I need a/some mentor/s over the phone

[slashsound]

Hi everybody, I am at that point where I actually need need live interaction with other builders/designers because I have too many questions and it would be alot more efficient if I just talked over the phone with a few of you all to talk amp tech stuff. As you may recall I am the over zealous noob that managed to piss off a couple of the veteran guys here.
I wake up and fall asleep thinking about amps, circuits, awesome tones, etc. This has become my obsession and I feel like Im missing out on alot because Im confused about many aspects of the workings of tube amps. If anybody who really knows their stuff wouldnt mind me giving them a call or visa versa please let me know. I really want to learn, I read this forum all the time and I am reading a Dave Hunter book " guitar amp handbook " along with the radiotron book. But there are many things I would like clarification on. I really would love somebody to help me out and take me under their wing.

[novosibir]

@ slashsound! I very well can understand and appreciate your intention and spiritedness, to go your 'new way', but please start your topics in the concerning forums! Your initial post isn't conform to the title of the forum:

Marshall, Marshall, Marshall
Everything about them from vintage to reissue.

Where you've started this topic. Therefore moved here

Larry

[Gaetano]

Hi everybody, I am at that point where I actually need need live interaction with other builders/designers because I have too many questions and it would be alot more efficient if I just talked over the phone with a few of you all to talk amp tech stuff. As you may recall I am the over zealous noob that managed to piss off a couple of the veteran guys here.
I wake up and fall asleep thinking about amps, circuits, awesome tones, etc. This has become my obsession and I feel like Im missing out on alot because Im confused about many aspects of the workings of tube amps. If anybody who really knows their stuff wouldnt mind me giving them a call or visa versa please let me know.

take a bath and calm mate. All they know come from experience.

[dtdionne]

Try sweeting the pot...that can help many times. To put this in perspective, think about something that your not only an expert at but that your so good that you can actually teach it to anyone and at any level from any perspective or starting point. Then think about all the time and effort it took you to reach that point, all the countless months and even years that by day you battled simply for the the hope of an epiphany and that by night you lay awake wide-eyed because you realized that from every answered challenge/question 10 more, 10 times as complicated emerge in their place -AND- not only that, but you realize that you not only have no idea how to answer these new questions but that in order to understand the question itself requires you to wrap your mind around the concept of the fact that you now have to embrace a lifetime of knowledge in a field that was seemingly unrelated and equally and maybe even more complicated than that which lead you down this path of discovery and thirst for knowledge in the first place....what is that worth to you?

Or more simply put, what do you think EVH himself could or would possibly say to a person that just picked up a guitar even if they had more than sufficient burning desire not to mention "resources" to get 15min of his time?

That's the bad news...the good news is that the key to any worthy presuit stems from the glory of the struggle in the journey -that without an overwhelming desire to succeed (which you clearly have) would never exist in the first place- and NOT in the destination.

Or more simply put, it's the chase of the girl that just might be out of your league that's intensely captivating and rewarding, not the fairy tail happily ever after

How do i know this you might ask...cause I'm just like you but prolly a good bit older.

So savor every moment cause these are the times that you will look back on soooo fondly and once again HUNGER for after you've attained your goal...


David

[dtdionne]

But I'm in a good mood so I'll give you two GGGOOOOLLLLDDDDEEEENNNNNN shortcuts guaranteed to wickedly accelerate your understanding at a pace as close to osmosis as humanly possible:

1. http://www.londonpower.com/catalog/prod ... ucts_id=58" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

2. http://metroamp.com/store/product_info. ... ucts_id=59" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I PROMISE...

[xbearxau]

Beautifully said Dtdionne.

I still stand by what I said in an earlier response to one of your questions about learning. Build a small Single ended amp and start tweaking. The easiest way to learn what affect certain changes have on a circuit is to put it into practice.

Im currently trying to teach a friend of mine about tube amps. He has quite a sound knowledge of electrical theory but he learned more in a week by building a small amp from http://www.ax84.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and tweaking it than I could have tought him in 6 months verbally. Obviously there was the 3 phone calls every day with odd questions, but seeing the results first hand is priceless.

I know you probably want to jump in and build a 100watt plexi monster, but you really need to take baby steps first. The few hundred dollars you spend on the first amp you build neednt be wasted either. Ive reused the transformers and other parts at least 6-7 times in variations on certain designs, in fact if you search the DIY section you can see one of my posts labeled Prototype Amp. Its a new design I came up with but the funny thing is the transformers are the same ones I bought for my first project 4 years ago. haha brings a tear to my eye.

Failing that, what questions do you need answers to? Im in Australia so the phone is out of the question, but if you want to PM me, Ill give em a shot.

[chubs]

Ya dude... I have been building amps since 2005, a Marshall 36w (18w clone)... I did not know what the hell I was doing, but the amp worked. Then a Plexi and so on and so ... I am just now... after about 6 amps to understand what is going on... I read about amps on a daily basis... I have theory books in my washroom... I go home for lunch to tweak amps I have been thinking about all morning...

All this is to say is... it takes time. I see your dozens of posts daily flooding the forum... but even if you get answers to all of them... you are running around like a headless chicken.... slow down dude... if you start by reading all the posts on the forum and going through Georges building tutorials you will understand more that ...than from the answers to your (IMHO) uneducated questions...

It's simpler than it seems... but you have to understand some stuff before you go too fast...

