So, those few pictures took quite a while to complete.....my brain was getting fried every couple of hours. After every thing was complete, i checked and double checked every connection on the board before continuing. I did catch a couple of mistakes while I was building out the board and got them fixed right away.....
Once everything was in place, it was time to start the initial testing. Fired it up with no tubes - all ok. Installed the rectifier tube - all ok. Next up was the preamp tubes - not ok.
Seems as though some solder flowed through the socket while I was putting the wire on that connection.
My amp-building friend told me I was screwed and would have to put in a new socket....and, oh by the way, "I always put the preamp tubes in while I solder the connections to keep from this happening." Would have been nice if Mojotone would have imparted those words of wisdom.....
Anyway, I wasn't about to wait a week for a replacement, so I set about trying to clear the solder. I had bought a solder sucker just for this build.....mainly because I needed to get a few more bucks in my Parts Express order to hit the free shipping.... Glad I did. It help in a couple of different places and a little bit with this problem. However, the final fix was heating it up and using a very tiny metal pick to push the solder back where it came from. Took a bit, but eventually it was clear enough to accept the tube.
Success!
So, on with the testing!
Best I could tell, everything was fine with the preamp stage......
Now, for my second big screwup......When putting in the power tubes, one tube was rotated off by one pin. Inexcusable. But in my defense, the tube sockets came with the hold downs and they are really, really tight making it hard to put in the tube. I thought I had it lined up and pushed it in - I was wrong. I'm surprised that the key on the tube would even allow it to go in wrong, but it did.
So, with the tube situated incorrectly, I hooked up a speaker to give it a load and hit the on switch....about 3 seconds later the speaker made a GUHZZZ sound and that was all she wrote. It blew the fuse.
Obviously, something was wrong - when I looked down on the tube socket from the inside, it was clearly off by one pin. Re-positioned the tube and went in search of a 1A Slo Blo fuse. Guess what - they don't exist in my town on a Saturday afternoon. Tried the big box building stores and the Auto parts stores - no luck.
So, Amazon to the rescue.....when I found 'em - it said order in 35 minutes and have it tomorrow.....gotta love Sunday delivery.
Anyway, about this time I thought.....wonder if my Boogie uses a 1A fuse? Well, it does! I took it out and put it on my workbench intending to start testing Sunday morning.....fortunately, before I stuck it in there and took a chance on blowing it - I remembered that I had a gig Sunday afternoon.... So, I wasn't about to take a chance on losing my Boogie with a gig coming up. While I was playing that afternoon, Amazon dropped off my 5 new fuses.
If you think this story is long, well.....it's getting longer.
Monday morning I put in a fuse, held my breath and turned it on. Still alive....me and the amp. So, I started checking all of the voltage points to see if everything was getting what it was supposed to. The voltage on the rectifier tube was perfect. However, the voltage on the Power tube was showing 833 volts! Yikes - turned it off.
Started calling my friend and emailing Mojotone trying to figure out how that high of voltage could be there.
Well, while I may know a lot about PA systems, I don't know doodly-squat about building a guitar amp. After a bunch of back and forth, hand-wringing, and hair-pulling (had to reach for most anywhere on my body other than my head for that last one), it finally came to light that I was checking AC voltage instead of DC voltage. The rectifier is AC voltage coming in - but everything else is DC....oops...missed that. So, started to check DC voltage....oops, my volt meter only went to 200VDC....needed 600.
Off to Lowes for a better voltmeter. Should I tell you the part about putting the lead of the new meter on the wrong side of the meter and touching the amp with it? Thus, blowing another fuse? .....nah, let's skip that part.
Anyway, with everything sorted out, I started the testing phase from scratch. Pulled all the tubes and started over. Went through the whole process and everything was checking out within tolerances except one point on the board where the manual said it should be 1.3V and it was measuring 162V. Hmmmm......just a weeeee bit outside! (ok, who gets that joke?)
Too late to get a response as the east coast for some reason uses a different clock than the great state of Texas and they were already closed .....so, on the advice of my buddy - I plugged in a guitar and let it rip.
The amp worked fine. Volume, Treble, Bass were functioning. I don't have the Reverb tank hooked up yet and if I raised the knob a bit, it was motorboating. I'm hoping that attaching the tank will solve that problem.
The Vibrato/Tremolo isn't working at all. I modded the footswitch jack to use TRS instead of RCA, so I'll check today to see if something is wrong there.
Good news is that this morning, Mojotone got back to me and said the 1.3V in the plans was a typo and the 162V was fine at that point on the board.
So, I'm off to the garage to install the reverb tank, the speaker, and then see if the reverb works. Then I'll tackle the Trem.....I can live without that - but, I'd really like to have everything working.
Man, I wish I'd have known about the jig before I did mine...
