Just sayin' howdy. New Amp, GNX3 ramblings
Hey gang, another hanger on here. Sorry I didn't feel like getting involved in the concert going/personal responsibility thread 
If you want digitech-only content, skip to the end.
Y'all may (or may not) recall that years ago I built a sweet little 1/2 watt amp (Gilmore Jr. from Guytronix). It's still cranking away but I was jonesing to build another amp. Not looking for more power, just wanted another project, maybe a little more challenge. So a while back I got a Blackface Princeton Reverb kit from Mojotone which I *finally* got around to building.
The Gilmore Jr. was a pretty easy build- turret board construction, *great* instructions and diagrams- and dead simple:- Solid state rectifier; 1 input, 1 output; Volume, Tone, Power, standby knobs/switches; 12AX7 preamp tube and 6n1p \"power\" tube. The Princeton is a way more complex animal - 2 inputs; Volume/Treble/Bass/Reverb/Vib Intensity/Vib speed controls; LOTS of fiddly little jacks for the reverb tank and reverb/vibrato footswitch; 5U4 tube rectifier, 3 x 12AX7's doing various things, 1 x 12AT7 driving the reverb; 2x 6V6 power tubes; Eyelet board instead of turret board. The \"Instructions\" were ok as a general guide but there's a ton of helpful details missing. Mojotone's Schematic and Layout docs were pretty good but contradictory in a couple of places- AJ @ Mojotone spent a lot of time on the phone with me discussing vague cross-connection info in the docs, as well as the pros and cons of various grounding approaches. Then I jumped on in.
All-told the initial build probably took 10-12 hours of work; there was a *lot* of additional research and a bit more phone time involved.After the build the first test involved applying power with tubes out and went great- nothing smoked and the heater pins all had the right voltage, but after that it took three additional tries to get sound out- Try 1: bias board diode backwards; Try 2: speaker jack was incorrectly wired; Try 3: I confused Pin 1 and Pin 8 on *both* 6V6's. Then VOILA - awesome blackface tone, sweet vibrato, reverb that runs from subtle to overpowering (gonna replace the 12AT7 with a 12AU7 to address that). After playing a 1/2 watt amp for a while, the Princeton's 12 (possibly 15, the rectifier tube in the Mojotone kit is pretty hot) seems huge. I could definitely see this amp holding its own on stage with a small combo.
Pics and samples at http://www.loon.com/~arch/Princeton
If any of you fellow hangers on have ever considered building your own amp, and have time to kill, I totally recommend giving it a shot. There are a ton of sources out there (Guytronix, Tube Depot, Mojotone, Torres Engineering and so on) and kits from the ultra simple (like a PCB-based 5F1 Champ) to the absurdly complex.
OK, GNX3 Rambling: I have mentioned here a few times how hissy the analog outs on my GNX3 are. So hissy that I basically can't use them to connect the GNX3 direct to an Amp. The S/PDIF has no such issue and I've been playing using the DAW as my \"amp\" pretty satisfactorily but I also *really* want to hear my amps. So the other day I figured I'd try getting GNX3 output from the DAW and routing it to my Amp. I'm using an EMU-1820 as my interface. So now the GNX3's S/PDIF goes into the EMU's system board's S/PDIF ; Using the Patchmix app that controls the EMU 1820, I'm then able to insert a Send in the GNX3's mixer strip to one of the EMU's physical outs, which goes to the Amp. It works like a charm with the added bonus that I could easily add a second send and run two amps simultaneously. It'd be a crap stage rig though
peace everybody.
Rawfish/Arch.
If you want digitech-only content, skip to the end.Y'all may (or may not) recall that years ago I built a sweet little 1/2 watt amp (Gilmore Jr. from Guytronix). It's still cranking away but I was jonesing to build another amp. Not looking for more power, just wanted another project, maybe a little more challenge. So a while back I got a Blackface Princeton Reverb kit from Mojotone which I *finally* got around to building.
The Gilmore Jr. was a pretty easy build- turret board construction, *great* instructions and diagrams- and dead simple:- Solid state rectifier; 1 input, 1 output; Volume, Tone, Power, standby knobs/switches; 12AX7 preamp tube and 6n1p \"power\" tube. The Princeton is a way more complex animal - 2 inputs; Volume/Treble/Bass/Reverb/Vib Intensity/Vib speed controls; LOTS of fiddly little jacks for the reverb tank and reverb/vibrato footswitch; 5U4 tube rectifier, 3 x 12AX7's doing various things, 1 x 12AT7 driving the reverb; 2x 6V6 power tubes; Eyelet board instead of turret board. The \"Instructions\" were ok as a general guide but there's a ton of helpful details missing. Mojotone's Schematic and Layout docs were pretty good but contradictory in a couple of places- AJ @ Mojotone spent a lot of time on the phone with me discussing vague cross-connection info in the docs, as well as the pros and cons of various grounding approaches. Then I jumped on in.
All-told the initial build probably took 10-12 hours of work; there was a *lot* of additional research and a bit more phone time involved.After the build the first test involved applying power with tubes out and went great- nothing smoked and the heater pins all had the right voltage, but after that it took three additional tries to get sound out- Try 1: bias board diode backwards; Try 2: speaker jack was incorrectly wired; Try 3: I confused Pin 1 and Pin 8 on *both* 6V6's. Then VOILA - awesome blackface tone, sweet vibrato, reverb that runs from subtle to overpowering (gonna replace the 12AT7 with a 12AU7 to address that). After playing a 1/2 watt amp for a while, the Princeton's 12 (possibly 15, the rectifier tube in the Mojotone kit is pretty hot) seems huge. I could definitely see this amp holding its own on stage with a small combo.
Pics and samples at http://www.loon.com/~arch/Princeton
If any of you fellow hangers on have ever considered building your own amp, and have time to kill, I totally recommend giving it a shot. There are a ton of sources out there (Guytronix, Tube Depot, Mojotone, Torres Engineering and so on) and kits from the ultra simple (like a PCB-based 5F1 Champ) to the absurdly complex.
OK, GNX3 Rambling: I have mentioned here a few times how hissy the analog outs on my GNX3 are. So hissy that I basically can't use them to connect the GNX3 direct to an Amp. The S/PDIF has no such issue and I've been playing using the DAW as my \"amp\" pretty satisfactorily but I also *really* want to hear my amps
. So the other day I figured I'd try getting GNX3 output from the DAW and routing it to my Amp. I'm using an EMU-1820 as my interface. So now the GNX3's S/PDIF goes into the EMU's system board's S/PDIF ; Using the Patchmix app that controls the EMU 1820, I'm then able to insert a Send in the GNX3's mixer strip to one of the EMU's physical outs, which goes to the Amp. It works like a charm with the added bonus that I could easily add a second send and run two amps simultaneously. It'd be a crap stage rig though peace everybody.
Rawfish/Arch.