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I am being to put together a new 18W amp. This 18W will be a Plexi/Plexi Brown hybrid. I am going to use the amp as a platform to try a few mods and circuit tweaks/ideas.

So far I have only started putting parts on the chassis; though nothing has been tightened down. One with an astute eye may notice a few extra holes and modifications to the standard 18W chassis. 6V6 tubes, 5AR4 rectifier, 3 way foot switchable boost, choke, VRM and hum pot are some of the highlights (among others).

Currently I am waiting on a few parts before getting much further on with the build. I am missing noval tube sockets (waiting on some NOS ones), 9 pin chassis covers, neon light and hook up wire. Trinity is sending a turret board which should be here shortly. They are also building a classic Marshall looking head cabinet.

The amp will be a mix of a 18W Plexi, 18W Plexi Brown, JTM45 and JTM50. I would like to make this the best sounding low wattage Marshall that I possibly can, lots of tweaking to be done.


Anyways here are some pictures thus far

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Looking forward to your Holy Grail!

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

New style 18W turret board.

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Oh yeah Can't wait to see how this turns out. Hopefully it turns into the world's best Marshall, cos then all I'll have to do is copy.

Eyelet board complete. 1W carbon film, SoZo caps, NOS BC/Philips electrolytics, etc


I like the lack of jumpers on the new 18W layouts. The two jumpers needed are soldered on the backside of the board and then I like to secure them even more with a small strip of tape.

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That strip of tape is a good idea. I guess you could use hot glue too. Make sure it lasts a long time.
Love that board!!

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

Looks really good.

But that new board looks messed up to me (been looking at the old one for too long)
Was hoping to see the new layout in the resource's section


Good luck on your adventure

New ones going to be posted soon. No messing around!

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

Got some parts in today...

Finally got the square neon indicators I've been looking for. I bought four of them. Two of them I already blew up in a smokey flashy mess. Turns out these indicators don't have the limiting resistors in them that I'm used to. Fffffff


The neon indicator Trinity provides in their kits have 33K 1/4W resistors built in so I'll probably use that value.


Now I also got some NOS noval tube sockets. I installed them as seen here.




Now the V1 socket is just every so different than the V2 and V3 socket. The V1 socket is a different shade of brown (a bit lighter). These are nice solid American sockets. They took a while to modify so they fit just right. They are bottom mount rather than top mount.
The slightly different shade of brown on V1 is driving me nuts. Trying to decide if I should switch them out for Beltons. I think they do look pretty cool.
???

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Yep these indicators are burnt

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Science experiments - 101.

Use the NOS ones, colour doesnt matter. MOJO {BTW, not that they are any better than what we use!!}
Will be hidden by the tube anyway.

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

I am going to use these sockets then I think.

The 22 AWG teflon wire I am trying out is fairly thin. In order to keep V1 wiring cleaner (as it is a “busy” socket) I elevated the terminal strip with little plastic washers to allow wires to go under the terminal strip. Hopefully this keeps the wiring nice and tidy.

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Those spacers could be a cool idea.

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

Took off most of the back panel hardware tonight and wired the heaters. While I was at it I also wired a bit of the power supply section. So far so good.

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Why are you not using the heater ground connection? So you can use the hum pot?

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

Going to connect the wiper of the hum pot to the output tube's cathode (heater elevation). Heater elevation is supposed to remove a bit of hum, I am going to experiment once the amp is done using a SPDT to switch between the heater CT and output tube's cathode. Really just did it to try something new.

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More progress

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Very tidy indeed, looking very good.

Thank you

The amp is basically done now, just have to wire up the VRM.
I ordered tube socket covers from Mojotone and they sent me the wrong ones. The ones I ordered won't ship for another two weeks so I'm stuck waiting.

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With all the stuff ive done to my plexi /plexi mk 2 ish. Im wonderin about converting to 6v6 and how well it would work with the ez81