trinityamps.com

Hi guys,

I´ve been pretty busy the last couple of months. But now I´m ready to get going with my deluxe again.

It was already finished, but I blew the VRM. Stephen kindly supplied me with a new fet, and I´m going to re-install it this week.

BUT....

As long as I´m in there again, I might as well see if I can fix some things that are bothering me. I would love to hear your thoughts on.......

HISS
- I know there will always be a little hiss. But I noticed that it´s quite bad with mine. It also increases in volume as you turn up the volume of the active channel, the unused channel, or the tone control. UP = MORE HISS.
When the amp is on and off standby with no cable plugged in it´s fine.
Sometimes it seems the hiss is even worse, and when you slap it a bit, it will decrease again. (back to the already pretty high level)

HUMBUCKERS
- I just put new pickups in my Dot Studio, (very nice handwound paf style pups from Leosound), and it is a bit overpowering in the bass department... I would like to reduce the boomy-, woofy-ness a bit. But retain the overall nature of the amp. Most probably by changing C1 or C2 or maybe both, but I have no clue what value would be best. I still want te be able to use it with my strat as well of course...

There´s no real hum. (I had that yesterday when I switched out the pickups, but I fixed that.) Could the hiss be in one of the preamp tubes ? I am using the following:

V1: Stock supplied 12AY7 EH
V2: Stock supplied 12AX7 EH
V3: Tung-Sol 6V6 (matched)
V4: Tung-Sol 6V6 (matched)
rectifier: NOS HYTRON USA 5Y3GT

I am not proud of the way the input jacks are wired up (the groundwires). I used shielded wire for the inputs, so the shield had to be connected to the ground terminals on the jacks as well. It got pretty crowded...Could a bad connection there be the source of my problems ?

Sorry for the long post, but I would love to hear your comments before I start this.

Yoeri

Regarding the hiss - you may start with swapping the preamp tubes and see if that changes anything. I just built one of Trinity's Deluxes, and it's a GREAT amp, with little hiss. Maybe check input wiring and grounds - but I'll leave that advice to the experts.

Regarding changing the first two coupling caps - I used 0.022 (bright) and 0.047 (normal) Mylar caps, and mine sounds phenominal , both with Strat /Tele and HB's. There is a much more usable range on the tone knob and the HB's. I'm playing through a 12" TTA. YMMV.

This is my second Tweed Deluxe, and I'm sold on the cap modification.

Thanks Tutone,

I followed your advice, and ordered some new tubes.
Yesterday I received new Tung-Sol 12AX7, a new EH 12AY7,and a NOS GE 12AV7, and I´m going to try these today.

I brought the amp down to the living room yesterday since were remoddeling the 3rd floor of our house, and noticed that the noise seemed less than when it was still upstairs.....

But maybe that´s just my perception. In any case I´ll be trying the new tubes, and re-doing the input jacks. I have to rehouse the amp in the new chassis anyway, so I´ll take the opportunity to go over everything again.

I think I located the Problem !

I went at it with some chopsticks, had the amp on with all controls set to 6. After I tapped the cabinet, and noticed the hiss increase. I checked around with the chopsticks.

A soon as I tapped the shielded cables coming from both bright inputs, I could hear the tapping through the amp. Then I tapped the jacks themselves, and the hiss decreased again.

So.....as already suspected I need to redo the jacks. But can anyone enlighten me about how it can be that you hear it through the amp when you tap the shielded cables ? (as soon as I had the hiss level down again to normal levels, the tapping could not be heard anymore.)