toothace
Zombie Thirteen, DFZ
That looks great!! We'll be patiently waiting for the sound clips...
bodia
Authorities said.....best leave it.....unsolved
Yeah! We want samples!
D
Deleted member 5962
Guest
Love it! That's what I was getting ready to do, only in head format. And yes, I prefer turret over eyelet boards!
D
Deleted member 5962
Guest
uh, you guys asking for sound clips, that amp was sold probably 7-8 years ago. There are clips somewhere, because I took it to one of those "Forum get-togethers" that I mentioned a few days ago, but I don't think I have any of them. I'll look.
bodia
Authorities said.....best leave it.....unsolved
Yeah, what he said!
Alnus Rubra
Loving nature’s wonders
Black Plaid
Other Alan!
Unless it's a tangled mass of components and wires, it's not TRUE point to point.Clean enough?
D
Deleted member 5962
Guest
Correct. This is not “point to point.” This is a turret board build. Honestly, I built a few PTP pedals and one single ended 5 water, but I’d NEVER mess with “point to point” on any larger scale, vs. turret board, eyelet board, or even a good circuit board. Good clean “logical” circuit path that I can follow... and I’m good. That is NOT PTP! LOL.
Heck to be honest, I was really into that stuff back then. And yeah, it “looks high end.” But the truth is, a properly laid out and properly made circuit board with those uncool “traces” is just as good or BETTER than many, PTP or even turret or eyelet board builds if they aren’t line dressed perfectly.
Don’t believe me? That’s OK. I’m no expert. Ask Randall Smith though. Or Mike Soldano.
Or you could ask Doug or Paul.
Black Plaid
Other Alan!
Hey, no worries, just my idea of fake 'purist' snobbery humor!Correct. This is not “point to point.” This is a turret board build. Honestly, I built a few PTP pedals and one single ended 5 water, but I’d NEVER mess with “point to point” on any larger scale, vs. turret board, eyelet board, or even a good circuit board. Good clean “logical” circuit path that I can follow... and I’m good. That is NOT PTP! LOL.
Heck to be honest, I was really into that stuff back then. And yeah, it “looks high end.” But the truth is, a properly laid out and properly made circuit board with those uncool “traces” is just as good or BETTER than many, PTP or even turret or eyelet board builds if they aren’t line dressed perfectly.
Don’t believe me? That’s OK. I’m no expert. Ask Randall Smith though. Or Mike Soldano.
I've poked around at the inside of my Tri-Axis, which may be 1 space high, but it's 2 feet deep of PCBs layered atop one another.
D
Deleted member 5962
Guest
Oh, I knew you were joking. If you look at the high end builds today, they almost all use turret or eyelet board builds, rather than PTP. But even Soldano uses circuit boards. And even people like Friedman have said that circuit boards sounds just as good and that they build their high end stuff on turret or eyelet boards because that's what people expect in a high end amp, but that it doesn't sound any better then a well designed circuit board.
Ha, interesting story on what I said about circuit boards potentially being "better" than even PTP, turret or eyelet boards. If you've been in the amp building forums, you'll soon see the troubleshooting thread, where a guy has a noise he can't find and while checking things out, he moves one wire 1/2" and the noise goes away. You simply find a way to make the wire stay there (tie wrap, glue, or other) and it's fixed. I've seen where a guy had to replace a wire with one slightly longer, because in trying to dress the wires well, he didn't have enough slack in the wire to move it far enough to get rid of the noise.
Well, the Mesa TA30, fine amp that it is, is known for having a noise in the reverb circuit. RS himself has simple said "it's the way they are designed and there is nothing you can do about it." Well, some amp builder opened one up for a friend and with the schematic in hand, very quickly traced down a place where two of the circuit board traces are closer than they should be, given what they do. He cut the trace, replaced it with a wire that was tucked just an inch or so farther away from the other trace, and the noise is gone.
Easy fix for an amp guy, once you know what to do. But a re-design of the circuit board would be required to fix it in production. By the time this happened, the amp was ready to go out of production, so it was never "fixed" by Mesa, but there is an easy fix for anyone who has one.
I only use this as an example of the differences though. The amp forums are full of guys chasing down noises that are lead dress related. I was pretty heavily involved in amp and pedal building and modding for a while. And, while VERY interesting, and very cool to do, after a few years of that, I finally decided I was spending all my free time either building, modding, or in the forums learning about how do do both. And I was not playing nearly as much! I decided to spend more time playing, and just buy from people who knew more than I did and already knew how to build great stuff.
ViperDoc
Plugged In.
Building is a black hole. It's so interesting, but like you said, more full of study and solder smoke than playing. I'm currently deep in the throes of my most complex build. I've spent about a week modding my chassis just so I can fit everything in where I think it should go, and with any luck at all, it will sound like garbage! But hey, I figured it would be worth the effort.
What you said about tone quality between wires/PTP vs. PCB is absolutely true. There is no difference in tone, so long as the circuit is executed correctly. I've never built with PCB myself, but more complex designs definitely tempt me to consider it. Cool story about the Mesa wire fix.
D
Deleted member 5962
Guest
First, yes, I was in that same place. Fascinated with the learnng and building part, and the thought that I could build my own amp, exactly the way I wanted. Thing is, I was only into building circuits. I didn't want to build cabinets or even custom drill the metal amp box. You can buy drilled out boxes, and of course you can by head cabs. And it was the same with pedals. You had these guys doing art work on their pedal boxes. I'd build pedals during winter and couldn't even paint them. But yeah, after a few years of BYOC, AX84 and SEWatt being the forums I spent all my time out, I figured out how little I was playing and how I was spending all my time reading/learning and building/modding. Several wake-up calls for me, were taking a Valve Junior that I had modded to premo everything, and comparing it to my Egnater Tweaker and the Tweaker easily sounded better and of course WAY more versatile. Yeah, it's not far to compare a 5 watt SE to a 15 watt push pull, but it was a wake up call that I could pay about $350 for the Tweaker new. The amp I showed above sounded great, but was again limited by it's SE output stage. THe other wake up call was a custom built pedal that I got to where I really loved it, and then the Barber Gain Changer came out and sounded at least as good or better, was more versatile, and costed $129 or so. I never got into the bigger builds, like I wanted too. The 18 watt Bluesbreaker style amp was always on my list, but I never got around to it.
And yes, the method of wiring is less important than the execution. My Mesa example was interesting to me, only because a known expert designed a great amp, had an issue that was totally related to the circuit board layout, and once you commit to buying say 500 boards, you aren't changing it unless you run out and it's time to order more. But with the hand wired designs, you have to do all that each build. Proplerly dress the wires and sometimes tuck them a certain way, to avoid picking up noise.
I have built using eyelets and turrets. Turrets almost always look cleaner, but eyelets are easier to work with post-build if tweaks need to be performed. I have been considering getting back into designing and building tube amps. I had to stop when my children were young. As much as it may appear to be heresy, I am probably going to build most of the amp on a PCB with plated-through holes. The preamp sockets will be on the board, but I am going to use flying leads to the power tube sockets. Experience has taught me that one does not want an amp with PCB-mounted power tubes sockets with current production tubes. It only take one tube shorting out to destroy the board. However, experience has also taught me that building high-gain tube circuits using turret or eyelet board technology is tricky on a good day because lead dress is so critical.
