trinityamps.com

Hi folks, I haven't posted here much but I've been a long-time lurker and now I’m a first time builder.

In fact, I think I happened across Trinity about 5-6 years ago when I first felt the urge to build an amp. I logged many hours reading through your posts and drooling over your fantastic looking builds. Judging from my purple links, I'm reasonably sure I've looked at nearly every 5e3 build thread to date.

Although I was keen to dive right in to amp building, life took hold of me and I didn't have the time or cash to take the plunge until just a few weeks ago. And man, am I glad I did.

Apologies for the crappy cell phone pics. I'll update the thread with proper pics once I get my greedy hands on my new cabinet.

I will follow-up with details on the build, but I first thought I would start with a rather crass and wholly inappropriate analogy to my experience with amp building. Hide your kids, hide your wives.

Building your first amp is a lot like having adult relations for the first time. The horizontal mambo, if you will. What Shakespeare confusingly referred to as the beast with two backs. Think about it. You read up on it, you ask your friends about it, you fantasize about it. Pretty soon you can’t get it off your mind. You don’t even know how you can live without it. You can barely make it through a moment without thinking about it. You wait, patiently. And finally the big day arrives. You can’t believe it. The time is now. Game on. You’ve got all the various parts spread out in front of you. Yes, you see all the parts you’ve read about, but you’re still not quite sure how they work! Let’s be honest, you’re downright confused. At first, you’re all thumbs. But you can’t contain the excitement. You forget everything you’ve learned and pounce in with unbridled passion. With giddy glee you fumble along, hoping for the best, diving in with what limited skills you’ve attained so far. Sure it starts slow, but soon you begin to get the hang of it. Once you get going you actually become pretty comfortable with it. Pretty soon you’re gaining confidence. Heck, next thing you know, you’re downright cocky. You OWN this. You’re the master of your domain. The head honcho. You’re the king, baby. Then BLAMO! Out of nowhere you make a horrible mistake and everyone ends up in tears... But once you fix that bad solder joint, and stop sobbing, you’re back in the game, son. Better than ever. You’re a freight train barrelling down the track. And before you know it, you’ve got yourself a working amp: now that’s satisfaction!!

Ok now that the saucy details are out of the way, back to the kit.

My kit arrived in early May (beautifully packed and shipped very quickly out here to Vancouver). I ordered the kit, a ToneTubby low watt, and a VRM kit (which arrived about a week or so afterwards). Many thanks to Stephen for his quick responses to e-mails and expedient shipping.




Given that I had been holding off on buying a kit for so many years, the anticipation of ripping open that box took me back to childhood Christmas mornings and made me forget that I'm a grown-ass man!

Well I was definitely not disappointed. Everything in the kit was tidily laid out, packaged, and labelled. I pulled out the bits and pieces and took a look at the chassis - stunning.



The chrome on that chassis looks so perfect that it quite literally takes your breath away.


Everything was right where it should be and after a minor mix up on the manual (I got a Tramp hardcopy instead of the 5e3 - which Stephen quickly resolved), I was good to go.

Although I’ve had a lifelong interest in all things electronic, my actual electronics experience and knowledge is fairly limited. I have built three effects pedal kits (from Build Your Own Clone) and I have done some guitar electronics replacements (swapping out pickups and pots). Prior to the 5e3 kit, I hadn’t used a soldering iron in about 4 years so needless to say I was a little rusty. But to be honest, that didn’t really hold me back to much and I started to feel comfortable again after making the first few connections.

I found the manual to be very thorough, clear, and complete. The large colour-coded illustrated printout is HUGELY helpful and I think I would have really had trouble without it – that thing belongs in a frame on my wall. In a few cases where I ran into confusion, I took to these forums and in every case I found the exact answer I needed within minutes.

Well I worked through the manual and before I knew it I had everything in place.


I struggled a little with the VRM kit at first as I found the instructions and schematic confusing, but the Resources section of the forum was really helpful along with some of the excellent high res pictures in the Tweed forum section.

Aside from the VRM installation, I did have some trouble with the tricky solder joints on the tube sockets, particularly as they started to get a little crowded near the end. A couple wires got rather toasty in the process, but nothing structural merely cosmetic, and mostly minor. Mashing (ok fine, gently coaxing) the board into place was also a rather unpleasant process but if you follow the sequence in the manual and hook up all the flying leads as suggested it makes life a lot easier.



Overall the build really didn’t take me that long, but I stretched it out over a few days. I found that having a full uninterrupted day on a weekend to work on the amp was by far the most effective use of time, because it enabled me to read up on what I needed to do, do it, then read up on the next part and so on. Evenings were less productive for me because I found I spent most of my time reading and not enough time soldering! Really I think that somebody with even limited soldering experience, like myself, could easily put the kit together over an uninterrupted weekend, which is a testament to the elegant design of this circuit as well as the excellent manual from Trinity.

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.

My only small problem is that one of my inputs currently isn’t working, which remains a mystery because the connections seem good but I’ll likely need to explore that issue a little more. I do get a bit of static/hiss that begins rather suddenly when either of the volumes are between 11 and 12, but nothing too crazy - I assume that’s pretty normal?

