Amp internals

[ecc83]

Certainly some nice work there but such a shame that mains and other high voltage points are not booted and sleeved wherever practical.

Dave.

[cacofonix]

Certainly some nice work there but such a shame that mains and other high voltage points are not booted and sleeved wherever practical.

Dave.

One amp I saw in the second thread I posted was fully PTP and each exposed wire had a transparent plastic sleeve covering it up to the solder point. Proper attention to detail.

Amazing when you think 90% of people will never look at it.

[musicegbdf]

As we are talking about the insides . Here is mine








It is an Ashdown Essex Blonde made by Matamp

[chillidoggy]

Good stuff!

My Hellcat (up for sale now, though). Whenever I see piccys like this, it always makes me feel like I'm paying for empty space.

[musicegbdf]

Good stuff!

My Hellcat (up for sale now, though). Whenever I see piccys like this, it always makes me feel like I'm paying for empty space.

Not wrong there , bet it goes to 11 as well.....

[chillidoggy]

[Misty]

Very interesting stuff, thanks for posting that link. I'm no tech, but I love to see nicely made handwired amps. I hate seeing those ribbon cables in anything, (past experience!), and also pots and valves PCB mounted.

As a Dr Z devotee I like this site, beautifully built amps with real attention to detail:
http://www.guitaramplifierblueprinti...torzamps3.html

Scroll down to see the Doc's work close up.

[John_P]

Very interesting - thanks for posting it.

It's fascinating to see some of the spaghetti and I feel for the poor tech's that have to work on them!

[ICBM]

Very interesting stuff, thanks for posting that link. I'm no tech, but I love to see nicely made handwired amps.

Believe it or not, I prefer a really well-made PCB amp. I love the precision and consistency - even compared to the most obsessively neat hand-wired amps.

I hate seeing those ribbon cables in anything, (past experience!)

Same here. Anything involving mechanical contacts and wires crimped into connectors can and does cause trouble.

and also pots and valves PCB mounted.

Not a problem as long as it's done properly. Pots need to be decent-sized metal-casing jobs not the nasty little square plastic type that are becoming 'standard', should have a proper threaded bushing mounted to the chassis to take any physical strain, and preferably a PCB support frame as well; valve sockets are fine mounted on a PCB, but power and rectifier valve sockets need also mounting to the chassis for strength and to reduce heat transfer to the board. Done like this they're reliable. I'm still not convinced about mounting jacks on the PCB though, they do get a lot more stress than any other component, and it both increases the possibility of damage and makes it harder to replace them.

[Danny1969]

I know people like to see tidy wiring but in fact having every single wire cable tied every inch can make an amp a pain in the arse to work on, especially if you need to work on it while it's running.

As Misty pointed out worse things are PCB mounted valve bases, PCB mounted pots, valves hanging upside down with no restraints, 1\4 sockets used for speakers, crap impendence selectors which are so bad they have an impedence of their own.

I know we use things like 1\4 jacks and kettle leads on amps for legacy reasons but any new decent design wouldn't.