liverpool controls

[mark enger]

Im not sure in my control are working right, with volume all the way down only a little twangy sound comes through, as i ease up TMB knobs the volume rises with each control is this how these amps work or is it just mine? also my volume seems to be maxing out at 7 or 8 then volume dips? also my amp is'nt humming or hissing but has alot of white noise or roar to it its not dead quiet. mark

[geetarpicker]

Sounds almost normal. IF all the tone controls (not including the presence) are off you will hardly get any volume no matter how far you crank it. Yes, you will get plenty of level once you start raising both your tones and volume. Many amps are like this that don't use a cathode follower before the tone stack, most notably black and silver face Fenders. You will have some noise overall if you crank it, but it should be a tad less than most high gain amps if you compare with similar gain settings. If your volume seems to drop at the very end of the dail it is possible you have ultra sonic oscillation problems that are only kicking in once you get the far up on the dail, as sometimes an oscillation will ocur that saturates the power stage and effectively takes up all the power and you will actually hear less noise at that point. That said, if you fully dime it and play the guitar with it really backed off, if it's oscilatting the clean tone will be crap no matter how backed off the guitar is set. Also you can check the power tubes for oscillation as they will glow quite bright (and perhaps more blue than normal) if they are indeed amplifiying oscillations. You should be able to fully dime EVERYTHING and not have oscillation issues. Make sure you have a bottom plate on the amp chassis, as these amps will not be stable without it and it's a common detail sometimes missed by first time TW builders. If it is indeed unstable there can be many causes, and it's a common problem if the original Ken Fischer layout and wiring placement is altered from how he did it. That said, some have made changes in that department that worked out fine but it's a crap shoot. Hope that helps for starters! GK

[mark enger]

Gpicker i had a el84 that was just starting to glow purple, I replaced
it, and did the power tubes glow brighter with guitar volume rolled back
test, which @ controls fully dimmed did not appear brighter or blue'er to me or my wife, with the rooms light off, and clean tone sounded fine, amp no longer is craping out @ end of the volume so im assuming it was from a dying power tube, now i gotta make a bottom plate im hoping it might quiet this amp down over-all, Thanks for the excellent info Geetarpicker, mark

[Kassie]

Gpicker i had a el84 that was just starting to glow purple, I replaced
it, and did the power tubes glow brighter with guitar volume rolled back
test, which @ controls fully dimmed did not appear brighter or blue'er to me or my wife, with the rooms light off, and clean tone sounded fine, amp no longer is craping out @ end of the volume so im assuming it was from a dying power tube, now i gotta make a bottom plate im hoping it might quiet this amp down over-all, Thanks for the excellent info Geetarpicker, mark

I thought I had my express stable with only a shielded input wire.. it turned out it started oscilating in the lower frequencies (almost motorboating). When I dimed the treble.. and gain on 3/4. The bright switch was in off position funny enough, and it didn't start to oscilate in both the bright positions weirdly. A remedy was a quality shielded cable from volume pot to grid.

Furthermore I placed a 1k metalfilm gridstopper on the v2 grid to kill any high frequencies further. I prefer shielded cable over gridstoppers on v1 since gridstoppers generate lots of white noise. Make sure you use good quality cable since these two wires are critical for the sound of the amp. Low quality shielded wire will eat up a lot of the tone.

Now I can max out all the controls and get a fair amount of hiss but no reall oscillation problems... I do can hear some slight whisteling sounds with the plate off.. so perhaps it's oscillating mildly.. but I guess that's the nature of this amp. It's on the verge of instabillity.