Wow, it actually works!

At lunch break today I finally dared to switch on my home made valve (tube) guitar amplifier and to my work mates surprise and my relief no bang, smoke or sizzling noises! So I connected it temporarily to the PC's sound and it came out loud and clear with NO hum! Can't wait to plug a guitar into it! Tomorrow I have to take multiple voltage measurements and do some maths to work out how hard the new tubes are working -too lower wattage and they won't sound their best-too much and they won't last as long. Then I can see if I can get the final (or first) tube working, it's just an option and can be switched in and out but I'm still a couple of components short. I've learnt so much already by building this thing!

Tube amplifier progress

The valve amplifier is coming together nicely, as most of it is over 40 years old I'm hunting through my parts to try to keep it vintage looking. Although it is a separate head the controls are on the top like a Vox so I can access them easily, putting them on the front only seems to make sense if it is up high on a huge speaker stack and I assure you it won't be! I'll keep you updated and maybe post a video once it's all working.
Hopefully at my next gig at Gary's Club I can play my own songs on my homemade guitars AND amp
Optional techie bit;
The chassis came from the remains of an Armstrong 127m stereo tuner/amplifier, it originally used ECL86 triode-pentode valves but these are hard to find and not as good as the EL84s pentodes which are found in most smaller British amps so I have rewired the holders for El84s and added a separate ECC83/12AX7 for the two triodes (Driver/phase splitter stage) Also I want to add a switchable EF86 pentode at the input try try and capture some of that VOX chime but I'll add that later.-The rectifier is solid state. THe whole thing should push out 10 watts in A class, I'm not too worried about distortion though a nice overdrive would be a plus.

One man's junk....

Junk? Oh nooo! Gold dust! This is the remains of a guitar amp I built about 20 years ago from the remains of a valve hifi amp from the 1960's! I found it in the attic and I'm rebuilding it and converting it to take readily available (and better) valves. It's a 10 watt class A amp that is similar to a Vox AC10 except it hasn't got the EF86 valve (tube) in the preamp so I'm planning to add one. No I haven't finished the last amp yet! I'm building these in the warm at work during my lunch breaks and come the spring I should have two working ones to take out to the shed and put into cabinets!

A new year and new projects to build!

LET ME START BY WISHING ALL MY FRIENDS A HAPPY 2010!

2010? It it doesn't look like a date does it? More like something out of Star Trek! Star date 2010-- thing is I've just seen Bernard Cribbens on Dr Who acting like Luke Skywalker what is going on?

Anyhow I have a couple of nearly empty roses chocolate tins on the kitchen table, anyone got ideas what to do with them?

Actually I'm starting the year with at least potential six projects waiting to be built! I have 3 (no make that 2 as I have to build a ukulele for a friend) cigar boxes and one larger wooden box waiting to become various strange woodsy acoustic instruments. Also my newly rebuilt 100 watt sold state guitar amp has been tested and is all working that is except the swanky 5 control tone mixing circuit which needs sorting! And also I unearthed over the Christmas break a valve (or tube) amplifier I built about 20 years ago from some ancient hifi equipment Some of the valves are missing though and are hard to find nowadays so I needs to redesign it a little- I think i know what I'm doing!

All shall be blogged as usual! Just don't tell my wife as I'm rapidly running out of space! That's the good thing about song writing!

Merry Christmas! (& free festive music download)

A Merry Christmas to anybody who might be looking in and enjoy this FREE festive EP download from my favorite Ukulele(and mouth trumpet)player Victoria Vox!


http://victoriavox.bandcamp.com/

Open Mic at Gary's Club including video

Open mic night at Gary's club.
I had a great open mic at Gary's club last night. I felt far more confident and go to grips (at last) with singing through a microphone!
Unlike a normal open mic where you only get to do one or two songs Gary pre-books you in for a 20 minute slot so you can really
start to develop a proper set. It was a great evening with 6 of these slots and a really varied selection of styles and I was asked back
to do another in about 4 or 5 months or so,in the mean time I'll definitely be back to watch!

100 watt homemade guitar amplifier MK 3

My main homemade guitar amplifier is undergoing its third reincarnation!
It is based around Maplin 100watt Mosfet power amplifier kit which was popular for use as a disco amplifier in the 1980’s and is no longer made.
I remember I originally built it as a general purpose amp in the early 90’s then in 1997 (see photo) I built it into an old tape recorder cabinet cobbled together with a hodge podge of different projects which included several relays, one valve (tube), five power supplies and a loud speaker from the late1950’s to make a very useful amp indeed! I used it for many a Prison Fellowship visit into jail in the trio El Camino and despite its heath Robertson nature and being shaken up on a bone rattling trolley it never let me down even surviving being dropped and landing upside down! Its only problem was it had so many controls I would get to the end of a gig and wonder why my sound wasn’t quite right to find a knob on the wrong setting!
After we’d stopped doing the prison visits it languished in my shed for a few years and when I fired it up last year I discovered that part of it had ceased to function and rather than trace the fault in it rats nest wiring pulled it to pieces and put the components aside for later.
My modern digital VOX ACD30 is great but somehow I feel I should be playing through something homemade and also I’m missing the thunderous roar of my old 100 watt monster so I’m rebuilding it (neatly this time!) into an old (digital!) 30watt amplifier cabinet, I’m not sure if I can shoehorn the old speaker in there yet!
Co-worker Graham is kindly building it a new neater Craig Anderton “Super Tone Control” circuit, I have already got the powers supplies into the new chassis.
Photos etc to follow!
For the geeky here is a list of its circuits: (so far!)
Germanium transistor “range master” booster (New to this build)
Preamp from a tiny Fender mini twin battery amp
“Super Tone Control” from the Craig Anderton book Projects for Musicians
Maplin Spring line reverb driver

“ line driver & 100 watt mosfet amplifier

I’ve just remembered that I want to put in a microphone input too so I can use it as a joint guitar amp and PA system like Carvin make. This is going to be an epic project!