trinityamps.com

the underboard connection between the trebel and bass pots came out somehow, so its working now, and damn it sounds niiiiiiice

wow it sounds really nice

it gets nice and dirty when you crank it up, a lot dirtier than i was expecting actually (i'm not complaining) but it cleans up real nice too.

and wow it's a hell of a lot louder than i was expecting But it's also so quiet ... basically no hum at all, no hiss, nothing, just pure good tone.

good feedback tone too; not high pitched and awful like some amps i've heard, but much more friendly and nice..

thanks for the help everyone


now time to design and build a cab...

Congratulations on being the newest Lightning owner on the Lightning Forum! You are #1 !

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

BTW - Knew it couldn't be a cold solder joint or dodgy cap!

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

belive me, stephen, your solder joints were beautiful until my grubby little hands and soldering iron got to them

Well, that's good news. Congratulations!

BTW, couldn't a dodgy filter cap whack your voltages somewhat? Or maybe I should say an incorrectly wired filter cap? I have seen wierd stuff happen with filter caps before...

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PJM

http://www.diyguitarist.com

heh, well, Stephen assembled my board for me (I ordered the assembled eyelet board from him) so I trust him to use good parts, hahah...

and paul, daniel garlans on ax84 is ME, so, that's why there was a similar situation on that forum as there was on here, eheh

later all!

now i'm resisting the temptation to play really loud until all hours of the night. I'm so amazed at how good it sounds, and how little noise it's got.. no power supply hum whatsoever, and any other noise is totally swamped by noise picked up by the guitar and cable.

//daniel

We're expecting sound clips, if you can.

It's great that you got your build to be hum free first time. I'm sure you've read volumes about people who struggled with this, as I did, first time I built a Lightning. Did you use the layout 'right out of the box'?

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

OK Daniel. Glad that you got it fixed and that it sounds so good to your ear.

I would also like to hear a soundclip sometime.

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PJM

http://www.diyguitarist.com

Wow, nothing beat that feeling when you go from silent to violent with one fixed wire. I recently a similar experience; I was all set to completely rebuild a standalone reverb. I flipped the tagboard over and saw the problem immediately. What a relief.

-n

I guess you could say that is one reason I don't like running wires under the board...

BTW, how do you like that standalone reverb?

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PJM

http://www.diyguitarist.com

there's actually a bit of hiss now, which is probably caused by the crappy shielded wire i used; i'll have to go and get some new stuff and replace that and that should get rid of some of that. There is absolutely zero hum though.

the layout is pretty close to stock.. the grounding is actually pretty arbitrary though; most things on the power supply side of the amp are just bolted onto the bolts that are holding the power transformer on. Everything on the other side of the board are bolted onto the output transformer bolts. Most all of the ground wires are individual too; other than the bus that the filter caps all connect to, everything that is grounded has its own wire thats going to the chassis.

so, i definitely broke the star grounding rules, hahaha, and everything else, but it worked out just fine in the end... the hissing has to be dealt with, but that's a matter of getting some better wire and also trying different guitar cables; some of my cables really suck.

i'll have sound clips eventually, once i get the hiss worked out, and ill start putting up pics when i get the combo itself built.

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- daniel garlans - http://ihku.org/~witeshade/ - ct hXc -

It's a kit from WeberVST.com. It's pretty neat. My experience with vintage reverbs is limited, so I can't tell you how it measures up to actual Fenders. But the sound is deep, long and boingy. You will play slower with this thing on, I guarantee that. It can be dialed in for weird pretty easily, and I like weird.

The problem, BTW, was a wire poking down and touching a transformer bolt. It sapped the B+ to the point of melting the solder at that eyelet. My fault and my oversight entirely; the folks at BBQ offer quality stuff, and their kit was all good and working once I fixed my errors. I'm so glad I'm glad I'm glad the chassis was properly grounded.

Needless to say, I'm tweaking it daily. There's a small cap from the reverb return to the Mix control that I've swapped in various values on, and I'm trying out different tone control caps. Haven't come up with anything mindblowingly better than stock, but there's still time.

-n

Thanks for the mini-review. I have had thoughts about building the Fender standalone reverb circuit, but I have heard some mixed reviews about it, so I am a little reluctant to give it a try.

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PJM

http://www.diyguitarist.com

The coolest sounding standalone Reverb is the Premier reverb that was made in NY in the 50s and 60s. It has a big smooth sound.

Too bad it uses a bunch of weird tubes. AES still carries most of them though.

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Richard Johnson
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Playing an insturment doesn't make you a musician, listening does

Well, there's one of those for sale on ebay right now: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... eName=WDVW

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PJM

http://www.diyguitarist.com