Oh - and I'd like to add this - guitar people are funny. Funny as in Ha Ha! and also funny hmmm....

For instance, I could have written:

"You'll note that the pickguard isn't the original one that comes with the EMG DG20 set. I originally found the sound of the pickups kind of brittle sounding in the high end, but upon removing them, I notices that the pickguard seemed extremely stiff and inflexible, and tried switching it out with a regular thin, cheap, more flexible pickguard I happened to have, and it smoothed out the tone a lot, enough that I now really liked the sound, and have kept them on."

... and somewhere, someone would have believed I was serious, and tried the same thing, and had an epiphany, and repeated the experience as gospel, and a whole new myth about guitar sound would evolve.

So Steven, (and please, I'm just kidding!!!) maybe you should try changing out the pickguards on those strats with EMG's? I'll bet you'll like them then with your ots!

Oh don't worry, I absolutely meant it in the most respectful way - I had a pretty good idea who was meant, and I was pretty sure he would understand where I was coming from. Don't worry Steven - I love you man!

Steven said it best - "Tone is a very personal and subjective thing". I find I'm happiest as a musician when I'm using MY ears (and those in my immediate vicinity) to develop my sound, and not coloring it with opinions from magazines or forums - in fact, my involvement here has been quite an anomaly, and I'll probably fade away fairly soon. I've got a new amp that I'm thrilled with, and want to learn lots about it, but eventually my interests drift, ifyaknowudImean.

I haven't properly introduced myself here - while I don't play guitar gigs anymore, I started out as a guitarist back in the late 60's, and played in lots of bands in the 70's and 80's, nothing big, just average rock stuff. My last gig was a country pickup band for a songwriter here in Nashville in 1990. I was usually the hired gun flash lead guitarist, and have always been good about learning songs fast so that worked out pretty well. My day job is also as a musician - I'm a symphony cellist, playing with the Nashville Symphony for the last 26 years. So I've been around guitars for a long time, and some of the great ones at that. One of my huge influences for guitar tone is Vince Gill, who's someone I've played with a lot, and I've played his guitar a few times even. He uses a fairly similar EMG setup, and a pair of blackface Deluxes. If I knew him better I'd try to get him to try my new amp - I'm sure he'd be impressed, although I doubt we could pry him away from the fenders.

For a laugh, take a look at a list I made once of all the guitars I've owned - warning - this web page was originally created in 1993 (!!!) before there was such thing as web page editors, and was (and is) very primitive - although I've updated it sporadically, it's still extremely primitive looking - http://home.comcast.net/~sduck409/Stevesguitars.html

So anyway, I didn't mean anything - just showing off my guitar, as per the thread at hand, and responding in an off-hand way to an off-hand comment - nothing serious meant!

They're JJ 6L6GC's.

And I love my EMG's - not about to change them. I couldn't give a damn what Steven thinks, whoever he is.

Good to hear others opinions on the Jensens. My experience is based on having them in several blackface era fenders, where they sounded pretty darn good. I wonder if any of their more modern alternative speakers would be a better match?

This one sounds really nice -


for you gear heads, that's a warmoth swamp ash body, warmoth padouk/pau ferro neck, EMG DG20 pickup set, wilkinson tremelo, graphtech nut, sperzel locking tuners. Goes from super vintage sounding to modern high tech sounds. It plays so nice that I sold all my other guitars even!

No-one else likes 10" speakers? I'm using a 4x10" cab with my bluesmaster, and it sounds fantastic. It's nothing special - in fact it's part of my old tubeworks combo amp, and it has some kind of generic speakers that were relabeled as tubework speakers, but they work well. I'm considering making a dedicated 4x10" cab for this amp in fact - perhaps some nice Jensen speakers in there....hmmm.

I'm also drawn to the idea of a 2x12" open back cab with Jensens in there. Back when I was playing semi-professionally in the 70's and 80's, I played a million gigs with a blackface '66 twin, which is still my reference amp memory. And the bluesmaster really nails that sound, even with the 4x10's, although there are some dynamic pops you can only get with 12" speakers.

Yes sir!!! Spent a good hour or more today trying out the new toy. (First I set the bias level). This thing is Really Amazing Sounding. The clean sounds are out of this world fantastic, just about anywhere you set the knobs (within reason). I had to do some tweaking of the OD tone pots, which will probably take a few more tries before it's perfect, but it's pretty close at the moment. The stock settings sounded like a heavy blanket had been thrown over the amp, so I turned the treble trimpot up to about 11:30 and it sounds a lot better. Overall I'm very happy!

