Plexi please.....

[Tadpui]

Definitely no shit content, I watched with rapt attention! When you paused saying "and there'll be a wire here going to um..." I actually said out loud "pin 3!"

I legit enjoyed this, you could rattle on about amp schematics all day and I'd watch.

I'd love to know more about translating a schematic into the actual board layout. For whatever reason, schematics are still greek to me. I can kinda sorta follow it, but there's no way I could make a board like that from a schematic.

Well done, man!

[Greg_L]

Definitely no shit content, I watched with rapt attention! When you paused saying "and there'll be a wire here going to um..." I actually said out loud "pin 3!"

I legit enjoyed this, you could rattle on about amp schematics all day and I'd watch.

I'd love to know more about translating a schematic into the actual board layout. For whatever reason, schematics are still greek to me. I can kinda sorta follow it, but there's no way I could make a board like that from a schematic.

Well done, man!

Thanks Tad.

Well to be honest I didn't invent this layout. The amps have existed for decades. What I had to do was take the schematic and compare it to already built amps and adapt the signal flow to my own board using existing amps as a reference. I could just look at a schematic and devise a board layout but these have already been done so I had reference material. The main difference is that the original Marshall boards were much larger and also they used multiple boards. My challenge was adapting the whole thing to fit onto my one single generic board.

Anyway, since I'm a master video maker now (LOL) maybe I'll try to do a rudimentary beginner's tutorial on translating a schematic to real world applications. It is a learning process.

[rayc]

Last night was Uncle Doug's latest & this morning Greg's Part II.
Excellent.
VERY different approaches & styles but both well worth viewing.
Entertaining AND the W.H.S. message slipped in nicely.
Last night Uncle Doug chided folk for asking for parts lists & layout diagrams but I think he assumes his views have been with him all along & have learnt stuff...not me though.
Tad's request is a good one. Not one I'm likely to use but def. one I'd watch.
Excellent.

[Greg_L]

Last night was Uncle Doug's latest & this morning Greg's Part II.
Excellent.
VERY different approaches & styles but both well worth viewing.
Entertaining AND the W.H.S. message slipped in nicely.
Last night Uncle Doug chided folk for asking for parts lists & layout diagrams but I think he assumes his views have been with him all along & have learnt stuff...not me though.
Tad's request is a good one. Not one I'm likely to use but def. one I'd watch.
Excellent.

Thanks. I don't know what "WHS message" is?

I haven't watched Uncle Doug's vid yet. I'm behind. But he was pretty instrumental to getting me learning this stuff.

Nice work on Vid 2.

I'm sort of almost used to the "sodder" thing by now - the other word that I wasn't expecting different pronunciation on was chassis - "chassy" which in my world is pronounced "shassy".

I know. There's a guy from Australia I like to watch. Really good Marshall tech in particular. He says "shazzy" for chassis and it's pretty funny but obviously I'm aware of the different ways we say stuff. That doesn't bug me as much as American people calling tubes "valves". That is a pet peeve.

I was wondering at the very end there with the small yellow wire going to pin 8 why you didn't strip the other end while it was a free agent and not soldered in - seemed like, not knowing anything about this, stripping the wire whilst attached might risk the integrity of that solder join?

Then I thought about it and came up with...

(a) if you did that, and there are quite a few wires to do before you do the final connection, then all those stipped wire ends are going to bang up against stuff and fray and possibly bend and strands might snap off - bad

(b) because it'll take some time there'd be some oxidation of the copper whilst you're working on other things and you probably want it as fresh as possible - perhaps not as bad as I think

(c) you've got a really good wire stripper tool and a method of doing it without pulling on the soldered join.

Or possibly all 3?

You're close with "C", that is part of it. I can strip the loose end of the wires without the soldered end even knowing what's going on.

I leave the tube socket end of the wires unstripped because they will still need to be trimmed for their final routing. I leave everything a little long knowing that I will snip a little off and then strip it when I've determined the placement. And the 270 degree wrap I mentioned in the video around the turret is military spec. The wire going through the little holes in the board offers a bit of strain relief and the wire end itself is wrapped military spec and then soldered. It's not coming undone no matter how aggressively I strip the other end.

[Greg_L]

Oh, also, forgot to mention...the connection wire I use is pre-tinned. All that blue, green, yellow, red wire....all pre-tinned 22 gauge 105C deg PVC insulated hookup wire. Pro stuff, and quite similar to what you'd actually find in a vintage Marshall. I can strip it and it's ready to go. With normal stranded wire, you strip it and it's bare strands of wire that can fray all over the place. You'd have to twist it and tin it yourself. Not a big deal, but my pre-tinned stuff keeps me from having to do that step, and it might not seem like much but twisting the ends of hundreds of wires for hours and hours is not fun for the finger tips.

But I still prefer the cloth pushback solid core Fender style wire.

[rayc]

Work Health & Safety - the fan.

[Greg_L]

Work Health & Safety - the fan.

Yeah that. Solder fumes will get to you if you don't ventilate.

[Greg_L]

Last night Uncle Doug chided folk for asking for parts lists & layout diagrams but I think he assumes his views have been with him all along & have learnt stuff...not me though.

