woody
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Post by woody on Dec 15, 2006 22:13:31 GMT -5
I just built up a tube portable amp using a 6V6GT and a 12AX7. It works of a 12V Sealed battery that velcro mounts in the case. I designed and built a high efficiency inverter to output 300Volts for the Tube supply and this seems to give around 4 hours continuos playing time. It has a clean channel and variable distortion by adjusting the preamp feedback loop. Now is there a market for portabe battery powered 5,10,20 Watt amps? It also works of the mains supply by using a inbuilt power supply.
Any thoughts or recommendations?
Woody
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woody
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Post by woody on Nov 24, 2006 4:31:01 GMT -5
I just bought this hybrid amp. Is there anything that I should know about it? Are there any mods or other issues that I should know about?
Woody
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woody
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Post by woody on Jan 26, 2007 21:46:53 GMT -5
Thanks for the feedback, I wanted some with more mid to high output and mainly for heavy type of stuff so I found new Trevor Wilkinsons on Ebay for dirt cheap. So I have these coming and see how they sound. i18.ebayimg.com/02/i/000/80/25/4fbb_1_b.JPG
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woody
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Post by woody on Jan 18, 2007 2:24:32 GMT -5
I have a Ibanez EX-350 with stock pups installed. These pups favour the bottom range and lack on the treble. Can someone suggest some good sounding replacements in a H-S-H configuration.
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woody
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Post by woody on Nov 24, 2006 23:17:59 GMT -5
Thanks for the suggestions and you are right on the money, it was a tiny burr on the bridge and was under the string.
Thanks for the insight.
Woody.
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woody
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Post by woody on Nov 24, 2006 4:26:07 GMT -5
Hi, I am no expert on strings at all so I hope someone can help with this. It also may sound like a dumb question but im not proud. lol I have noticed that the top E string on a squier has a sort of a loose twang to it. Other guitars I have do not make the same noise. Is it a Nut, Bridge of string trait? I have no idea.
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woody
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Post by woody on Dec 25, 2006 21:23:22 GMT -5
Another way is to add a cap to the the first coil in a Humbucker and jump into circuit using a small toggle switch. It pays to wire the cap straight to the wiper of the volume pot. Experiment with cap values to adjust the amount of mid brightening. I use .002uf to brighten the top end.
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woody
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Post by woody on Nov 16, 2006 2:28:23 GMT -5
Here is an Ebay experience to take on board. I bought an el-cheapo strat made in China special to do some testing on. This came with its own lead for the amp. I used this lead and I noticed that I kept on having noise problems whenever I backed off the volume pot on the guitar. Now I make my own leads out of double sheilded cable and eventually got around to using my own cable. The moral to this story is that the noise went away!
I also suspect that you may have a dodgy pot as well.
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woody
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Post by woody on Nov 18, 2006 20:56:56 GMT -5
Looks like it is the same stuff. We just did a side by side guitar test with 2 squier strats. One had the pickups done and the other was stock standard. They sounded exacly the same except the shielded version had no noise. With this mod you can Single coil sound with humbucker quietness or better. I even wound up a mega hot coil with 20% more winds on it and it was just as quiet. A lot to be said for silver paint and the fine copper fabric.
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woody
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Post by woody on Nov 17, 2006 18:36:05 GMT -5
I grounded my Bridge with some Brass shim, I cut it to size and screwed the bridge plate down onto the shim and the metalic foil on the pick guard connects with the shim via a pressure contact. The paint I use is pure metallic Silver, not fake Silver paint. I use, www.semsupplies.com/Silver%20paint.html
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woody
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Post by woody on Nov 17, 2006 3:13:53 GMT -5
I myself have not tried the 2 wire shielded version but I may give it a go later on tonight and report back if there is much difference. On my strat with 95% wound copper fabric tape and foil shielded magnet ant the Silver painted pole shorting technique my Strat is about twice as quiet as a mates Genuine 2005 Gibson with 2 buckers in it. Now I cannot detect with my fine tuned ear (Ha Ha) any difference in pitch/tone of the shielded pickup compared to a straight fender original. There is another way of getting a single coil strat sound and that is to use Dave Devers pickups. These may look like other dual coils but they are patented in his own name. Dave has some pics of his pickups and some sound files on his site. www.riffcraft.netIn the mean time I am going to buy a bucket of bobbins and wind some more designs for testing.
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woody
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Post by woody on Nov 16, 2006 1:03:06 GMT -5
Thanks for the welcome, It is a ongoing saga trying to make a single wound pickup hum and noise free without upsetting the tone. Chris Kinman has a good article on tone on his site. www.kinman.com/html/myStory.htmI have a commercial bobbin winding machine that I can put to good use, If anyone wants to send me stuffed coils or empty bobbins I can professionaly rewind these and try overwinds with full shielding to see how they sound. I also have around 20 pounds of #42 wire. If you want to test new things then send me a PM. my thoughts are that if you cover the postage both ways I will do the winding and shielding for free. I have a complete electronics lab so coil specifications can be Number of turns, resistance, inductance and even sheild to winding capacitance. Here is a pic of my winder.
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woody
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Post by woody on Nov 15, 2006 6:49:54 GMT -5
These are some shielded coils that have been done with Copper foil and Conductive Silver paint. The Silver paint has a few ohms resistance and is applied right around the coil. I have also Silver painted the tops of the bobbins with Silver as to connect all the pole pieces together. I have also copper taped the magnet and used Silver paint for a conductive path onto the Earth Eyelet. This makes for a very quiet coil. I also did some copper fabric versions but they are in the Strat. The pole pieces being floating from Earth conduct hum from the player via the strings by capacitive coupling, earthing them out helps kill the hum. The magnet is also couples hum into the pickup as it is not Earthed so either copper tape it or paint it. All poles coil shield and magnet shield connect to the Earth eyelet via Silver paint.
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woody
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Post by woody on Nov 13, 2006 7:20:12 GMT -5
I just moded a Chinese Strat copy and it has been converted from something that sounded like a buss saw to a nice sounding unit. First I pulled it apart and glued a layer of Aluminium foil to the back of the pick guard and connected it to the small foil that the switch and pots connect to. I used conductive Silver glue to make the connection. I also star wired the Earth returns to the volume pot. The biggest improvement came when I sheilded the 3 single coil pick-ups, most people will say that if you try and sheild these that you lose the high end treble and the output drops and it sounds muddy. Ahh but there is a way to do it and it makes these coils nearly as quit as a humbucker. You need to get woven Copper conductive fabric and "partially" wrap the pick-up coil. I solder a small wire from the earth connection on the pick-up body and cut the fabric so that it wraps around 95% of the coil. I connect the small wire to the fabric with the Silver loaded glue and with contact adhesive wrap and stick the length of fabric to the coil winding. Make sure it does not make a full turn but only 95% of a turn (the start and finish should not touch or overlap) I do electronic design for a business and just put theory to the test and it works fine. If you wrap plain copper around a coil it acts like a shorted turn if it goes all the way around in a complete loop, this acts as a transformer and the shorted winding kills the coil output. The fabric I use has 70 threads per inch and this stops the formation of cross sectional Eddy currents that muddy the sound. The Currents cannot exist on the fine threads. If you want to try this and do not have a clue to what I am on about I will put up some pics if it is requested. Another trick when trying to eliminate hum is to work on the Guitar while its plugged into the amp, then as you try different grounds/sheilds or wiring layouts you can easilly hear if they make a difference.
Woody.
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