It Works!

[swelebny]

I realize there's a lot of people on this forum who have built a lot of projects.

But for someone who has never built an amp before, this is pretty neat. Some Van Morrison is breaking the thing in right now, and nothing has melted down yet. I'm using some cheapy output transformers I had. Now to think about a chassis and proper output transformers.

If anyone is thinking about doing one of these, it's easy and a really enjoyable. Can't think of a nicer father/son project.

Thanks for the board Shannon. This has been fun.

P.S. I've got some 'International' 'Servicemaster' 6B4G's. English made..... Any good?

Steve

[TomMcNally]

Congrats on the new amp Steve.
It's sure a satisfying feeling when they
come on and work the first time.
Sit back and enjoy that magic SET sound,
turn off the lights and bask in the tube glow.

Post some pics if you can when you get it
finished up.

... tom

[SDS-PAGE]

Good stuff, Steve. Hope you'll enjoy listening to the amp as much as building it. The GSG amp makes a good first time project 'cos it's easy to build. The fact that it's SE helps cut down on # of components used. Hope you will get to try building amps from scratch with p2p soldering as well. -Min

[hembrook]

I have mine up!

Plays fine. No magic smoke!

I am using a 1958-61 vintage CBS (Hytron) 6AX5GT rectifier, a Soviet era (1988) 6N9S (6H9C in Cyrillic) and a pair of those 1974 vintage Sylvania 6AV5s triode strapped internally and sold as JAN 6B4Gs.

I have something of a shortage of good small music players, so I used this crap MP3 player I had and all I got was buzz, so I thought, "This is wrong!" So I switched it to a Cassette(!) player with an old slave copy from the mixing-deck tape of my first album from years ago. Sound! Me on Backing vocals! Nice.

It works!

So I loaded a pair of 8" Sammi (Korean) single-cone speakers into my Herb Jeschke/Lowther Club of Norway design Voigt Pipe speaker cabinets (think 6" tall by 1 foot square wooden right pyramids with a speaker 1/2 way up) and hooked the amp to my Zonbu (A cheesy Linux box that si silent and lowe energy, it draws 20 watts of power maxed out)

First songs were 1) My "Reference" song for demoing stereo gear for the last 20 years, "Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits. Nice transients for a 3 watt amplifier! Next up is "Sweetness and Light" from Gala (1988) by Lush, in honor of my 6N9S. Freebird is in there for sentimental reasons (I call for it at every concert I go to, mostly to annoy those standing near by).

This little amp delivers the goods. My speakers are no where near finished much less broken in, and I am already hearing things in the mix I have never heard, and I have been listening to these guys for 20 years. Cool.

I do have some hum, so that will take some looking into. No, the amp hasn't forgotten the words...

More to follow. Pics:



Good night! Off for some ice cream and a snifter of courvoisier to celebrate a job (almost) done.

Robert "in tune heaven"[/img]

[swelebny]

Good for you Robert.

This is fun.

Steve

[hembrook]

Nothing quite looking at a glowing box of "empty state" technology and saying "I made that!"

Thanks to Shannon and the whole DIY Tube community.

All my tubes and wires, and careful notes! (and antiquated notions...)

[Shannon Parks]

Glad you guys are having fun tonight!