The Eagle Supre - Big SE Amp

[mrvfr]

Well after delays due to non-guitar events, I started on/finished the Amp - got sound and works pretty good - slight hum, but no more than my Goodsell - tone controls work w/ good range, vol cranked gives tube distortion and loud - at half vol works nice w/ my acoustic w/ K&K PWMini - speaker is an old 10" retired stereo cabinet - may get a guitar speaker for it and cut down the cabinet a bit - will also have to back it up to the goodsell and try that 12" speaker - still should tidy up wires a bit and one tube doesn't seat all the way - works tho !!

Took me maybe 20 - 30 hours including studying where parts go - figuring out the schematic, drawings, pics and part list - kinda held my breath when I turned on the power strip - no smoke and maybe 20 second warm-up and could strum and get sound. Relief !! Thanks RJ for a great kit !!

Don't know if I'll try this again tho - eye hand co-ord @ 67 is not what it used to be. Briefly grabbed the HOT barrel of the iron w/ left thumb/index/middle finger tonite early on, so a bit blistered now,- glad I have calluses, tho will be tricky fretting for a bit.

[RJ Guitars]

Congrats, Awesome job! It's excellent to know you got sound on the first try. I've had a few that went that way but it's not every time even after doing a bunch.

I am not convinced that these have to hum although it has always been one challenge with the single ended format. I did get mine pretty quiet by doing all the standard tricks and now I have minimal hum... I never notice unless it is dead quiet in the room.

With a KT88 output tube it's very loud and makes some very cool tones.

rj

[surfsup]

What guitar is that? Looks like a LP but has an interesting "up the neck" relief cutout. Looks like two cutouts...

On hum, i built the kit, then modded it quite a bit but it still has literally ZERO hum. Amazingly quiet. I'm sure it was more lucky than anything but i'd rather be lucky than the opposite

[mrvfr]

What guitar is that? Looks like a LP but has an interesting "up the neck" relief cutout. Looks like two cutouts...

On hum, i built the kit, then modded it quite a bit but it still has literally ZERO hum. Amazingly quiet. I'm sure it was more lucky than anything but i'd rather be lucky than the opposite

It's a Larrivee RS-4, dual humbuckers - their LP interpretation, fancy hog top cap and hog back.
Pretty low hum, but I probably need to go back and do some wire dressing and any suggestions on grounding, tips, appreciated - Thanks.
I was just tickled to get good sounds out !!

[surfsup]

I have an lp studio, i took out the gibson pickups and put in SD alnicoII's, then i changed out the wiring harness to a jimmy page. If you want a guitar that can do just about anything, and you have a LP style guitar, get the JP wiring harness. This guitar is crazy versatile now. I love it.

[mrvfr]

Day two - Remember those nerd T-shirts that say " your ..... doesn't work ? Did you mess with it ?? "
Well this AM I decided to clean up the amp wiring a bit and get the tube to seat better and it ended up dark and silent !!! %%#$@**&&##@#$%^>

Never fear - an hour or two of head scratching, coffee and voltmeter - ohmmeter testing and re-soldering the pwr tube socket squiggley things - we have sound again - talk about Hi's and Lows - I think I need my dog to take me for a walk.

Is the KT88 just a drop-in swap, googled and some say yes, some say no - the xformers probably are big enough and I used the higher volt taps - maybe worth a try ?

Larrivee makes their own pickups now and uses very good components and gets pretty good reviews -try one if you see one, but maybe a franken tele next to experiment w/ single coils !!

[RJ Guitars]

I hate it when that happens... but I understand it completely - if we stick to T-Shirt text I guess you might say "Been there - done that".

I had KT88's in mind when I put together the Eagle Supre package... I even have a KT90 here and thoughts of a KT120. The transformers will handle them and there are no critical changes to the circuit to try it out. There are some subtle things you eventually might want to do to optimize it for that specific tube but for the most part it's plug and play. Cathode biasing is very tube friendly. If you do this, as a precautionary practice - measure the bias current across the cathode and see if it's reasonable... in fact, measure all the voltages just to have a record of them. I'd be curious what they look like.

Somebody let me know if I missed anything important on the voltage measurement locations.

rj

[mrvfr]

Now here it is - nothing plugged in, stack on -

[mrvfr]

After enjoying my Eagle for almost a year, I decided to try reducing the "not too bad" hum. So I looked at photo's of prior builders on this thread and compared to mine and found a couple areas to tweak - redid the ground path for C8, moved heater wires and taped to chassis, unsoldered an OT to jack wire and twisted it w/ it's pair and then generally bent hookup wires away from others and doggone it worked - now nearly inaudible hum at 1/2 vol w/o tone stack and hum doesn't get significant till 80-90% . Sound might even be a bit crisper. Now thinking about an order to Amplified parts to include a KT88 to help with the winter doldrums - didn't get above zero today here in Minn.
Thanks RJ
Wayne
Oh and since I last posted - the speaker now is a WGS 10" G10C, reccomend those guy's speakers.

[Colossal]

Oh and since I last posted - the speaker now is a WGS 10" G10C, reccomend those guy's speakers.

How would you characterize the tone with this speaker? Good job getting the noise floor down. It always comes home to roost that good lead dress pays.

[surfsup]

Nice. I'm still enjoying mine as well though it turned into this:

https://tubeamparchive.com/viewtopic.php?t=15968

RJ really put a nice kit together with this. Thanks again RJ, hope you're doing well...

[mrvfr]

Oh and since I last posted - the speaker now is a WGS 10" G10C, reccomend those guy's speakers.

How would you characterize the tone with this speaker?.........

I don't have a lot of guitar speaker tone experience to compare with, but the clarity and clean bass plus volume capability is not far behind my Goodsell w/ 12".
WGS calls it "American" sound vs. British. Recommendation is more based on easy dealing with them and reading their tech blog and that Goodsell uses them too.
Small 3-4 gear head guy type shop , Oh and prices are pretty good too.

Gonna have to study your thread surfsup, tho looks like more than I want to attempt.

[RJ Guitars]

It's great to see a little more tweaking on this build. I actually worked a day in the shop yesterday... not very fast yet but finally getting something done. The big Supre is a cool amp and I may try some of those tweaks. Mine is still at the acceptable hum level and I would love to cut it down even further.
rj

[Colossal]

Good to see you here RJ.

[angelodp]

Howdy RJ, great to see you back, my Supre is a tone machine for sure and pretty quiet, I'll have to take another look at my lead dress and see if I can improve on that.

Cheers Ange