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Got it put together. Fixed a few more things. Tone is very nice. Vintage tube amp. A bit more compressed at volume, compared to my Fender amps of similar power and size. Great tremolo!
Well... may have found why this amp has such poor reverb tone. Took tank out of bag (which look like a mouse made a home of... for a few years) There were foam pieces still glued to the frame to protect the springs during transport. I'm pretty sure these are OEM parts --- as they crumbled in my hands. And the glue is rock hard and old-colored yellow.Will retry reverb with the 12AU7 driver tube (OEM) and see how it works now.
Power supply portion after. Fast-recovery diodes, wire-wound Mills and Ohmite resistors added:
Wow. Holy ratsnest batman!
I've not done any work with vintage electronics, but that was a big mess and a lesser mess once you were done. Amazing point to point wiring. Did you have a schematic to follow?
Yes, had schematic. Problem is... with most Ampeg and Gibson amps of this era, few actually had 100% OEM setup like the schematic. They constantly were tweaking circuits, while on the assembly line.
Capacitors are perishable on the old radios I've had rebuilt even the "solid state" types. The "pinball machine" point to point wiring sure looks crude compared to PCB architecture but is easier for me to understand.
You did better than Gibson. I’ve always been good at soldering and wire routing. personally, I like 90 degree angular and easy to follow routing of cables and wires. Not mine, but an example of what I’m speaking about.
Nice neat routing! BTW... in electronics, 90-degrees also applies to routing of wires ---when they need to cross each other. Done to minimize EMF interaction between lines. Like this 1962 Fender Pro amp. Or DIY Princeton Reverb.
Third photo is of my favorite current electrolytic caps ( Sprague or F&T).
You did better than Gibson. I’ve always been good at soldering and wire routing. personally, I like 90 degree angular and easy to follow routing of cables and wires. Not mine, but an example of what I’m speaking about.
90 degree routing...
Free form routing..
I spend many, many hours running interconnection cables neatly when we built our building and the IT geeks screwed they up within a month.
04-17-2017, 05:28 PM
Restoration of 1966 Gibson Explorer amp
