Mission Accomplished?

My last post was somewhat like having a giant Mission Accomplished banner strewn across the front of an aircraft carrier. I was still waiting on gold grill vent mesh material to cover the holes in top and back of the amp. I'm glad to say that the amp is officially 100% complete.

I have to say, that gold mesh really clues it up nicely. Dontcha think? I think it is now time to start considering what I am going to do for my next build. I've been focused on doing a Tweed Deluxe 5E3 build. The electronics for that would be much simpler than this build, but the cabinet would be the interesting part. Stay tuned, I'll be ordering parts in the not too distant future!


Mmmm, gold vent grill mesh.

Haskell #001 Complete!

So a bit of soldering, design, troubleshooting, and woodworking over the course of the last 10 months and this is what I've come up with...


She's all done. Well, technically. I still need to track down a bit of gold mesh grill material for the top and back vents, but other than that, I'm ready to call it done.


I plan on getting some really good quality audio recorded in the not too distant future, so stay tuned. Here's one more for your eyes.

99.99% of the way there...

So this past holiday weekend I finally managed to get a few coats of stain and then a few coats of clear onto the cabinet. My brown leather handle and the rubber feet are now enroute from eBay. Here she is...


The Presence knob is missing, but that's because the knobs that are on it suck. I have a set of official Marshall replacements with locking screw, but I'm going to wait on the handle and feet and install all that gear at once to have it complete.

Another thing I did this weekend was I replaced an 8.2K resistor on the tone stack with the originally called for 10K. I'd noticed that when turning the preamp up over 8 that things would start to break up. Swapping in the 10K cleared it all up and now I can stick the preamp all the way to 11 and it's golden. The moment this thing is 100%, I'm going to set up my recording gear and get some nice samples of this thing online.

Temporary Detour

I've been waiting for the weather to warm up for a while now and decided to go ahead and try something out. I ordered an ITS8 pedal kit from General Guitar Gadgets! It's an Ibanez TS808 ("Tubescreamer") clone. It's a very neat, PCB based kit. It comes with everything you need to just fire up your soldering iron and get down to business.


The first thing I did was hit the case with a nice even coat of primer. I'm going to go with a sea-foam green color for the case, and then hit it with a couple coats of clear to keep it protected. I'm thinking about what I may put on it for graphics, I'll probably have a better idea once I get the first coast of paint on it. I figure I'll just stencil some black on there. Here's a look at the kit components.


This will go together quick so keep an eye on things! It's going to sound quite nice pushing through the JCM800 clone for sure!

95% Of The Way There

I got up early and cranked hard on it today. I'm just gonna insert pictures and talk about what I was doing at the time.

First off, I went ahead and picked up a load of clamps on sale at Canadian Tire today! $9.99 for the 36" and $7.49 for the 24". I also picked up a jigsaw, sander, rubber mallet, and a sweet set of router bits. I cut the top heat vent hole, glued up the finger joints, hammered it together and clamped it up. I put it in my computer room and turned up the heat so things would set nicely.


I then decided to throw the chassis in for a preliminary look. Things looked rough, but nice.

I then broke out my new 1/2" and 1/4" round over bits and started routing everything nice and round. Once I completed that, I went ahead and hit the works with some 100 grit, and then again with some 150 grit, to make things nice and smooth.

Then it was time to put it all together. At this stage I am still lacking rubber feet, a handle, and 5 or 6 coats of dark chestnut stain, and a bit of gold mesh for the rear and top vents. Then all I gotta do is drill some holes in the logo and screw it on. I'm going to start staining tomorrow, but for now check this out. There's a video at the end of the amp going as well, connected to my XXX 4x12 full of Sheffields. Be warned, the audio will suck, it was recorded with an iPhone.

So tomorrow I'm going to hit it with a fine sanding (by hand) and then start staining it. I figure I'll order some rubber feet and a handle and it should get here within a week. I'm in no big rush now; I'm practically there! Here's that video I was talking about...

Head Cabinet Beginnings

So after letting the pine I bought dry for an extended period of time, I decided that with the nice weather happening today I would go ahead and get some woodworking done for the head cabinet. I made use of my new table saw as well as my router table with finger jointing jig that I got from Oak Park Enterprises. It made the finger jointing part of the endeavor a total cinch.


