp was a little odd. There were 4 Mesa 12AX7s and a Ruby marked 12AX7 which was nearly defunct. Out they went, to be replaced with 2 new RCAs and 3 BEL 12AX7s. After installation one RCA and one BEL were found to be a bit noisy so I subbed in a pair of 6681s.

I am running pretty short of my last ditch preamp tamer Philips 6681s I got a while ago, so I looked around and found a guy selling Penta Labs 6681s. The original 6681s were a premium mobile rated tube, very stable and quiet and just the ticket to tame an overly energetic preamp. These were something of a product test to see if they were anywhere near as good as the Philips items. So far, so good but keep your shirt on for a while.

The power tubes are Ruby 6L6GCMSTRs, and I decided to keep them because that's what I sell my customers and they've performed well for me. Another nice touch is that the power tube bias is individually adjustable for each tube via a pair of Bourns multi turn pots. No more worrying about mismatched tubes. I was able to dial the power tubes in to within .1 ma, which is pretty damn good.  I removed the cage around the power tubes, it's not needed and is probably there to satisfy safety regulator types. There is also a small trimmer on the power supply board marked R3 I think, no idea what it's for so I left it alone.

There are three qualities any guitar amp or bass amp must have to make it in the big wide world-it must be reliable and sound good or else it's a piece of crap, as Reinhold Bogner says, and I would add that it must be serviceable out in the world and follow the Donald Douglas rule of "How will it do in Peoria?". I have seen some commentary on various forums about the foot pedal plug being a dodgy proposition but I haven't tried mine and don't intend to bother with it. A number of people have talked about the Alchemist DOA syndrome which I suspect is traceable to the 6.3v 8a fuse-that was what was wrong with the one I worked on. Time will, of course tell what the reliability ends up being but for now it looks OK.

For now, I'd give this amp a preliminary thumbs up. The price is right and they aren't making them anymore, and it is a lot better built than a comparable Deville or Blackstar as well as sounding more smooth and well behaved in my biased opinion.

Rat Rod Bassman

As promised here is a photo tour of what may have been the ugliest Bassman I've seen lately. It had been brush painted black, and then covered with some revolting light green vinyl. Then came the Floods of 1993 and this amp got a soaking. A friend of mine committed to rehabilitating it for the owner who is a local player down around Burlington. It's a 5F6 circa 1957.

Originally I was on board to reassemble and overhaul the chassis,, and  and it sat for a while until my friend informed me that he was moving south of here a ways and wanted to get this amp back to the owner.
So he asked me to kind of pull the whole thing together. The speakers were pretty well trashed and two were beyond repair so out of my collection came 2 C10Ps that came out of a barn find Standel and seemed in pretty good shape.

That took a bit of yesterday and today. The ears of the cabinet where the chassis screws go through were a little weak so some 5 minute epoxy, poured in and set did the job. I had to fabricate a couple speaker leads and install a handle I had kicking around here.

It sounds pretty good but does need a set of new or reconed speakers to bring out all its primal glory.