[dtdionne]

Thanks xbearxau

And I must say that I completely concure with what xbearxau and chubs have said about starting with a smaller single ended project. There are less "moving parts" or variables to wrap your mind around which reduces frustration and increases learning...I wish George offered a singled ended kit, that way he could benifit from this as well, which is why I origianlly recommended the 100w kit, but that could very well be too expensive and too complicated for a first build...but just like they said, nothing will feed your burning desire for knowledge and understanding in this area than building a kit with the support of this forum and a few good books.

[slashsound]

There are a series of books from a place called http://www.pentodepress.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; that i saw. Should I buy them all? Should I also buy all the London Power Press book? I am almost done with my Dave Hunter book " Guitar amplifier Handbook " . I really wish there was a video with cool graphics that could visually represent what is going on in an amp, im surprised nobody made one yet. Anyway, yes, I know Im a little crazy ... I feel like a guy who has not eaten in 1 month and has a huge chunk of meat in front but dont have teeth to eat it lol. Im reading everything I can get my hands on, believe me I read this forum a whole lot. The problem is I dont understand very much of what you all are talking about I feel so helpless, it sucks, Im really doing my homework. Thanks for the ax84 suggestion, I will get one next pay check or I may just get a 5 watt blackheart amp and mess around with that, so if i burn it , its not a big deal, like burning a 100 watt plexi clone. Thanks for all the suggestions, please continue, im all ears.

[paulster]

You could actually do a lot worse than to buy a Valve Junior and then read through the archived monster thread over at sewatt.com. That thread covers just about every aspect of modding one of these, from choosing the right coupling caps for the particular voicing you're after, filtering, tweaking the gain of stages, changing the output tube type, etc.

With a minimal outlay and a serious thread to work through you can actually use it as a practical experiment to get a 'feel' for what component selection means and how an amp hangs together.

At the end of it you'll have something Fendery, Marshally, Voxey, or whatever you want, because you'll have an understanding of the concepts and you'll have been able to try them out for yourself and learn through experience. Just this way you'll have kind of an accelerated learning programme!

Books are great, but without the practical experience it's difficult to put any value judgement on what you read. And it's always difficult to describe a feel when playing an instrument (and I include the amp within that definition).

[dtdionne]

I think the best thing you could do is build an amp from scratch. Find a kit that comes with excellent instructions that not only walks you through how to build it but also explains things like, "in this next section we're going to wire the ac heaters which supply the ac current to warm the tubes" or "now in this section we are going to be soldering the capacitors and resistors that comprise the first gain stage of your preamp consisting of the first half your first 12ax7 preamp tube to your PTP board" or "now for the rectifier section, this section comprises the diodes that form the rectifier portion of your circuit that is responsible for converting the alternating current (AC) from your Power Transformer to direct current (DC) to be used by tubes. Now keep in mind that while vacuum tubes can use AC current, it's DC current that creates the sound and tone characteristics that is so pleasing to our ears...and since we're talking about tone, did you know that tubes are flawed in the way that they reproduce sound and it's that flaw that makes tubes sooooo pleasing to listen to? and that it's because solid state amps reproduce the sound with 100% accuracy that makes them so unpleasing to listen too? more on that later, back to the rectifier..."

Also keep in mind that tube amps are very robust and that it's pretty hard to "burn one up"...hell i TOTALLY wired my dual voltage standby switch backwards and upside down sending 500v to a part of the circuit that it was never intended for, but my mains fuse blew immediately and everything's fine and the amp sounds amazing...my point is that while mods are cool, there's NOTHING like taking a bare empty chassis, a pile of resistors, caps, diodes, switches, pots, tubes, tube sockets and wires, some solder and a soldering iron and building an amp from the ground up...there's something about the time it takes, the fact that you touch each part, put in in place etc that gives you a foundation or platform for learning that you can't get anywhere else and certainly not in the amount of time it will take you to build an amp. It took me about 10 days to build my first kit and i couldnt have learned more in that 10 days and every day following if you hooked electrodes into by brain through my eyeballs. For example, as your reading the instructions and you read, "cut a 6" black wire and a 5" red wire stripping 1/4" from all ends and then twist them as shown in the picture below MAKING SURE TO GET AT LEAST 3 full twists. These wires are your heater wires for V7 and the quality and quantity of twists will dictate how beautifully quite or annoyingly noisy your amp will be when its done so TAKE YOUR TIME AND GET IT RIGHT, you won't be disappointed" you will begin to have an understanding of what's going on that increases with each twist that you could never get from just reading it.

But above all CHERISH THESE TIMES or at least make a point to think to yourself...I have no idea what he's talking about but I'll promise myself that I won't forget how I feel right now...and do that every couple of days or so. Oh and don't worry about being too over enthusiastic or excited or over zealous about this...while it may not seem like it now, it is and will always be one of your biggest allies so nurture it.

[chubs]

You don' t need to spend 8K on books.... buy one book... read it amd use it as a tool... again withthe headless chicken.... "Should I buy all the books....?"...


Slow down dude... you are freaking me out....

[slashsound]

again withthe headless chicken....

Slow down dude... you are freaking me out....

LOL, here you will enjoy this then http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATz3AdbjyRI" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[basisfunction]

Depending where your skillset lies, maybe you shouldn't begin with an amp. If you are starting out on the rock-bottom-ground-floor for understanding electronics and amplifiers specifically, then consider building a few pedals or oddball electronic kits first.

[Jerry G]

I know you probably want to jump in and build a 100watt plexi monster, but you really need to take baby steps first. The few hundred dollars you spend on the first amp you build neednt be wasted either.

That is one of my main concerns about buying an amp kit here at Metro. It is a fair amount of money and if I can't get it done right it is money wasted.