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This ...



... had all the right voltages, worked perfectly first time, and was dead-quiet, even at full volume.

Of course, I'm heels-head-over right now, but still. Even after aggressively recalibrating the expression of my response to adjust for heels-head-over error, I still say this:

Best amp I've ever played through. I love this thing.



The two tens should be just about done - I expect them in a couple of weeks.

Damn that looks nice!!!!!

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http://pdfelectronics.com

I'll say. That is one sweet build!

Quill, is that the VRM control mounted on the left side of the chassis? I'd appreciate a close up pic if you could.

Look at you guys, being nice and even asking for pictures.

I don't know a lot about grounding and was loath to move the power section ground to accommodate the VRM. The ground looks right, sitting between the transformers like that - with sizeable pieces of the chassis all the way around the hole.

So, I followed your example, Case - I think it was your example - and drilled a hole in the side of the chassis and ran some jumpers. And as I posted, the amp is dead-quiet as it is, so I'm glad I stuck with the design and didn't settle for a corner of the PT for the power-section ground. Here's the detail shots.






I had some copper foil left over from another thing that was cluttering one of my parts bins, and I looked at it and thought about the watts-to-heat application of the mosfet in this circuit, and had a silly idea and made this:

http://i919.photobucket.com/albums/ad34/qui11/5e3heatsinkdetail.jpg

It's more cute than functional, I'm sure.

I haven't connected the VRM yet - but I will soon.

And when I do, I'm going to keep an eye on that heat-shrink, in case I've done a bad thing there and the conductors get hot.

Great pictures, Quill! I was wondering what the copper "fins" were (I guessed correctly). Heat shrink should be fine; I've seen it in other builds. Fine work, my friend, fine work.

Very nicely done! The copper feathers wont make a big difference. The MOSFET doesnt get that hot anyway.

How many amps had you made before this one?

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

Though I have worked a bit with wire, this is my first electronics project of any kind. I've wanted to build an amp for many years, and have done a lot of reading and looking around. Just trying to learn as much from the process as I can.

Really appreciated the phone support during start-up, Stephen.

You sir, are hereby qualified to take the next step!!

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

Hey Quil, great work. I wish I had taken more time and been more careful with my build, but I just wanted to get the thing done so very badly, I rushed it. I like your solution for the facia pieces. I set mine in a rabate, but your tongue and groove solution is stronger. I don't know if you have finished the cab yet, but some natural wood putty will fix many of those small gaps. I used lots, but mainly because my box joints were hand cut.

Great work, keep it up!

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Everyone must believe in something, I believe I will go canoeing. - HDT

Well, thanks for the kind comments.

Here's where the project sits, until I've gathered the courage to apply the tweed:





I just love the duck-cloth grille. It's not what most are using for theirs, and I do admire the more often-applied gold-striped grille. If I thought I could get away with the bare pine - jeez, you just walk by the cabinet, and the breeze from your movement seems enough to mark the wood - that lovely brown cloth next to the pine would be, to me, the better match.

And I suppose the next step is to install these:



The first speaker to go in was a nice 12" Jensen Jet, a black "special edition" one that I bought used from a local amp tech. It's a beautiful speaker - but I really do like the sound of 10" speakers in an amp, and I also prefer two speakers to one. So, we'll see.

It seems to be quite a trick to post links to sound clips, in this forum ... does anyone know how?

You need to host them on a site such as soundclick. Then post the links to the clips here.

BTW I love your amp's gut shot at the top of the page. That's some beautiful work!

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Great tones come in small glass jars!

Use a wipe on poly(minwax) on the pine, the dings are character. When the time comes and you want to put the tweed on, scuff the poly up with sandpaper and go to it. Contact cement will adhere to poly.
Myself, I would get some bullseye shellac and finish with that.
http://www.wwch.org/Technique/Finishes/ ... ullEye.htm
The beauty of shellac is almost anything will adhere to it and it will adhere to almost anything. It is a natural with pine.
Beautiful work

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Fantasy Noise is what my shop of dreams is called and was the only way to beat my addiction, like many here I suffer from G.A.S.


Tele's make the best noise

... of the Infinitely Baffled.

Curious; before doing this, I'd not really identified the "graininess" of a/the/this ceramic speaker. There's a quality the single Jensen Jet has that I hear some of, in the 2x10" mix. Anyway, here's what I've been doing with them:





Identical levels at the amp - guitar into input one on the bright channel. Bright V about 5 or 6, normal V about 9. Tone around 3 or 4.

Waveforms - the only equipment difference between tracks is the baffle/speaker assembly. I think the difference is pretty interesting!



If you check it out - and you're a Les Paul player - you'll hear it, of course, but here's the breakdown anyway: neck pickup first, volume 0, tone 10. Volume stepped up to 10; then, volume down, and tone rolled back as the volume comes down. Neck down to 2, switch to bridge: bridge volume at 2, tone 0. Bridge volume up a bit, tone brought up, volume & tone increased alternately, and then back down.

1x12" Jensen Jet, ceramic: http://stash.alonetone.com/mp3/37587/sp ... 1-1x12.mp3

1x10A125, 1x10F150: http://stash.alonetone.com/mp3/37589/sp ... 1-2x10.mp3

Thanks to all for the kind comments so far.

... incidentally, the inactive 2x12" cabinet holding up the 5E3 for this test is also a pine cabinet, and has an absolutely indestructible flooring finish on it - I believe I've mentioned it earlier. One of those miraculous new super-polys. And it is stompin'-with-hobnail-boots indestructible on a hardwood floor. Works great! But on pine, as a protection, it's like it's not even there. I think there is no finish capable of protecting a pine cabinet - not an instrument cabinet, anyway. So! The tweed is going on, and it's going quite well.