Above is my router table with finger jointing jig. It's awesome. I still need to pick up some large adjustable bar clamps (I figure a couple 36" and a couple 18" should do) and then I can cut the heat exhaust hole in top of the box, glue and clamp it up, and then move on to cutting the front and back pieces. I've decided that #001 is going to get a few applications of dark chestnut stain when the time comes. Here are a few shots of what I managed to get dry fitted together.


Stay tuned, I'm going clamp hunting tomorrow!

Cabinet Design and Logos

It's been a spell since I last updated, so I figured now would be a great time. Since getting the amp all biased and rockin' I've played it a few times and every time it's just fantastic. A couple weeks back I went out and bought a router table with a fixed router in preparation for doing the head cabinet box. I managed to put a design together in Google Sketchup, see below...






Today at work I put together some vector graphics for the logo I want to stick on the amp (and future builds). I bought a clear (future mod, set in face frosted light up logo) 12" x 12" x 1/8" sheet of acrylic and a white opaque piece the same size. Then I did this...



I must say, my employer has got some pretty awesome gear kicking around! Stay tuned, I'm going to buy some pine in the coming weeks to get started on the box!

Biased and ready for a home!

So I got my 1ohm 1W 1% tolerance resistors from Digikey a week or so ago and got the amp biased. The calculations I did showed I should have been running ~37mA through the output tubes. Turns out it was running quite hot at 56mA. So things have been tweaked down to the numbers when you calculate using 70% of max for the tubes (25W max the tubes can do, 70% of which is 17.5W; 17.5W / 475V plate voltage gives the magic number 37mA). Now the tubes should last a bit longer than if I'd left it unbiased :).

More pictures to come soon. I'm starting to accrue the tools required to do the head cabinet, and hope to get started by the end of the month.

Audio Samples!

Don't forget, this amp has yet to be biased, but it still sounds pretty good I think. Here are four samples...

*Update: Samples no longer online. My Linux servers hard disk ate shit.

Amp Sound Samples

Now I need to start tweaking those knobs to start finding those magical sounding places that this amp is sure to be hiding from me. Check out my capacitor discharge device! Resistors and alligator clips for the win!


Still fighting with getting video with good audio, so hopefully the clips tide you over for now. I'm hoping my resistors get here Monday so I can bias this baby. Enjoy!

Windows Movie Maker Sucks

It really does. I was recording some video with a decent cardioid mic on the cabinet running into line in and it sounded really good. Too bad it was so out of sync it was like watching a dubbed Kung Fu movie. So I'm going to try to get that ironed out in the not too distant future, but in the meantime, check out these tubes glowing! Yes, my camera is a piece of shit.

Oh, I also tried recording some video with my iPhone but Steve Jobs didn't equip the thing with a microphone capable of handling how awesome this amp is. I'll try again later this evening with the laptop, and even if the audio/video is out of sync, I'll post it so you can get an earful.

And it sounded like...

So I put in a few solid hours over the past couple days. First I re-did the power section and heaters. Then I put the board back in and got down to business. After a few more hours punched today, I ended up with this...


Yessirree. That power light is ON! After this picture was taken I went ahead and checked all the necessary voltages to ensure that things were functioning as they should, and sure enough, all was well. Next, I unplugged it and discharged the filter caps. I then went ahead and installed the three preamp tubes (JJ Tesla 12AX7) and fired it back up, and they started glowing a nice warm orange. My heart melted. I flicked it off, popped in the two output tubes (JJ Tesla KT77), plugged it in to a 4x12 full of celestions and turned it back on again. The output tubes lit up in unison with the preamp tubes; a beautiful sight indeed. No hum, no squeals, just the smooth sound of a 4x12 cabinet on the receiving end of a 50 watt head. I plugged in my guitar, turned up the preamp and master volumes, and a smile a mile wide hit my face.

I have yet to bias the amp as I am waiting on a couple 1 ohm resistors from Digikey. I hope to have them on Monday so I can adjust the flow through the output tubes, and then I'm going to record some video/audio of the amp in action. Make sure you check back here on Monday!