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I will post some pics very soon. Recordings are a little more difficult right now, at least home recordings are. Dont really have a decent set up at the moment. I will have that together pretty soon though.

I still havent returned the amp to the Trinity PT. That might drop me 25 volts or so right there.

I will crack her open again tomorrow and take some readings.

Hopefully those adaptors will get here soon, kinda bummin me out a little.

Adaptors arrived and I reinstalled the EL 84's . If I use a 5u4 rectifier, I can get the plate voltage down to around 340. I have about 325 on the screens. It sounds great unless I really hit a string hard at reasonable volume, then the El's distort in a foul sounding crackle. Not good. I have tried 3 different sets of tubes, checked and re-checked all solders, checked and re-checked all voltages. It did not do this at all with 4 6v6's. I just dont get it, the voltages are pretty low. I must fix this, because it sounds considerably better with the 6v6/EL84 mix than with just 6v6's, I mean quite alot better. It really sounds great.
Any ideas anyone??
Thanks in advance

I figured it out. I had Both 6v6's and one El 84 on the same grid resistor, then the other grid resistor only had one El 84. I have rewired this thing so many times at this point, that it is getting a little sloppy in there. I believe I have the amp how I want it now, so I will go through it this weekend and clean it up nice.
Fricken thing sounds amazing. Was at a rehearsal yesterday and had it set up next to the other guitarists Matchless. The Matchless is a 15 watt, one of the first ones they made. The 36 watt held its own in the clean sound department, maybe not quite as nice, but very very close. Then when it came time to get dirty..... See ya !!! Poor little Matchless doesn't stand a chance in the overdrive department. Too bad the other guitarist is a freak of nature and just smokes me chops-wise.

Way to go!!!

Did you do the ladder arrangement of grid resistors to split the signal level for the EL84s and 6V6s?

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Great tones come in small glass jars!

Nope, I just got it to run with a decent bias, and the voltages not going crazy, and no horrible tube shorting sounds. In other words, I fixed all my mistakes(well maybe not all.........). This weekend I will put the finishing touches on it, the Zaphod grid arrangement will be part of that. Anything else you think I should add? The amp sounds very very nice right now. The clean is just beautiful, and the overdrive is great too. I might add one bypass cap, and change a value here and there to get a bit more gain. Not much more though. Im pushing it a bit with a BB preamp right now.

A flux capacitor.

_________________
Great tones come in small glass jars!

sorry to jump in, but I just wanted to say thanks for the discussion in this thread. I have been kicking around a 4-6v6 build for some time, and I agree with Zaphod - I would REALLY be into seeing a 6v6/el84 mix. It would be another cool and unique offering from Trinity - considering how amazing and unique the TC-15 is, this would be a great addition to the line !

I'll have to go digging for other threads to see if I can find your schematic (or starting point, considering the mods). Any links would be appreciated! I have to turn my obsessive antennae to this one . . .

;^}

I must admit imo Zaphod was 100% on the money. The 6v6/EL84 mix sounds considerably better than the 4 6v6 version I tried, not even close. I havent heard a 4 EL84 version, so I cant comment on that.
My 2x12 closed back vertical slant cab finally showed up last Friday from Lopoline. What a great cab they built me. High quality work at a very fair price. If you dont mind waiting a while, I strongly recommend thier speaker cabs. I loaded mine with 2 G12H Heritage Celestions, and now the 36 watter has really come to life. It has maybe even passed the Super/Dumble as my favorite amp, and that is saying ALOT, I have a pretty good pile of amps here.

Thurs I played a Top 40 cover gig with it, lots of Motown and funk stuff too. Saturday I played a Straight Ahead jazz gig, and bebopped all night, fricken thing sounds flat out bad ass clean.........Sunday morning , church. More on that below. Sunday night I played a groove jazz/ jam funk gig with it, alot more overdrive sounds, some blues on that hit too, amp might have even sounded better on that one, I dont know...... Just got back from my church rehearsal, modern praise music, BIG rock guitar sounds, other guitarist always has a high dollar rig at his disposal, either a Matchless, or a Mesa Lonestar, or a VHT, 36 watter sounds perfect in that context. I put a BB preamp in front of it, you'd swear it was Angus's rig up there... JK !! But it really does sound great. The guy with the high dollar amps wants me to build him one soon, and he is a beast shredder who is very picky about his sound.
Thats pretty much the range of gigs I play, and the amp works very very well for every one. The only thing it lacks is mega clean headroom for the really loud funk gigs, but other than that its flat out killin!

The gig last night was podcast over the internet. Once I have a listen, and see just how bad I sucked, I will post the link maybe...... I should probably just post some clips, because the board recordings from these podcasts never do my amps ANY justice.

Thanks Again Zaphod and Steven !!

Haha, I got a little carried away with the review there......

I meant to say that I basically used the Trinity V6 layout with a couple of changes here and there.

Steven sold me a 36 watt transformer set. I added some screen resistors. I changed the rectifier, first to a GZ34, then to a 5u4 gb to drop some volts (if you read the thread you will know why). Thats really about it, I just removed the switch that chose which set of power tubes, so they're all running all the time. I also changed the cathode resistors, but that is/was more a matter of taste. Oh yeah Zaphods grid resistor layout too. This amp is quite picky about grid resistors I have found. The EL's will freak out if they dont like the grid arrangement.

Along the way I tried a few other things S.S. rectifier, Fixed Bias power supply, choke. I just wanted to see if any of those things improved the sound to my ears, but none of them did, except maaaaybe the choke, which I'm kinda neutral on. I removed all of of these mods and went back to cathode biased, tube rectified, choke free tone. It will stay this way.

It really could have been very easy to do. I made it hard on myself with a lot of experimentation. Really you could just buy the V6 kit, a 36 watt transformer set, follow Zaphods advice on this thread and you're there. Man, what a clean sound, truly gives the Matchless a run for its money.........

That's awesome!!! So glad you like the amp now. 6V6s and EL84s complement each other in a really special way.

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Great tones come in small glass jars!