I’m one of those people who checks things rather obsessively, so I was continually double/triple-checking everything as I went along. When it came to the final check, I found that everything was in order and ready to rock.
With some trepidation, I plugged it in without tubes and the voltages checked out just fine. I shut’er down, added the rectifier, fired’er back up, and nothing exploded. Finally I put in all the tubes and the speaker and flicked that switch. The moment I had been waiting for all along had finally come to fruition. I gave it a few seconds and saw those tubes give off that beautiful, heavenly glow. Hell. Yes. The warmth of those tubes warmed this ol’ cold heart of mine, let me tell ya.
Carefully I upped the volume ever so slightly and plugged in a guitar cord. With my heart in my throat, I put my hand over the end of the cord expecting, hoping, desperate to hear that heavenly hum. What did I hear? NOTHING! NOT A SOUND!! Oh god, my heart sank. What have I done? STEPHEN WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME? Then I took a look at my speaker. I realized that I had put both the positive and negative leads on the same terminal. I’m an idiot. I just built an amp from scratch but screwed up the simplest part? That’s embarrassing. What is this, amateur hour? Anyway, it gave me some hope that everything was still ok. So I shut’er down, put the leads on the correct terminals, and fired her back. What do I hear? Not much really, this amp is really frickin quiet (in terms of hum that is, it’s loud as hell in terms of volume!) But it was clear that this thing was working like a charm.
I was so excited I could have puked. I grab my guitar, plug it in…. E minor chord…. BLISS!!!!!! Man this thing is just something else. So, much to the chagrin of my upstairs neighbours, I put the amp through its paces… well as much as I was able to at 11pm (basically volume of 1 and the VRM at minimum). But it was clear that this thing was just working fantastically. It even sounds great at that low of a volume.
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