Wow Tom, that's some amp. Great job.

You'll have to produce some clips demonstrating some of the different mods.

Yes.

I have an Overtone HRM 50 head into a 2X12 Avatar open back cab. It's loaded with a combination Veteran 30 & ET65. It's a great sounding combination. They compliement each other quite nicely. Lots of bottom from the ET65 and better focused mids and top with the Veteran 30.

Actually, no I haven't. I've been pushing the ones I have as long has possible. But like before, I was just telling myself I need to get new tubes right away. I have been going through an acoustic playing spell the last 2 months or so and haven't been playing the amp as much. I have some electric playing situations coming up and I don't trust not having a good set to start with.

Are you still loving the Tung Sol's?

P.S. Good to hear from ya!! 

Hmm, those are your filament/heater leads. It's hard to say for sure. They are carrying AC directly to the tubes and wouldn't be an unusual failure zone. Yeah, talk to Nik and a Tech for sure and yes, let us know. If this was the second time for the filament secondary I would be suspect.

Are you using anything unusual as far as tubes?

I don't think you will be able find a drop-in replacement. The Ceriatone tranny has a winding for the 12vdc supply for the relays and the voltages are slightly different that most stock power transformers. I think the only choice is either to have some one custom wind a transformer or use a separate tranny for the relays and use a standard tranny for a Twin or similar Fender. You may have to adjust some resistors to get the same voltages. Honestly, I would contact Nik about a new one and explain your situation. But I wonder about a few things?

Was the second tranny a Ceriatone tranny?
When you say "brown"wire, which are you referring? (voltage wise) Just to be sure we're talking about the same thing.
Is this the same failure spot of the first tranny?
If so, it may be a good idea to check a little deeper into things to see if there's something in particular stressing the tranny.

It's all good. The late hour was my problem too, I was sort of in a hurry when I was writing the other post  (putting most my effort in the wiring question) and didn't give it much thought. Then when I saw Gregg had answered while I was typing, I just forgot about it.

I wasn't going to post this because it will probably just csuse more questions than solutions, but here it is. I didn't write it, and forget who it's from, but I pretty sure I copied and pasted it from a post over at TAG and it's was from an experienced builder. So if you have the know how it may be useful.

No....I was a little thrown, I had made the crazy assumption that you had read the manual and knew about the switches in the back.

Again...the manual will help out a great deal with these things.

Check it out!
http://www.ceriatone.com/Manuals/ceriatone%20bm%20hrm%2050w%20100w%20manual.pdf

This is probably the your biggest and best revelation so far. Sounds like you're on the right track.

Ok, Gregg got here while I was typing. 

Yeah, what he said. 

Ok, heaters? This is mostly a reduction in noise from the AC current that the filamants use. Electrically the thing to consider is this noise, besides being annoying can be degrading to the tone. It's more of a proximity thing. How close they are to sensitive signal carrying lines. It is an "opinion" thing for sure. There may be more reasons why Mr. Dumble preferred one over the other. Very likely just a less chance of messing up with them above. Also, from my understanding he started out mostly modding Fender circuits which were done this way and maybe he just never bothered to fix what wasn't broke.

Now when it comes to wires carrying signals to the tubes and back. Once again it's an issue of reducing all noise inducing issues. With wires floating up in the air like "antennas" it's a possible problem area. But also and what many refer to is you'll notice certain leads actually running in parallel and close together at points. Typically this will cause capacitive coupling which typically is not wanted, but this is what many feel was done purposefully by Mr. Dumble to sculpt the overdrive and other areas of tone. So overall it's believed that following the lead dress maticulously is very important in obtaining a perfect clone. YMMV.


Cool!

I'm a little confused what you're saying here....

Again...not sure what you mean by no overdrive

The only thing is you don't want to rely on accidently making continuity. Also, just getting a multi-meter to beep doesn't mean you have as good a ground as possible. You want a very secure, solid connection. As far as most pots, and non-power switches signal degradation is all that's at risk, but for power chassis grounds and other higher voltate grounds you don't want to question continuity. It could be a shocking answer.  

Seriously, even signal degradation will piss you off it becomes an issue. All it will take is vibration working loose a pot or switch, etc. to reduce the ground and start noise and hum, intermodulation, etc. I'm speaking from experience. 

Holy crap!! really? Depending on were it's set at right now, it may make a rather large difference how you approach the amp, especially on the OD channel. Get mess'n with it!!  

If I had to guess, it was probably shipped with it in the lifted position, like a regular BM, but you may find the OD more pleasing, or atleast more tame-able with LNFB. Either way it changes the flavor to reveal another side of the amps personality. Both clean and overdrive.

Well, there are things like doing it correctly, but I was mainly thinking of something that happened to me that was a real PITA. Care has to be taken not to overheat the tube socket pins and let solder flow down into the pin. It's just about impossible to get it cleaned out properly and buying a new one is the best solution once it's done.

1. make sure the tube is out of the socket.
2. use desoldering braid or pump or both to remove all the solder first and then remove the wire. (making sure not to overheat the pins)
3. take care not to disturb as little as possible in surrounding area to not stress other leads of components, wires, etc.

Basically, if you choose to do the heaters and leads. Do the heaters first. The heaters are not hard, but wil take patience and a little pre-planning. If you're new to soldering I would practice soldering and desoldering on something else first and get the hang of it. I'm sure there's some good vids on youtube to show different and good procedures for desoldering. There's a little bit of an art to reworking electronics. Nothing over the top, but like most things there's a hard way and an easy way to do it. Plus, you may not use the same procedure for everything you do.