Pics of my build

[HeeBGB]

I apologize. Upon closer examination Allyn has come up with eveidence that proves that this pic IS Francesca after all. She has weathered quite a bit since that pic was taken. She still sounds great though.

[Allynmey]

Yup, it is. Here the pics and proof. Compare with the pic on the last page.


Allynmey

You can't change or fake a grain match!

[HiGain]

Thanks to both of you for this great thread!

I have a question about the express you played: What kind of headroom did it have?

Jake

[HeeBGB]

Not a lot of headroom but adequate for all but a chickin' pickin' country player I would say.

I gotta plug my strat into one. We only player a LP through them. Also my Hamer Special with P90's. I hear that Juniors and specials were KF's favorites.

Greg

[Doug H]

Thanks for the great pics, guys. This should solve a lot of mysteries.

Interesting to see the perfboard and flea clip construction. I have some perfboard like that but have not found large enough flea clips for it.

One question: Did the taper of the volume pot seem to match up with the one you built? I remember rumors a few yrs back about KF using a special log taper pot to stretch out the gain range. Don't know if that's true or not.

Thanks,

Doug

[HeeBGB]

Funny you should ask this. The answer is NO....the taper on the Alpha pot that I used REALLY sucked. I changed it this morning to a 1Meg PEC pot with a much more useable taper

[Doug H]

I changed it this morning to a 1Meg PEC pot with a much more useable taper

Interesting... Where do you get those at?

Doug

[HeeBGB]

I got them through a member of the 18 watt forum. Chris Wujek! Basically he asked if anyone was interested in getting some. The larger your order the cheaper the cost of the pots. So he basically organized a buying collective and then had all the pots shipped to him and then shipped them out to all the people who ordered them. I'm not sure we got the discount we thought we would because the supplier raised the price last minute. Chris let us know about the price increase and gave us the option to bail. I cut my order a bit but stayed in. I think Allynmey got some too. Nice pots. This is the first one i've used. Not sure I like the feel yet but the taper is WAY better than the Alpha's! I want to try some others. Like Claro, and I'd like to see if I can find some Bourns and maybe CTS as well. Gotta find some suppliers!

Greg

[v00d00blues79]

metroamp.com has PEC pots in stock as well. They're about $12 apiece.

[HeeBGB]

Different values were different prices. I'll have to dig up the prices. I think I deleted the email though. The most expensive one I paid for I think was about $10-$11 for one of the more oddball values. Most of the common stuff came in between $5 and $8. They are nice pots though.

[gnugear]

You can get them from Digikey but I think they're still in the $10 range.

[Mark]

Just thought I'd chime in here with advice to increase the bass response.

Some time ago I tried one of the Blueguitar circuits where the cap coupling to the third stage was a 0.001uF, in this circuit there was a 0.0022uF across the second plate resistor, this did have the effect of increasing the bass response, I don't recall if this effected the drive going to the third stage, however it would make sense if it did.

The effect of this circuit did surprise me as I expected it to sound weird, however it sounded extremely similar to using a 0.0022uF cap as the coupling cap.

Onother mod that I have heard of is a 0.0047uF cap in series with either a 39K resistor or a 100K pot that is attached across the second plate resistor.

I think the advantage of this circuit is that you can dial in how much of the high audio content you wish to shunt.

Hope this advice helps.

Yours Sincerely

Mark Abbott

[Doug H]

re. Pot taper:

I don't see anything in the PEC pot catalog listings that distinguishes its log taper from any other log taper pot. Was your original Alpha a linear taper pot?

Doug

[HeeBGB]

I don't usually buy 1meg linears but it says A1M on the back of the Alpha.

Trust me there IS a difference. By the time I got to 10 O'Clock on the alpha I had as much gain as have now with the PEC at 12 O'Clock. I'm stayin' with the PEC at least for the volume.


Did you ever play a metal panel Marshall? Ever get the situation where the volume is really low and you turn it up a hair and it's too damn loud. So you turn it back down a hair only to find yourself back in the same situation? That's what I was getting with the alpha. Hated it!


BTW....tried the 5200 ohm tap tonight! Me Likey! Mo Betta! Me still tweeky though!

Later

[gnugear]

Any more pics coming?