Well ... how painfully obvious is it that photography and photo editing are not among my strengths. But I am sorry the photos are so crummy. And the captions are just awful, a thousand apologies for those ...

But such as they are, they do give a sketch of my humble process so far.



There are a couple coats of sanding sealer on the tweed. I try to listen to some of the advice I get!



The commercially prepared products are very good - others have had great success with them, really beautiful results - but for me ... well, I guess I was just interested in trying it the "old-fashioned" way. The materials are quite fun to work with - it was fascinating, dissolving the flakes and seeing the wax separate and slowly fall out of the mixture. Took about three days to make and draw off the solution.





I really love the colour - it's a shame I can't capture it. And it feels glassy ... it was as though I wasn't so much applying a finish as casting the cabinet in amber! Very beautiful, far more so than I ever expected, or can possibly show here.

Sheesh You are taking your Deluxe into a whole other level of Deluxeness.

- and myself, to a whole new level of obsessiveness!

... "obsessiveness"? Anyway - with the two tens, it's kinda a Super Deluxe!

(modify it to accept octals in the preamp and PI, and it'll really be a Super Deluxe)
(bet I'm not the only one thinking about trying that, with their 5E3)

I managed to take a couple photos that are a little better:




- those of you with all kinds of experience with great amps might be doing some head-scratching at all the details - some of which are surely a bit silly; looking around in here, I've seen posts from many people who've built four or five amps and seem to have detailed knowledge of dozens of other amps! But for me, a one-amp-for-twenty-years kind of guy, this amp is far and away the finest and most interesting amp I've ever played, let alone had as my own. So I'm fussin' with the frame, a little bit.

The weird thing is, it feels familiar - and I don't mean because I put it together; something about the sound, and the way it feels.

It may be something to do with the designs from that era; what you get, when you play a guitar or an amp from that time, is really yourself - a very natural, acoustic-but-louder rendering of what you can do. Maybe when we look for gear, we aren't really looking for gear so much as for a way into ourselves, into the music and the sounds in our minds that aren't always easy to understand, and that haunt us, until we find some way to make them real.

Hey Quill, that thing looks sexy. The shellac really has set that thing off! Great job.

What iso did you use to mix the shellac? Most of the ones I have seen are around 60% or 70%, which means that the rest is water, which can badly affect the shellac. But your mix seems fine. Usually you'd use denatured alcohol, which is commonly available as methyl hydrate. Just wondering.

I agree with you about the sound. How it seems familiar. It just fits.

Great job on the cab, it really looks great.

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Everyone must believe in something, I believe I will go canoeing. - HDT

Doftya, thanks so much for checking it out.

Did you know that shellac - the flakes - is a harvested excretion from the female lac bug? And that it is edible? The lac bug eats sap from trees, and the colour of the shellac is strongly influenced by the kind of sap and the time of year ...

Wait, that wasn't what you asked. I have a 2L container of "shellac reducer" (a blend of ethanol, isopropyl alcohol and some other things) that I will use for my next shellacking project; I'm told it's the perfect thing. But for this, I found a sale on isopropyl alcohol (99%), and I used that.

Denatured alcohol and methyl hydrate are actually different things. Denatured alcohol is ethanol that contains an additive, something that makes it undrinkable - and out where I am, it's very hard to buy. Methyl hydrate, like ethylene glycol, is one of those commonly used things that is widely misunderstood - it is such a dangerous chemical, it really has no place in any household, and should be used in industry only with proper training - yes, I know that many people have used it freely for a very long time. But in the quantities needed for this, that stuff'll kill you, or hurt you so badly you'll wish you were dead. Not interested in that!

I started with 25 grams of shellac flakes in 500 ml of isopropyl alcohol, which dissolved completely in about a day, with occasional shaking. Then I tried dissolving 100 grams of flakes in 1L, and it looked like about half the flakes, maybe less, could not dissolve; I don't know if the solution was saturated or not, maybe I wasn't doing something I should have been doing. So I diluted it back down to about 50 grams per litre of solvent, and that seemed to work.

The wax separated out and settled to the bottom just beautifully, and I drew the shellac solution off the top with a baster. In application, the colour developed slowly and steadily with each coat. I was experimenting, so I used all I made - managed to get seven coats on the cabinet. The last two coats seemed to get deeper and richer, but not a lot darker. And the feel of the stuff when dry, wow ... well, kind of like the shellac flakes that I started with, surprise, surprise - sort of glassy. Really beautiful and interesting. I was reluctant to lacquer it.

I did a couple test pieces with lacquer on top of the shellac, and it seemed to stick - after all, I'm sure most of the wax was gone (and there was a lot of wax that came out, about half the mass of the original flakes) - but it's not a piece of furniture, and I wanted it to have some stability, so I put a "bonding layer" on top of the shellac - two thin coats of Zinnser sanding sealer, which seemed to change the colour a little. I didn't like it!

But then I sprayed four or five coats of Mohawk pre-catalyzed gloss nitro on top of that, and somehow that seemed to restore the colour again. Maybe the sealer has a different sort of reflection or refraction? Idunno. I was going to take off the lacquer's sheen with 4/0 steel wool, and I did try that on some spots on the inside ... but I don't mind the gloss, and it'll wear down on its own soon enough. I don't know if that's the greatest lacquer in the world or not, but I quite liked the result. Used up two aerosol cans.

I was expecting some dampening of the sound, with the speakers loaded into the cab with the tweed and all that finish - and it does sound different - but I wouldn't say it's dampened. It seems to sound - a different great! Warm, but really clear. Can't quite explain it, but I'm sure it's understood what I mean.

SPAM!!