Board in an Epiphone Blues Custom 30

Megachunk · Post by **Megachunk** » Sat May 19, 2007 9:30 pm

Hey George.

Bought a plexi board a few years back to get my feet wet in amp building and I've been hooked ever since. I was wondering if there's a way to install a board in my Blues Custom amp. I want to remove the channel switching and gut it basically, and put in a JTM45 circuit, single channel no master. Have you heard of anyone retro-ing this amp? It's a Gibson amp, basically.

TIA,

Megachunk.

Megachunk · Post by **Megachunk** » Fri May 25, 2007 9:10 am

Bought a 50 watt lead board. Hope it works! I'm sure it'll be fine and I'll keep you up on it's progress.

TomGibbs · Post by **TomGibbs** » Sat May 26, 2007 8:58 am

im looking forward to seeing how it goes

Megachunk · Post by **Megachunk** » Sun May 27, 2007 12:31 am

I'll post pix as I go along. Got the trannies in, but mounting the board will be a bitch. More to come.

Wicksy · Post by **Wicksy** » Sun May 27, 2007 6:40 am

I've seen people build JTM 45 lite versions which used a single preamp tube cascaded as drive stage, a PI and a pair of 6v6s. That basically reduces the size of the iron (and the wattage) yet still retains a lot of the JTM 45 tone. Trouble is it was on a post at 18watt.com so we'll have to wait until it reopens to see it.

Good luck with your build though! Lets see some pictures

Leader · Post by **Leader** » Sun May 27, 2007 6:53 am

The Epiphone Blues custom sounds great. Not as good as a JTM45 of course. Good luck.

Megachunk · Post by **Megachunk** » Mon May 28, 2007 7:22 pm

Here's some pix so far... Please excuse my hairy pits on the backside shot.

Megachunk · Post by **Megachunk** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 7:52 pm

Another "so-far" picture:

Megachunk · Post by **Megachunk** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 9:52 pm

Got it all hooked up and powered on. Heaters on, plate voltages OK, But when I kick on the stby, the power tubes are ok for a bit, but eventually red plate. The mA read something stupid, like 200+ mA!! pre tubes still need to be checked.

Anyway, it's hooked up and on it's way to making noise. Any thoughts why it would be doing this? I'm sure I missed something. Thanks for all the help.

Mega

tonejones · Post by **tonejones** » Sun Jun 03, 2007 1:46 am

I know this is silly, but do you have the resistors on the output tube sockets????

No, that would be present on the plate voltages as well.......

nevermind.....

Megachunk · Post by **Megachunk** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 9:21 am

Yes the resistors are there. I'm not sure but the power trannie has 2 black wires, one for secondary center tap and one for one side of the heaters. I'm wondering if I have those 2 black wires backwards and have the secondary center tap going to the heaters and the black heater wire going to ground... Maybe why my mA readings are over 200mA??

Anyone know how to test the back leads? Not sure how to connect my meter.

Megachunk · Post by **Megachunk** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 4:54 pm

Last 2 10uF electrolytics in backwards! Sounds great, workds fine! Need a bit of sheilded cable in the inputs, but other than that, CHUNKA CHUNKA!! Thanks George.