I was very nervous about wiring the components. Some things can be destroyed if they are wired incorrectly - and this was the first time I ever attempted something like this.
If I blew a transformer or damaged a fuse - then I would be sunk. I doubt I can find some of these components any where around here. Here is the final build with the tubes installed. I do not plan to modify this into another amp, so I finally filled the extra tube socket hole with a little Sears Tower souvenir. (Note that it will protect the tubes if I do something dopey like turn it upside down to work on it!)
I did not have much free time last week, but this week is different. It is Spring Break, and this is what it looked like outside on the first day of Spring.
Now it is time to build the cabinets for the amp head and the speakers. Right now they are downstairs being glued up. Here is what they looked like this afternoon, before glue.
The mini speaker cab is going to be cute.
Oh man, I didn't talk about the amp. Luckily I have a sad amp with an 8ohm speaker in it. I pulled the cable so that I could plug my new amp into it. I will fix that amp some day, but I didn't mind using its speaker as a test.
So, I fired it up at just before midnight, Sunday night and it worked! There was a fairly strong 120hz hum. On Monday morning I moved one of the filament wires on the output tube and knocked most of this hum out. It is still a little too much for my taste, so I will keep playing around with some of the lead dressing until I find the culprit. I might test some of the filter caps, I should have picked one up today when I was at Radio Shack. The 120hz might be some ripple from the power stage.
But, I will keep working on the cabinets and make it easy to take the amp in and out of the head to make adjustments and poke around. The sound is incredible - I cannot believe I went this long without a tube amp.
--gh
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