***The Official Guitar Thread***

[SexyGreyFox]

If you can find one, a used PRS S2 594? They were selling them end of year for like £1k (down from £1299). New ones now start at £1599 now.

How can I talk her into that? https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/673944118133608/

At 66 I should finish gigging but my band are so brilliant it will be hard to leave.
I don't think I've ever linked to them before - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydafPhnuZWA

Anyway, my journey since 1970 has been enormous with guitars, amps & pedals.
You may remember I went into guitar synthesis with a Roland GR55 and Boss GP10 and then 2 years ago bought the Helix LT so my 2x Line 6 Variax James Tyler JTV guitars could be put to good use - any guitar sound, any amp/effects and any tunings at the touch of a button.
After recently joining a Variax guitar group I'm now realising a lot of users experiencing problems, mine have been fine for 13 years though.
I now want to get away from the Variax electronics and Helix but will still use the guitars on normal pups because they are magnificent guitars.
For the last 3 months I've been searching for a new multi-effects to use at home instead of getting the massive Helix out but my decision would be made on the pedal doing a brilliant acoustic sound without the aid of my Variax's.
I eventually came across the Hotone Ampero SE which is an absolute bargain for £155 and yesterday made a superb acoustic patch which I can easily take on stage, that with other sounds I've created means I'm now going to take the Ampero out and throw it in my leads bag.
It does mean I will have to use a capo on two songs but I can get over that, the Helix/Variax did it on the fly.
I've got some great guitars but always wanted a PRS for some reason, I don't need it but I want it

 

[Raymond Lin]

How can I talk her into that? https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/673944118133608/

At 66 I should finish gigging but my band are so brilliant it will be hard to leave.
I don't think I've ever linked to them before - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydafPhnuZWA

Anyway, my journey since 1970 has been enormous with guitars, amps & pedals.
You may remember I went into guitar synthesis with a Roland GR55 and Boss GP10 and then 2 years ago bought the Helix LT so my 2x Line 6 Variax James Tyler JTV guitars could be put to good use - any guitar sound, any amp/effects and any tunings at the touch of a button.
After recently joining a Variax guitar group I'm now realising a lot of users experiencing problems, mine have been fine for 13 years though.
I now want to get away from the Variax electronics and Helix but will still use the guitars on normal pups because they are magnificent guitars.
For the last 3 months I've been searching for a new multi-effects to use at home instead of getting the massive Helix out but my decision would be made on the pedal doing a brilliant acoustic sound without the aid of my Variax's.
I eventually came across the Hotone Ampero SE which is an absolute bargain for £155 and yesterday made a superb acoustic patch which I can easily take on stage, that with other sounds I've created means I'm now going to take the Ampero out and throw it in my leads bag.
It does mean I will have to use a capo on two songs but I can get over that, the Helix/Variax did it on the fly.
I've got some great guitars but always wanted a PRS for some reason, I don't need it but I want it

Well...in my opinion, in your shoes and if you can afford it, you should enjoy your (semi) retirement and get things that you want. If you are concerned about price, think of it as the price of ownership instead of purchase price, get a used one and if you do need money in a pinch, it will still be there in the guitar.

If you spend £800 on a new SE, you will get about £400-500 selling it. Perhaps £600 if the SE price goes up to over £1k mark.

If you spend £1k on a used S2, you will get 90% of what you paid for it, the 2024 model prices are already going up due to them putting in USA pick ups. Last year and before they use the same pick ups in the SE line.

The cost of ownership for a higher end (used) PRS is much lower than an SE. Remember when I got mine? I paid £1249 for it in the sale, a new Custom 24 10-top is now £4k, and it will sell for about £2500. Even accounting for inflation, I don't think I've done that badly, of course if I put that in the stock market I would be up but not in a savings account.

Whatever you do, if you are worry about resale value, then do not get a new S2 or new Core or you are going to take a bath when you come to sell it. With SE, you are only going to lose a few hundred, with S2 you can lose as much as £500 to £800 depending on the model and with Core, at least £1k.

 

[LuckyBenski]

So
* Arrived .. Speaker and three 12ax7 from hotrox UK
* Arrived .. Resistors and capacitors from Mouser all the way from Texas
* Arriving tomorrow I hope .. the EF80 pentodes for the output section
* Arriving thursday/friday .. the main transformers, pots, wires, chassis, turret board, tube sockets etc from TubeTown in Germany

However I can't play with this all this weekend :/

I don't know if I've posted it here but I went on almost exactly this journey around 2020! Started out looking into 1-2 watt valve designs, then found the idea of building a JCM 800 preamp in front of it. Then the Rob Robinette one turned up, I think he was still on his first or second iteration at this point.

Just catching up on this thread and I've been seeing your various posts and going yep... Yep... Yep! And then you posted all the parts suppliers and I'm thinking yes, we are building the same amp

I spent quite a bit of time planning mods and quality of life tweaks, and the turret board layout. Enjoying the process rather than hurrying to the build. A couple of things I added in:

8 ohm resistive load that is switched in if you remove the speaker jack. Protective but also lets me tap a preamp/DI type output later if I want.

Switchable sag resistors in the power supply - I added a choke anyway and I think a 3-way switch for none/low/high sag. The idea being ill settle on which is best and can later have just one of the options or maybe a sag/no-sag switch.

I added a few switchable components like that e.g. the value of the negative feedback resistor, so I can try stuff out and then finalise the circuit design.