IT WORKS!!!!!!!

I assembled all the last little parts pieces. Then triple checked everything, mechanically and electrically. One big problem I caught was that I installed the power and standby switches upside down - followed the layout a little too literally on those. Hence they have new labels - maybe if I get around to rebuilding parts of this those will get flipped, but in the meantime the new labels will have to do. Installed the tubes, attached the footswitch and speakers, then powered it on, and the tubes starting glowing nicely. Plugged in a guitar, and it made sounds!!! Tested all the knobs and switches, and they all work as their supposed to. Even the deep switch works the right way. No extraneous hums or buzzes. I was only able to just turn it on barely, as my daughter had just gone to bed, but I'll sure be playing it a lot in the next few... years?



Now it's on to building a cabinet for it. I've got a lot of nice red oak left over from some synth cabinets I built last year, although I don't know, it's kind of heavy... hmmm.

Thanks, guys. I may well change the wiring around, depending on the results. One thing I know for sure is that the amp will still work with the wires where they are, just maybe not ideally. But if it doesn't meet expectations, I'll know at least one thing to fix. I appreciate your catching that for me!

I finished the power board today and did all the little final things - installed the knobs, nitpicky cleaning of the interior, etc. I will be giving everything a second thorough once-over to make sure all wiring, parts, etc are in the right place. And I still have some testing to do before powering it up. I do not want flames to be a part of the first powering up of this amp!

Oh - I wasn't aware of that. Hmmm. Just took another look at your pictures - I see. Again, hmmm.

I am capable of wildly overthinking this, and as I'm brand new at this the overthinking can go wildly wrong. I think that I was trying to keep the wires carrying the signals away from the heater wires for some reason. Would putting them over by the grounded chassis make a difference? They're not shielded wires to begin with, so I'd doubt it, but again, I just don't know.

I'm not excited about the idea of moving these wires unless it's deemed a Really Good Idea™ because most likely it'll involve cutting and splicing little pieces onto each of those wires.

Today, over the course of 2 hour long sessions, finished up the main board wiring.



Here's a closer view of V1-3



And a closer view of V4-5

Ack! No! Don't walk away!

Well, actually sometimes that's the best idea. I've built a LOT of DIY stuff over the years, and I've found the best way to keep my head in it and stay sane is to have a lot of patience. I've discovered that my useful attention span for any kind of decent detail work is an hour max, sometimes less. After that I start making mistakes. So while for some people a kit like this might take a few days, many hours a day, I'll spread the job out over a month or more, making sure I get everything right, and trying to learn a bit about how the thing works along the way.

Tonight I got engrossed in wiring up the main board, and got to the "just one more wire..." place, which is exactly where I start making mistakes. I did manage to get most of the wires along one side of the board done, so I'm happy. Oh, and I went out and bought the tubes for it today - tungsol 12ax7's, and JJ 6L6GC's - they were probably as good as I was going to do at the closest music store here. I've been watching the various tube threads with great interest - after I get this thing going I may want to experiment.

Ok, ok. Glad others are finding this thread interesting - I wasn't actually planning on doing daily progress reports on this, but once I started, it was kind of fun, so here it is.

Got new hardware to attach the OT and choke correctly, and got them tightened in. Then proceeded to wire in the PT. The sheet from Mercury had some of the wires labeled a bit differently from the layout, but I sent some questions to Nik about it, and he answered them quickly (actually within minutes - pretty amazing!) and I was able to finish it up confidently.


Another shot of this mess -


And the OT wires that can be hooked up without the other boards -

I also started on the main board installation - lots of little wires to connect!

And I noticed that I still have a lone 10k resistor left in my parts bag - as far as I can tell I've already installed the only 10k resistor - is there another one besides the one that attaches to the deep switch?

Thanks Kieran!

So my transformers arrived today. Man are they heavy. 20 lbs total. Once they're installed they make handling the chassis a pretty serious matter. So I took the main board back out, drilled some holes and installed these. I need to get some bigger bolts or some washers for the output transformer - I'm not really happy with the way the bolts I had fit. They're #6-32 1/2" ones - I'll probably get #8-32's and/or some washers.

...and my build is stalled for a few days.  After pondering what to do I decided to wait until I got my transformers and could install them before installing the main board, to make sure I could get good access for the mounting bolts.

The UPS guy brought my package from Mercury Magnetics on Friday, but no-one was home to sign for it, so I have to wait until Monday.