middleaudio.com

It shall incorporate some tubes and knobs (no “knob and tube” however) and wire and resistors and capacitors and a speaker ‘n’ shit.
Oh, and a wood enclosure with a strap of some sort.
.......and a baffle. I like baffles.

Pics soon!!

Step one... get some parts together and get organized.

A few simple calculations to get the ball rolling...

Design note for everybody following along at home:
Make sure all wiring slopes downward at a ratio of 1” per foot in order to keep those electrons flowing.

......unless of course you subscribe to the hole flow theory in which case you’ll be building from the ground up.

I have these MIL spec knobs left over from a project 20 years ago. They were the best sounding knobs I could find at the time after spending hours of A-B comparison, and can only imagine that their tone has improved with age.





EDIT: I mistakenly posted a picture of the volume knob, not the tone knob. I’ve since verified that the volume knob has not gotten any louder with age. Tone knob results are still pending.

A little side trip into the wire selection process for the techies. Everyone else is free to nap, as this is going to get real boring real fast.
My main focus apart from voltage rating and physical sizing is of course smoke emission.
UL1685 guidelines are as close as I feel relevant, assuming that vertical tests are going to see faster flame propagation and therefore more smoke emission than near* horizontal deployment.
LSZH type wire is going to be the jacket of choice due to its performance in such tests.
Following the obvious logic, less smoke produced means that in the event of a component failure there should theoretically be enough smoke remaining to finish a set or a gig, dependent of course on the severity of the component failure.






*Refer to my 4th post in this thread.

My PT and OT xformers are Hammond 373X and 1609 respectively. Chosen specifically because I have them in my inventory.
The search for a non-inductive choke continues.

Paying homage to lineage...and cartoon robotics...I have no choice but to dub this amp the “Bender Basement”

I’m making my own turret boards of course.
In the past I’ve used Keystone 1503-3 turrets exclusively, but decided to experiment a bit with this project.
I received some samples of Keystone 1502-3 and proceeded to make an anvil for staking. Discovered during the process that 3/32” drill bits differ in diameter slightly by manufacturer. After mic’ing several bits I found one that was perfect for the job and made my anvil from an old 1/4” bit.

Will get back to this soon. Been busy building a nurse call / wifi Android system for a hospital.

Got my soldering tools and supplies together, ready to begin assembling!

HEATSHRINK SHOOTOUT!!!

The hotly debated topic of tone vs colour is, IMHO, merely the tip of the iceberg.
I’ll be comparing colour, shrink ratio, meltable inner wall vs standard wall, polyolefin vs flouropolymer vs silicone elastomer etc. and posting the eagerly anticipated sonic results.

Who knew Covid would produce a global shortage of green 2:1 polyolefin??
Results are postponed in fairness to green. (Traditionally the best sounding IMHO).