Mr. Foxen

Sold my Laney combo, so I just pulled the trigger on the power valves. Ordering direct from Hong Kong works out fairly cheap, and I'm told the Shuguangs are pretty good for new production valves. Edit: Just spotted I used naughty words in the diary because they are ok on the first forum I posted this on, sorry about those.

[quote name='Wooks79' post='1267961' date='Jun 13 2011, 09:51 PM']Very much so! [/quote] See build diaries section.

Fairly sure it is going to mostly sound like a lot of swearing at various points.

If anyone in Bristol area has this sorta ding, I'll cheerfully apply the above methods to it.

Figure you all saw the big pile of Sound City 120s I bought. I like them because they are made of good components on turrets, so they are easy to work on, and 6 EL34 is loads of power. The pre has a bad rep because it is much more complex than most valve amps, but it is actually very flexible, just a bit unfamiliar, and it can get pretty noisy with the amount of components that can drift in it. Hopefully that can be fixed with a good service. I'm not too techy on the electronics side of things, but I'm learning. I did just break my multimeter, which isn't ideal. Step one, after selecting one that looked basically complete, was give it a wash. Damp scourer sponge and some washing up liquid for the tolex, and the top bit of the chassis. Nothing is gonna be passing current soon, so a bit of moist in there is going to do no harm. Top of chassis after a wipedown, this was pretty seriously grubby, bit dust/grease and corrosion, the scourer side was applied to that, care taken to not scour off the partridge stickers on the trannies, I have the screening cans for the pre valves put aside. Now for the actual electronic bits, here they are: Bit neater and much less f***ed with than the previous ones, snubbers on the diodes are installed in a much more fancy twisty way (smarty looking jobs). Essential tools for this part: Keep water away from electrics, so alcohol is the way, meths for bits you can get at, servisol (aerosol alcohol) for the bits you can't, like inside pots. Don't use WD40 for this, WD40 is an oil in a solvent, the solvent part acts like servisol, dissolving grease, but the lubricant oil part sticks around making a pain of itself. Plus it dissolves/corrodes some things. Servisol is safe and nice. Cotton buds dipped in meths for cleaning the jack sockets and contacts, and the grease with dust stuck in it around valve bases, enough dust stuck together and you can get a conductive path that shorts out your valve, high voltages around there make this very much more likely. The dust is burnt to carbon, which is more more conductive, and makes things worse, you get more flashes until something properly explodes or catches on fire. Everyone should clean out their amp once in a while, even just the jacks and valve bases can make a fair bit of difference. Also in that pic, you can see some of the main thing I was trying to achieve, a list of electrolytic caps (the ones that look like batteries, full of rolled up stuff and wet paste) I need to order. They degrade with age, and are a fairly major thing to be f***ing up in amps. I am just going to replace them all because modern ones are plain better, not point in messing with trying to keep things original at the cost of being noisy and not working right. You can mess with testing and reforming them, but I reckon it is pointless for a working amp. I decided to read all the values off the amp, because I suck at schematics, and these amps are a bit 'custom' and not necessarily consistent. Some were easy to figure: Others less so: Had to get the soldering iron out to get at this, did a pretty bad job of it, as only have lead free solder hand and it totally sucks. Some lead solder has been ordered. Some of the pots feel pretty dodge, stiff bits, but a good servisol spray and twiddle has freed up most of them. Won't be an update for a while as gotta wait for parts to arrive, and some money to come in so I can afford a set of valves, and a new multimeter. Anyone wanna buy an Japanese OC2 for £65? Would cover the power valves.

Anyone wanna see a photo diary of me trying to restore one of these?

Iron might do it, needs to be properly boiling hot though. I'd polish it down with fine wet and dry, till it is level, then polish with t-cut, maybe toothpaste for the finest bit. If wood is showing, maybe felt tip it first.

Put some wet tissue on the hole, and touch it with a hot soldering iron, the water/steam pressure can pop the fibers back out, then fill whats left with superglue and polish down.

I got called a 'f*cking oddjob' by a man with a forked beard and multiple facial piercings. I was having my pre-gig cup of tea and that pub happened to serve it in a cup and saucer.

Gotta figure how many full sets of knobs I can arrange, then the rest get chicken heads and there'll be a few left over. Some of them are damaged anyway, so I can swap the smarty bits around.

[url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/hondo-bass-70s-classic-/320713059195?pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV&hash=item4aabfceb7b"]Hondo[/url]

Nick has some Russian paper in oil jobs that will sort you out, if they haven't all sold already.

He is busy preparing the actually big cabs, the 2x15, told me should be good to go end of month.

Because Jaco did it that way.

Bear in mind the switch needs to be able to deal with the full power that the amp can do, and since the cab is rated 1800w or something, that would be a beefy switch to not be a downgrade.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='1258097' date='Jun 6 2011, 09:35 AM']If anyone thinks their bandmates are so clumsy that a tall stack will be knocked over... Well I can't see any band like that managing to get through a whole song without a cacophony of upended cymbal stands! [/quote] Former bandmates of mine here:

Sounds like you need your amp gone over properly, cleaning some points and tube swapping sounds like a low budget job. If the amp had a problem before, it might just have not been putting out the power it could have, and sorting that could give you the juicce to blow cabs, and when a cab goes, its impedance also goes wrong, either way, so could have taken something with it. If you amp does burning smell, it needs to be properly looked at.

Matamp can make you a small amp.

And of all the nice things I have up for sale, that one gets a bid. From Norway.

[url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ULTRA-RARE-THRU-NECK-BASS-GUITAR-PROJECT-LEMMY-ETC-/190542507992?pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV&hash=item2c5d37efd8"]Kit form.[/url]

[url="http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p3984.m570.l1313&_nkw=maple+veneer&_sacat=See-All-Categories"]Loads of small offcuts on ebay.[/url]

John made the transformers for the 400w Matamp.