for sure..what a beautiful sounding amp!!

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

Finally got it done
Here it is with the rest of the family

figured out what the problem is
the new speaker cabinet I had made has a faulty jack
Replaced it with a new one and away she went
I'd like to thank everybody for all your help
bluesfendermanblues, hywelg Nik and everyone else
I couldn't have done it without you guy's

The amp sounds awesome
gonna let it burn in now

Thanks so much

Tim

Fuses are good
Here's something I noticed
When I turn up the ratio and level I can here an ac hum coming from inside the chassis
sounds like it's coming from the pots themselves but I'm not sure
and when I touch one of the output tubes it get louder

From the post above

"Well I feel kinda dumb
I have all the wires that are spliced into the shielded wire hooked up to the main conductor wire instead of the shielding
I'll redo them after work and let you know how it goes"

It was working good , all the switches and pots did what they were supposed to
It did have an ac hum that wasn't that bad, not sure if it is from this old building I live in or wire placement
Fuses are good, all the voltages are good
it just quit working
I used to get a small click or pop when I turned the standby switch on but now I get nothing

Ok
Fixed all the wires and we had sound
Played it for about ten minutes and it just quit suddenly
all the voltages are good and the bias
Any ideas?

Well I feel kinda dumb
I have all the wires that are spliced into the shielded wire hooked up to the main conductor wire instead of the shielding
I'll redo them after work and let you know how it goes

closest amp tech is probably 300 miles from where I live
I've been talking to Nik and he asked if the tip of the input jack was shorted to ground
With a 1/4 inch cable inserted I have continuity to the chassis

Sorry just got back from a ZZTop concert
No the amp has no sound as of yet
Nik say's that the input is wired correctly
so I'm stumped

Found it, I pinched a wire between the standoff and mainboard
I built listening probe
(a pair of aligator clips, a 1/4" jack, a .047uF/400V (or more) cap and some wire. You connect a wire from an aligator clip to the ground connection on the jack, the cap to the other clip and the other side of the cap to the hot lead on the jack.)
then hooked that jack via 1/4" cable to another amp
Plugged in a tone generator to the OTS input and tried to trace the sound
but I could not get a signal from the tip of the input jack on the OTS
The listening probe worked fine when the tone generator was hooked directly to the aligator clips but not thru the input jack of the OTS
sssoooo unless I've wired the input jacks wrong which I've checked several times and even rewired again there must be a short to ground on the inputs
Is this correct?
I'm just guessing......remember I'm a newbie

Tim

Ok I unhooked two wires from the relay board and one from the star ground so I could have a look underneath the main board to see if there was a problem underneath
I found nothing wrong so I hooked everything back up
Now when I hit the power switch I get a low hum and v5 is red plating
What would cause this?
All wires were reconnected to there proper places

Can you have a look at the layout and confirm the the photo you showed is correct?
It doesn't make sense to me
Maybe there is some kind of mod on this amp?

Ok guy's I tried everything
Spent all day going over solder joints and checking wiring and still nothing
I did a continuity test from the tip of a chord in the input to ground just out of curiosity and it is continuous
Is this correct or do I have it wired wrong?
I have it wired just as it looks in the layout
All my voltages are good
so now I'm stumped
What would be the next step?