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 Post subject: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 7:24 pm 
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Here are a couple of tips I thought might be useful in building your amp. Feel free to add any tips you might have to assist others with their builds.

My first tip involves the alignment of the standoff holes in the turret board and the holes in the chassis. Take the brass standoffs in step 1 on page 8 of the build instructions along with their smalls screws and install them in their holes in the chassis. Snug the screws just enough to hold the standoffs against the chassis but loose enough for the standoffs to still move a little. Now lower the turret board onto the threaded portion of the standoffs. Here you are checking the alignment of the holes in the board to make sure they line up properly with the standoffs. The holes and standoffs in my kit were slightly misaligned but lined up well enough to thread the nut onto the threaded part of the standoff. If the holes in your turret board do not align well with the standoffs you may need to enlarge the boards holes a little. You can do this with a small rat tail file or a drill bit that is slightly larger than the existing hole in the turret board. Once you have the holes aligned and are able to get the nuts screwed onto the standoffs tighten the nut and the screw of the standoff. Now remove the screw from the standoff and pull the board from the chassis. Now tighten the standoff and nut. This will lock the standoff into place and ensure that your turret board/standoff assembly will be aligned with the holes in the chassis when you are ready to install the assembled turret board. Doing this is much easier than dropping the assembled turret board into the chassis later and finding out that the holes don't line up with the standoffs. Enlarging the holes in the board is a lot easier than enlarging the holes in the chassis.

Another check you should make is that of the output transformer and it's holes in the chassis. It seems that chroming the chassis shrunk the holes a tiny bit making it difficult to get the 6-32 machine screws into the holes. To enlarge the holes a bit I used my rat tail file to ream out the holes so that the screws fall right into the holes.

Here's a link to the files I use. I got them from StewMac.com. a few years ago and I can't tell you haw handy they have been.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Nuts,_saddl ... &xsr=15691

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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2011 8:57 pm 
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Stephen wrote:
Another check you should make is that of the output transformer and it's holes in the chassis. It seems that chroming the chassis shrunk the holes a tiny bit making it difficult to get the 6-32 machine screws into the holes. To enlarge the holes a bit I used my rat tail file to ream out the holes so that the screws fall right into the holes.
I just enlarged the two OT mounting holes with a 9/64" drill, which solved the problem nicely. Took about 10 seconds, quite literally.

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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 3:39 pm 
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When building the turret board and adding the off-board wires, make sure you strip both ends of each wire before soldering into place. That way you don't put stress on the solder joint by stripping the other side once the wire is soldered in, or worse, try to strip the wire with the turret board installed in the chassis. It's tight in there!

Also, make the 4, 5, and 6 inch wires about a half inch longer than required.


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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 7:30 am 
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mmarsh wrote:
When building the turret board and adding the off-board wires, make sure you strip both ends of each wire before soldering into place. That way you don't put stress on the solder joint by stripping the other side once the wire is soldered in, or worse, try to strip the wire with the turret board installed in the chassis. It's tight in there!

Also, make the 4, 5, and 6 inch wires about a half inch longer than required.


Wish i had read this before I got started...D'oh! Finished all of the board wiring, will mount in the chassis sometime this week and find out how many wires need to be lengthened. I started off making all of the leads 1/4" than required, but unfortunately found out that I was not left with enough wire to make the final connections. Any recommendations on where to order cloth covered wire?

Also, I noticed that the leads of one of the carbon comp resistors I had was not long enough to reach both turrets. Is it ok to solder to the adjacent capacitor, or should I try ordering another resistor with sufficient lead length. (1.5K resistor from step 14 of the instructions).


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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 8:10 am 
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Solder the resistor to the leads of the capacitor.

One source for cloth covered wire is Weber Speakers...

https://taweber.powweb.com/store/cableord.htm

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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 3:36 pm 
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mmarsh wrote:
When building the turret board and adding the off-board wires, make sure you strip both ends of each wire before soldering into place. That way you don't put stress on the solder joint by stripping the other side once the wire is soldered in, or worse, try to strip the wire with the turret board installed in the chassis. It's tight in there!

Also, make the 4, 5, and 6 inch wires about a half inch longer than required.



definitely agree with this one, having finished the build. It made for some hairy wire stripping when the instructions didn't specifically mention doing the stripping of those rather hard to strip cloth covered leads BEFORE mounting the circuit board...that was about the only "pseudo difficulty" I had...


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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 3:38 pm 
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jhucx! wrote:
mmarsh wrote:
When building the turret board and adding the off-board wires, make sure you strip both ends of each wire before soldering into place. That way you don't put stress on the solder joint by stripping the other side once the wire is soldered in, or worse, try to strip the wire with the turret board installed in the chassis. It's tight in there!

Also, make the 4, 5, and 6 inch wires about a half inch longer than required.


Wish i had read this before I got started...D'oh! Finished all of the board wiring, will mount in the chassis sometime this week and find out how many wires need to be lengthened. I started off making all of the leads 1/4" than required, but unfortunately found out that I was not left with enough wire to make the final connections. Any recommendations on where to order cloth covered wire?

Also, I noticed that the leads of one of the carbon comp resistors I had was not long enough to reach both turrets. Is it ok to solder to the adjacent capacitor, or should I try ordering another resistor with sufficient lead length. (1.5K resistor from step 14 of the instructions).


Hey, just use all that extra cut off transformer wire to lengthen anything you need. Pretty much you have every color available so as to still color code things. Just solder Good and wrap with a LOT of high quality supple electrical tape...I had to do it once, and it still looks pretty neat, I'd say...


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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 7:02 am 
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I just finished the turret board build and have a few suggestions.

