Ceriatone Forum

I've had my OTS 50w for awhile now ( maybe a couple years or so) and could never dial in a good tone
Clean sound was always amazing but the overdrive was always very loose and flabby no matter what I did
Once or twice a month I would fired it up and try and dial in a good tone with no luck.
I let it burn in for a few days,set the internal trimmers and tried everything
Just wasn't very happy at all with the OD
played with the lead dress for hours upon hours with no luck
Tried many many different tubes and it just wasn't sounding like all the demos I listened to
looked at lots of photos of all the builds I could and mine wasn't the best but certainly not the worst dressed
Some had heater wires laying down like a marshall ( the way I did it ) and some were floating over top of everything
today I said f**k it and tried floating them over top and WOW!
What a difference!
It now sounds like the amazing amp like the video demos i've seen
no more flabby overdrive, just smooth beautiful overdrive
tiss now my fav amp
just thought I'd let everyone know in case the have similar problems
Tim

Glad that's worked out for you, although out of curiosity did you build the amp yourself or wad it pre-assembled by Nik?

I built it myself but with lots of help from Nik and this forum

Heater wires up are def the way to go on OTS and other fender based amps

for sure..what a beautiful sounding amp!!

Tim,
thanks for bringing this up, I've been
planning to do this on my OTS for a very
long time.
This weekend I will, for sure.   ;)

Ulf

The HRM pictures on Nik's site show the heater wires down. Is up best just on the non HRM's? I'm not that excited about my overdrive tone. It sounds kinda like a thin sizzle. I think it's a bit better now that I've had some break in but I'm definitely looking for improvement.

Up seems to sound the best on all the OTS amps. Also make sure all your other leads coming from your tubes are nicely separated as well.

Here's a link showing how Nik built mine (heater wires up) and there is some discussion about heater wires and lead dress as well (including Nik's opinion)
 
http://ceriatoneforum.com/index.php?topic=2071.msg14358#msg14358

Gregg

I also noticed most builds have the wires to the sockets overlapping sometimes almost parallel. I've read that you should make any overlapping or crossing wires perpendicular as much as possible.

Hi
Build my OTS back in 2007-2008, and have never been crazy about the OD-channel.
So I have actually used the amps clean, with pedals in front, and got a great sound out.

About two month ago I put my amp up for sale, because I wanted a simpler singled ended amp.
The first person who came by and tried the amp, had the same experience as me. The clean channel sounds amazing, but the OD channel was thin and lacks harmonics. So ended up with him not buying the amp..

Then I sat down and checked out the forum, to check if anybody had experienced the same as me, and then I stumbled over this thread.

Turned on my solder iron, and cleaned up the heatercables (filaments), which where laying down against the chassis. Not the most clean build, and there were some other wires near the heaterwires. Soldered it up as floating wiring.

Turned on the amp, and WOW... OD-channel just came alive. Nice harmonics and a very musical OD sound, with at fantastic touch sensitivite.

If you are having the same problems, I think this is a very good place to troubleshoot. I don't think it matters if the wiring is floating or not, but more important that there is some distance from the heaterwires to the rest of the wires in the amp.

So thanks Riffraff for starting this thread...

Kindly Regards

René

Which one are the heater wires? The drilled cables? Some pics would be niche  :chairdance:

HI

If you look at the layout, then it's the wires named "f". They start at the two 3.15 V pins on the powertransformator, and then goes to V5 (6L6-tube) pin 2 and 7

Hope this helps

And they are the thick red and black cables, that goes from V5 through V4 - V3 - V2 - V1

Regards

René

You also need to route the V1 and V2 plate and cathode wires close to one another. Search lead dress on TAG. I also re-routed the heater wires up in the air

One other thing I did over Christmas when I did a load of rewiring and mods was to orientate the signal caps correctly.  Again search TAG for info. All those changes made a huge difference my amp is a lot livelier now.

I didn't get all the way through this thread but man I am having the same problem among others..thanks I don't trust myself and amp guts ha ha. I assume somewhere here is a picture of the heater wires and how you do it. Do you need longer wires?
Bdog/Burnie/wbfree/Max

I don't know my ass from a bucket of grapes about electronics and I'll have to explain this to whoever I get to do this and I would like to do everything possible to get the OD channel working. I am retired, the bldg industry where I lived died so I can't buy another amp this is it. Do any of you live near Redding, Ca.

It is nice to see that you are still here. I don't know how to do any of this. What is TAG. When they passed out brains they forget to put electricity in mine.

It is nice to see that you are still here. I don't know how to do any of this. What is TAG. When they passed out brains they forget to put electricity in mine.
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TAG - The Amp Garage, a site dedicated only to Dumble and Trainwreck builds.  I believe the url is www.ampgarage.com

TAG - The Amp Garage, a site dedicated only to Dumble and Trainwreck builds.  I believe the url is www.ampgarage.com
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Thank you sir. When I get my amp running closer to how these sound I'll be happy
http://www.sebagosound.com/index.php?id=11. Will let you know. I get busy doing many things so if you don't hear from me for a while that is why. I owe it to you guys for helping an electronically challenged numbskull..