I finally watched it this morning. You're right he does chastise a little bit. His sentiment is not wrong - do the work for yourself. But he is wrong in a way because no one is born knowing this shit, and he's an old man that has been at this for decades. He's probably forgotten more stuff than most people will ever know. I think he's lost a little perspective on how foreign this stuff is when you know nothing about it. A Princeton circuit is very basic indeed but to someone that knows nothing it might as well be astrophysics. But he is right...it's not his job to provide parts lists and paint-by-numbers layouts. He's wrong about layouts though and I've seen him use them many times. If Fender themselves went through the trouble of creating official drawn layouts for their own amps then who is he to say that no one should use them? That's like eating with your hands because using a spoon is cheating. That's dumb and he's wrong on that part. Comparing a layout to a schematic is a great way to learn how to read both.

[Greg_L]

Another....

[JD01]

Nice one, Greg. Get yourself a little phone grabber stand thing! So you can just position it over the "chassy" while you sodder away.

[Tadpui]

It's coming together nicely! When you held up the medusa looking board at first I had some doubts that it could turn out so tidy looking. It looks great man, and fingers crossed for the introduction of voltage to it!

[rayc]

Tidy and organised and all that good stuff visually & functionally speaking.
Well done. Enjoyed it.

[WhiskeyJack]

Work Health & Safety - the fan.

Yeah that. Solder fumes will get to you if you don't ventilate.

I finally experienced this a couple weeks ago trying to fix up a strat for our buddy Mr.Smith.

Had a mega ripping headache the entire next day. I'll have to have a small fan blowing downwind if I ever do that again.

[WhiskeyJack]

Another....

Ok this was awesome. Man that is a work of art. I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass. But that just loooooks good.

That crosstalk thing you mentioned. Is that something you mitigated and dreamt up or it that a fairly common thing people take a little extra attention. Too. That's cool.

I was going to just reply with a wisecrack about knowing a licorice rope when I see one but I genuinely was gobsmacked but the final-ish walk thru. Good stuff buddy.

[Greg_L]

Nice one, Greg. Get yourself a little phone grabber stand thing! So you can just position it over the "chassy" while you sodder away.

Thanks. My little mini handheld tripod has an attachment that can attach to a mic stand, and I thought about maybe rigging it up like that but that's a level of effort that goes above and beyond the already extra level of effort it takes to build an amp.

It's coming together nicely! When you held up the medusa looking board at first I had some doubts that it could turn out so tidy looking. It looks great man, and fingers crossed for the introduction of voltage to it!

Thanks, no lie the medusa aspect is a little daunting at first. I remember on my first build thinking "there's no way I can make sense of all this". There are wires everywhere. But with study and experience it's gotten way easier - especially if you can mentally compartmentalize each little section of the board by it's purpose. Like I mentioned in video two the board is just a bunch of stuff but it can be broken down into little sections. And also like I mentioned as you start attaching wires you're left with fewer unattached wires so it gets easier and easier. Just go one at a time in some kind of logical order and it's not a big deal. Put on some background music and just get after it.

Tidy and organised and all that good stuff visually & functionally speaking.
Well done. Enjoyed it.

Thanks, so far so good.

Nice work. Looking forward to the voltage application bit...

Thanks that's coming up next. Got a fire extinguisher handy.

Ok this was awesome. Man that is a work of art. I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass. But that just loooooks good.

That crosstalk thing you mentioned. Is that something you mitigated and dreamt up or it that a fairly common thing people take a little extra attention. Too. That's cool.

I was going to just reply with a wisecrack about knowing a licorice rope when I see one but I genuinely was gobsmacked but the final-ish walk thru. Good stuff buddy.

Thanks man. The crosstalk thing is a very real problem in any kind of amp. Usually what happens is you'll hear a very faint version of your signal passing through the amp even with the volumes all the way down. Really common on old amps with old parts and old boards. That kind of crosstalk is really not that big of a deal but obviously you don't want any "unregulated" signals flying around throughout an amp. The more detrimental kind of signal/voltage bleeding causes things like hum and oscillation. Hum is annoying and never sounds good. Oscillation can and will actually kill tubes. Oscillation is usually inaudible feral unwanted frequencies crashing through a tube that drive it insane. At worst the affected tubes can overheat and red-plate and just say fuck this I'm outta here. At best even a small amount of oscillation will add unwanted distortion and ugly artifacts to your signal. So you wanna do what you can to keep that from happening.

If yall haven't noticed, I've used exactly zero shielded cable in this amp. Normally I'm a big fan of shielded cable at least for the inputs to the first tube stage. Those wires are easily interfered with by literally anything - chinese radio stations, fluorescent lights, WIFI, cellphones, anything. But I'm not using it. The original Marshalls that this thing is copycatting had no shielded wire anywhere so neither will mine. Granted, they didn't have to deal with the technological nightmare that our current airwaves carry, but I'm trying it anyway. If it did it right it should be okay.

[Greg_L]

It's alive.

Here's a walkthrough of my process of bringing these things to life safely - for me and the amp. We've got a little bit of rudimentary schematic reading at the beginning and then some testing.

[einstein magoo]

EXCELLENT!

[rayc]

Step by step, safe n sure. A class class in patience and care.

[Greg_L]

That last video is long and tedious just like actually doing it in real life.

[Greg_L]

Setting bias, just about ready to make a racket.