Worth noting I got absolutely everything collected together much like your photo, and then got too busy to build it. When my workshop is setup since moving house, I will take some time to build it

One problem I didn't solve is I'd love it to be a small unit, but with full size turret board, 3 coils/transformers and 4 valves, it's very hard to shrink it below normal plexi size!

 

[NickK]

I don't know if I've posted it here but I went on almost exactly this journey around 2020! Started out looking into 1-2 watt valve designs, then found the idea of building a JCM 800 preamp in front of it. Then the Rob Robinette one turned up, I think he was still on his first or second iteration at this point.

Just catching up on this thread and I've been seeing your various posts and going yep... Yep... Yep! And then you posted all the parts suppliers and I'm thinking yes, we are building the same amp

I spent quite a bit of time planning mods and quality of life tweaks, and the turret board layout. Enjoying the process rather than hurrying to the build. A couple of things I added in:

8 ohm resistive load that is switched in if you remove the speaker jack. Protective but also lets me tap a preamp/DI type output later if I want.

Switchable sag resistors in the power supply - I added a choke anyway and I think a 3-way switch for none/low/high sag. The idea being ill settle on which is best and can later have just one of the options or maybe a sag/no-sag switch.

I added a few switchable components like that e.g. the value of the negative feedback resistor, so I can try stuff out and then finalise the circuit design.

Worth noting I got absolutely everything collected together much like your photo, and then got too busy to build it. When my workshop is setup since moving house, I will take some time to build it

One problem I didn't solve is I'd love it to be a small unit, but with full size turret board, 3 coils/transformers and 4 valves, it's very hard to shrink it below normal plexi size!

You could shink it if you used multiple separate boards that were verticle, with an amp head configuration you could put the valves side by side, thus your 4 valves then have a 2x2 look. You could even duct the air in to the base of the valve but that's a little OTT for 2.5W

This weekend has been garden - re-plastering the pond frost damage, laying a path (mixing the concrete by hand)..it's only getting up at 6am that I've had a couple of hours to move things forward. Right now I ache.

I've almost completed the layout - once that's done I'll post it up as I go through however I don't want to make it a build thread.. more of an interesting posts thread

 

[NickK]

I forgot to say - a reactive load will sound better than a resistive load. I'm intending to initially build and test with the two 8R 100W resistors I have and use for dummy loads but I'll make a 16R reactive load that's modelled on the G12M-65. They should be straight forward to make with the amp being low power, then a combination could be used to reduce the speaker volume and reduce the impedance to 8R to even 4R - the reason is that the small output transformer has a better low frequency response with lower impedance speakers.
Have the 16R speaker, allows me to add more gears to reduce the 97dB/W to something a little more house friendly but still have the amp cranked up. If I can get to 88-85dB/W then it is likely to be better (remember 2W means at 85dB/W it will be cranking out 88dB). The idea is to get speaking volume

 

[builder22]

made a video for the sax solo on Da Doo Ron Ron, lots of slides to try replicate the sax sound...

 

[NickK]

So this is the current proposed final layout of the new amp.

There's a couple of issues I'm looking at how best to solve - you don't know until you've built it:
1) the output transformer is quite weak in the low frequency range, couple that with a 16R speaker and it could be quite thin sounding, there's a number of ways to solve this The original JCM800 50W speaker OT had quite a flat response plus then the EL34s had quite a kick that gives the UK JCM800 (EL34s rather than 6550s in the states) it's characteristic hard hitting thump.

2) I'm using the 240V primary so when I plug in my 230V mains (which is at the top of the +10% range) my 253V wall voltage pushes the all the voltages up by 5%. I can burn this off with resistors etc but the power transformer is rather hardcore (139VA - basically 130W power supply) for it.. it could run a 25W amp quite easily.. We'll have to see.

Update this evening..

 

[potatolord]

All basses feel hefty, give it 3months of playing daily and it’ll feel natural.

I had the same with the 28.625” scale guitar. It felt big’n’heavy initially but now it feels like home. It still is heavy at 4.5kg without hardware

Always fancied a stingray but for now the next thing is the amp.

I had a very early G&L L2000, with a mahogany body, and that always felt like I had a washing machine hung around my neck.

Sadly, I sold it many years ago- they're pretty desirable now.

 

[potatolord]

The time has come to sell my Ibanez 7421.

I bid on ebay one night when I was drunk twenty years ago and, to my horror, found I had won the auction when I woke up.

I've probably played it for about a dozen hours in total in all that time. It's nice, but I just don't use it.

It'll be going on Facebook marketplace, so I expect to be inundated with time wasters shortly.

 

[NickK]

I finished the main board, but I need some more components and missed 4k7 resistor yesterday..

Today... I had a little chassis time - this means I can crack on with the internals of the amp whilst the other components ship.

Little tubes to the right are the 12ax7 pre-amp tubes.. just the same as a regular Marshall amp plus one for the infamous Mr Scary V2 mod making it a 5 gain stage amp (you will be able to switch on/bypass this from the front). The two centre tubes are the little output EF80s pentodes that will push a hellish 1-2Watts (This will be loud enough and some!).

So:
a) the front is offset to work in a combo amp or a head.. plus there will be switches above the sockets.
b) V2 mod tube socket hole at the back (making it a 5 gain stage amp .. attenuated as it's to adjust the waveform rather than add gain.
c) rectifier will sit at the front next to the HT fuse.
d) the power transformer will get flipped at some point and then I'll confirm the positions of the output transformer and some power smoothing chokes.

Oh.. importantly it has a purple power light (I thought it was blue initially looking through it but powered it's purple ).