The sweet sound of success

white room · Post by **white room** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 9:04 pm

I finally had the time to tube up my 67 build tonight and try her out for the first time. I don't even know where to begin.

Once I got it biased up, I grabbed the LP loaded with CR Crossroads and plugged it in and I had it already flipped up to the neck pickup, and I brought the volume up to about 2 and my jaw hit the floor! It had that warm, clean Jimi tone that I have never been able to fully get out of any other amp I have owned. The harmonics where deep and swirling, and the sustain seemed to last forever. I don't think my LP has ever sounded this rich before. I swear I thought I was going to cry it was so sweet.

I have owned quite a few amps in my 30 years of playing, and without a doubt none of them have sounded quite like this one. It's like a revelation!

I have not cranked it up yet but I'm just gushing over the clean tones right now. I can only get it biased up to around 24mA at full swing on the bias pot because I am using the 80% taps on the dual PTbut I will change to the 100% taps tomorrow and see what happens. I can't believe how quiet this amp is too...amazing. Well, I need to go plug the SG into it now and bask in those tones for a while.

So far no problems ( knock on wood )

This amp is too freakin

toner · Post by **toner** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 9:58 pm

Yeah, but do you like it?

Congrats!

Shared cathode? What filtering are you running?

white room · Post by **white room** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 10:46 pm

toner wrote:Yeah, but do you like it? Congrats!

Shared cathode? What filtering are you running?

I absolutely LOVE it

It is pretty much the same 67/68 layout that Dan did on MacG's page with a few slight differences.

Shared cathode
470Kmixers
500p mixer bypass cap
no volume bright caps
56k/250p
.1 PI caps

Filtering
Mains: 100u
Screen:32u
PI: one side of a dual 32u can
Preamp: 16u

I think I may have a dodgy solder joint somewhere because after I made the last post I went back to play and when I took the amp off standby I got about 2 seconds of fuzz and crackling and then it stopped. I hope that's all it is.

This amp does Wind Cries Mary and Take Another Piece of My Heart to a tee.
http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=5555410

toner · Post by **toner** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 11:05 pm

It seems like a lot of people are having problems with standby switch noise. Mine's different than yours and pops when switching from "on" to standby but I may be able to fix it with snubber caps (haven't tried yet).

white room · Post by **white room** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 11:34 pm

toner wrote:It seems like a lot of people are having problems with standby switch noise. Mine's different than yours and pops when switching from "on" to standby but I may be able to fix it with snubber caps (haven't tried yet).

I get the pop thing too but as you say, I think that's a job for snubber caps. I think I may have found my crackling problem. I found a plate wire on v1 that came off when I was poking around. The wire was actually broken which probably happened when I stripped it. I am about to go find out right now.

Dax-The-Ax · Post by **Dax-The-Ax** » Sun Jun 24, 2007 10:53 am

Nice amp, is it a JTM 45/100? I really would love that Jimi glassy tone.

Dax

bluze81 · Post by **bluze81** » Sun Jun 24, 2007 1:43 pm

Whitroom did you do the straght 67 clone build with the dual tap power transf,? I started doing the 12 series and wound up close the 67 shared cathode, and I love this amp! great tones, I did lower my mains filtering from 100uf to 50uf and the amp feels alot better, no ghosting but I play strats,your Les Paul might make a low filtered amp ghost like crazy? glad to hear about your build man, and big congrats! please post a picture for all of us to drool and ooh and ahh over,LOL, thanks bluze

white room · Post by **white room** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 3:50 pm

Thanks for the compliments guys.

bluze81,

It's a straight 67. It does ghost a little with the LP but not quite as much as I thought it would. It sounds great with a SG too with lots of tight mid chunk stuff going on when it's cranked. This amp makes me believe that Paul Kossoff could have used a 67 at times.

When I started planning for this amp, I thought about going with 50uF for the mains but decided against it because I wanted to see how the higher filtering there worked with lower filtering on the screens and for now I like it.

I had some problems for a few days with it blowing the HT fuse but I found that the brand new Dagnall clone I had in the amp was bad and I think it was from getting tossed around during shipment since the mounting feet on one side where bent up to the end bells. I decided to go with the earlier 67 spec and installed the Heyboer 2" OT in it and it works fine now...nice OT BTW.

http://forum.metroamp.com/viewtopic.php?t=12085

I may replace the dual tap PT since I can only get up to about 465V on the high taps and I would like to get around 475V. ( It's one of the low wound jobs that Heyboer did)

Check for pics a few post earlier in this thread.
Not as pretty as most guy's amps on this board but I'll get better after a few more builds.

BTW Dax, I was really surprised at how well this amp gets that JH clean tone. I was floored by it! It sounds very much like my SLP with JTM45/100 specs.