Turret board soldering:
If you solder the turrets from the bottom, like Fender does, with practice you can get a nice little bubble.
Attachment:
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Attachment:
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In order to do this and not go crazy, having a few work vices make it straight forward.
This image shows how I am holding the board. The wire is just sitting on top of the alligator clip, it is not clipped into it.
Apply heat to the turret from the above (your iron is on top of the work) and feed the solder into the hole. Keep an eye on the underside and stop as soon as you see it start to come out.
If you have trouble getting it hot, tin your iron and try again, I am using a pencil tip and having not problems getting good flow.
Make sure you pull back an extra 1/4 of cloth or the solder will bubble around the side and down the component lead.
Also, there are a few wires that you install but don't solder right away, these will fall out every time you flip the board so just set them and the pages they belong to aside until it is time to solder that turret.

Clean your iron every time you put it back.

Attachment:
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_HS_2414.jpg [ 164.71 KiB | Viewed 29394 times ]

Get a ruler:
Get a ruler and just keep it right in front of you, every page has a "Cut X length of wire" on it.


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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 2:34 pm 
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The tips are appreciated! I got my cabinet lacquered and my chassis assembled - about to begin soldering this afternoon. I've built several pedals but this is my first amp build. I've been following these forums and think I'm aware of most of the helpful hints and corrections just wondering one thing. I've read the suggestions about needing to extend wires but it seems from the dates that those were mostly related to the Champlifier kit. Has anybody that has built the TR needed to extend wires off the turrett board? Might as well ask before i get started.

Thanks!


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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 3:29 pm 
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Well, there are a few things I know now that might be useful.

If you are comfortable with a pencil tip on the iron, that may be the best way to go. I have used pencil tips my whole life and never had a problem. On recommendations, I got a small chisel tip and never found it any better for the bigger stuff, meanwhile for the tight spots it seemed gigantic. I ended up switching back half way through doing the pots and may never use it again.

Print the TR Wiring page and keep it handy. sometimes knowing where things go later made it easier to get into those tight spaces when the time came. This is especially true around the rotary switch and tube sockets.

In Rev 1.0.1

Page 18: Yellow wire should be 3" and not 2.5"

Page 46: Brown wire just reaches, wish I would have gone with 7.5" here. This may be because on Page 61 picture of and subsequent drawings shows the cut pot as aligned with the others pots. In the pictures it shows it at 90 degrees to the right.

Page 49: If you have followed all the "don't solder here" and "solder here" arrows, everything that should be soldered is and there are a few places where you have not soldered. You can ignore the instructions that say "solder all the lugs that have not been soldered". Later you will be adding more wire to those un-soldered lugs.
The 470ohm resister/25uf cap comes to mind, there are some paired resisters further down I think as well.
You could also just reheat, it is up to you.

Page 51: Once you install the BYOC-TRPT, much of the other hardware install will be easier by setting the chassis up on end like is recommended on Page 95, This is not always the case, if things seem like they are hard to get to try moving it around, laying it down in different directions. I had a few small pieces of scrap 1x2 wood I used to keep from leaning on the tube sockets and pot shafts when that was the most comfortable.

Page 62: Read the second half of Page 81 before you install the pots. Key the pots up before you install them.


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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 5:02 pm 
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Thanks HS. That's just the type of info I'm looking for. Did you finish yours? How's it sound?


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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 7:50 pm 
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My cab and speaker are in transit, tracking says it shows up on Monday, fingers crossed.

My amp chassis is done, I went through the initial testing and even hooked it up to a small 8 ohm 4" satellite speaker (trust me if my Vox had an 8 ohm inside, I would have busted that thing open to try it out). I only played through it enough to know it's working and considering the speaker, it sounded good.

The only issue I might have is some medium low feedback sort of noise when I switch back to standby from one of the two power modes, I am not sure which mode and until I have the thing in a cabinet, I am not going to worry about it.


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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 12:00 pm 
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For anyone who is building their first amp, or even anyone who has already built a few amps, there are a lot of good tricks to be picked up on in Tube Depot's series of amp building videos. Sometimes just seeing how things go together is a huge help. Rob Hull is a great builder and there are undoubtedly little tricks he does here and there that we can all learn from.








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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 10:25 pm 
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morgan..

Why is there no video? I am sure my dues are paid up..


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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 10:28 pm 
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All 4 working here....

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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 11:36 pm 
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I have one for the combo cab assembly.

Install the chassis into the cab, keep it loose.
Install the back panel.
Lean the cabinet on its back, so the back panel is now facing down, this will cause the chassis to go flush with the back panel.
Tighten chassis screws and you have a perfect fit between the chassis and back panel.


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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 10:18 am 
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Instructions on kit amps often seem to call for using a wire nut to join two wires together, such as page 78 in the tweed royal instructions. This was done fairly often in amps in the 50's, but there are much more secure ways to join two wires. Instead of using a wire nut, just solder the wires together!

Here is a tutorial: http://www.wikihow.com/Splice-Wire

And a video (although this guys doesn't do a great job on this particular splice, I think you'll get the idea; the meat of what you need to know can be found from about 5:00 to 11:00):

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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 1:29 pm 
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Great stuff here! Working on a Boothill 5f1 now.


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 Post subject: Re: Amplifier Build Tips
PostPosted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 9:27 am 
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To simplify the wiring of the 4 input sockets, just screw these in from the front side of your face plate. Now you have plenty access to the soldering points and you can bend the solid wires and resistors nicely to the sockets. It is also a good idea to use screened cable to run the signals to the turret board. Also you might observe to run screened cable from the turret board to the first valve socket #2 and #7. This helps to reduce any hum. After soldering is complete just remove the assembly and relocate to the inside of the chassis. It is also a good idea to glue some aluminium tape at the bottom of your enclosure wher you mount the chassis. Use some overleap. This will act as an RFI shield and is very usefull


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