Aside from that, there is no hum/hiss at any other volumes – at all. Nothing but sweet, sweet, tone. It is just a crystal clear, beautiful sound coming from this amp. Shimmering cleans and nasty, filthy, snarling dirty, breakup – achievable at pretty low volumes thanks to the VRM! It’s amazing really. Even though I’m a terrible guitarist this thing tricks me into thinking I’m better than I am. After demoing a few clunky riffs, even my wife said “that’s the best I’ve ever heard you play”. And she normally just smiles politely and tries to ignore me when I ask for her feedback!

So in sum, this thing sounds like a dream. I haven’t been able to put it through its full paces at higher volumes but I am biding my time until the neighbours leave for a night to crack a beer and crank this thing until the walls rattle a little. Break this speaker in a bit. My cabinet is still in the works but I’ll post more photos when complete.

Thanks to Stephen and to the great community here on the Trinity forums – satisfied customer and proud to be part of this great community!

That's a fun and good review. I did like the parallel Adult content part. That was hilarious.
Appreciate your taking the time and effort to do such an entertaining review!!
We'll help you get the input sorted out.

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

This is an excellent post and a great story. I finished my amp a few weeks ago. I'm slowly building the tweed style cabinet and I've wired up the VRM, but haven't installed yet, because I can't stop playing through the thing (I have my speaker in a small cabinet). It is such a blast! Fortunately for me I'm far enough away from the neighbors that they don't mind it during the day (the wife glares at me once in a while). I love your, not too off color, analogy. Happy playing.

Thanks for the feedback guys! I had a lot of fun with the build.

SteveLV I had a look at your thread shortly after you posted it and it looks like a great build - nice! I think you'll really enjoy the VRM, it adds some great flexibility in terms of volume, but as others have said it also provides some interesting new tonal options that I'm still exploring. But then again, sometimes it's hard to know if it's worth messing with the real deal.

Thanks for the comments Stephen! I'm travelling currently but I'll provide an update and more details on the input issue when I get home and have a chance to explore it further. I'm sure it's a minor fix.

As for the slight hiss I noticed at high volume, there also seems to be a slight volume decrease when either volume is between 11-12 - has anyone else encountered that issue? It doesn't really bother me all that much but if there's an easy fix, I might look into solving it.

This is typical Tweed Interactive volume behaviour. Just turn the unused channel down.

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

Your description of the building experience where very interesting and well written.
The horizontal stuff was fun also.
Will be following your thread to see what happens with your input.

Wow, that was an entertaining build thread. Congrats!

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Go Buckeyes!

Just a quick update to show off the new cab and bring some closure to the build thread (for those of you waiting on pins and needles)!

I ended up buying the cab through a company in the U.S. I am really pleased with the quality, look, and most importantly, the great tonal properties of the cab.


The chassis and TT speaker fit just perfectly.



While I wanted to build the cab myself, I'm glad I wussed out and bought one because I know I would have made a mess of the tweed. That said, I predict another amp kit in my future...

Great build thread!

These threads will be lifesavers when I go to build mine.

Michael

Great build, Champ! I really enjoyed reading your posts. I never realized how similar building tube amps is to "adult relations."

That's a nice looking cabinet you have. too. I'm good at woodwork, but I chose to buy the cabinet for my Tweed, too. I got Trinity's cabinet with the kit, though.

How's your input problem? If you haven't fixed it yet, try checking all your wiring right back to the volume control. Check the connections on the half of V1 for the channel the isn't working, too.

Make sure everything is soldered properly and use an ohmmeter to check that all the connections are making good contact. Check the connections to the input jack, too. It's easy to get things mixed up there and not realize it.

If none of this fixes the problem, it's V1 itself. Try swapping in a tube that's known to be good.

I love my Tweed. I have seven other amps but this is the one I usually use and take to jams.

Thanks, guys. Mitch, I appreciate the help and info about my input problem. I'm happy to report that the problem is now solved!

I had done as Mitch suggested and checked all connections and I finally had it narrowed down to the input jack or its solder joints. Once I had that figured out, I checked the resistance on the input when a jack was inserted. Sure enough, when a jack was in the input, the resistance read as though it was grounded. After resoldering the leads to the input jack and still having the problem, I concluded that the input jack itself was faulty.

So I got a replacement from Stephen and I finally got around to installing it this afternoon and it worked like a charm!

So a "faulty jack" I thought... well, I grumbled to myself and had some choice words for Switchcraft... until I took a closer look at the "faulty" jack.

Guess what? The jack wasn't at fault, but the person operating the soldering iron (me) sure was! It turns out that a very tiny bit of solder had dripped down from the switch terminal and made contact with the ground terminal ring. It was a very miniscule amount but just enough to make the connection and ground it out every time a jack was inserted. I didn't even notice it until I removed the jack and did a very close inspection under a bright light.

It just goes to show that even a little bit of sloppiness can have some pretty annoying outcomes. But now I've got all 4 inputs working like a charm and everything is running great.

So Stephen, I owe you an input jack! I'll find a way to make it up to ya. Maybe I'll put together a little VRM demo at some point as a consolation, I don't think I've heard/seen one yet for the 5e3.

Glad you got the amp working! It's good that it was a simple problem like a stray solder blob. It's also good that all the blob did was ground out one of the inputs. It's annoying, but no real harm done.

I found the manual to be very thorough, clear, and complete.