The Dark Father Chronicles - Part Two: Dumpster Diving

I spent most of the morning today tweaking "Gynoid" in Audiomulch, got it pretty dialed in, especially with respect to the automation timeline. Hands free, baby. But, in other recent news...

One of the pleasures of living near a college are the bi-annual trash heaps that spontaneously appear on the sidewalks in the neighborhood. Lovely trash that has lost it's home, free TVs, particleboard desks warping freakishly over the course of weeks as they soak up copious masses of rain, lovely filth typically of less than no value, etc, etc, until now.

Day One: Driving to work in the a.m., I have the pleasure of trying not to think about what obscene acts of liquid carnal depravity must have happened on top of the filthy mattresses in the new filthy mattress pile on the corner that got them so filthy. The Horror...

Day Two: In addition to the filthy mattress pile I now observe an additive filthy couch, most likely infected with scabies, soaking up the morning dew. Generally cursing my fellow man as I drive on, I happen to catch a glimpse of a seldom seen sight...guitar amplification? I hit the brakes, back up, get out, and find a little Epiphone practice amp that someone has decided not to love anymore, after trying, it appeared, quite unsuccessfully to get the back unscrewed. Hmmm...

I pack it in the car, get it to work, plug it in, light turns on, but no one home as of yet. Double Hmmm... I take it home, plug in the Slaytar, and I can hear some guitar but not much volume. Progress.

Day Three: We start with the tear down. Where's Nathan when you need him?



After some fiddling and diddling, with the circuit board that is, I managed to track down a couple cold solder joints on the input jack and the gain knob, but that was not the fix I was looking for. Still no amplified guitar output from the speaker, so I figured I'd check the headphone output. Same problem. With the headphones still on, and strumming the guitar, I start wiggling around all the components when SUDDENLY at FULL GAIN AND VOLUME THROUGH THE HEADPHONES!!!!!!!!! it get a brief blast of sonic destruction directly into my brain. It seems I'd found found the inner demon seeking release, locked as it was behind a bad treble pot (the treble "potentiometer", a variable resistor that sends 0-100% of the high-frequency bandwidth to ground and out of the signal).

I try a few different ways to get the pot working but eventually decide "fuck it" and bypass the pot instead of trying to track down a new one. 0% treble to ground but functional otherwise. Here's the fix:



With all the parts organized, re-assembly begins.



And finally:



25W of full-treble practice amp resurrected from a pile of filthy mattresses. Not too shabby.

The Dark Father Chronicles - Part One: Tube Upgrade

So...

I made a serious upgrade to the amplification a while back, getting rid of the Marshall Valvestate VS265 2x12 combo for a Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier and an Earcandy Buzzbomb 2x12 that came loaded with Eminence Blackpowder (8ohm, 75W) and Swamp Thang (8ohm, 150W) speakers. Needless to say: BOOM, right out of the box.

Here's my roadie and occasional back-up singer Ella with my rig, minus the foot-stompin' options. (we can get into that later)




She's keeping a careful watch on the "Slaytar", an Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plus with Seymour Duncan Invader pickups I "installed" (see below). The amp showed up literally minutes before I was to go on vacation. Plugged it in, turned it on, it worked, turned it off, pulled the shades out of paranoia that some crackhead scumbag would steal my new baby, and left for Kuai'i.

Despite the obvious power and apparent ability to unleash sonic devastation, it didn't quite provide the sound I was looking for, a bit too much mush I guess you could say, and it began to develop a SERIOUSLY fucking annoying intermittent static issue.

So here's how it worked out: I spent hours on the Interwebs ("It's not a dump truck! It's a series of tubes!") trying to track down what might be the problem and eventually ran across these guys:

Eurotubes.com



The game was afoot. I sent a dumb-ass email asking for advice, expected nothing, and received an amazing treatise on tubes, tube options, you name it, from Eddie at Eurotubes.com. I spent about three hours researching and internalizing the information he'd given me, rounded up the necessary coin and eventually pulled the trigger. (I also brought the Slaytar to a new local music store, 3six0 Music, where Corey hooked me up with a killer setup, a bone nut, and fixed my pickup "installation" fuck up. Turns out I had each of the pickups connected to the wrong volume pot. Who knew? Needless to say, my solution of spinning the pickup switch hadn't worked...)

Two days after I placed my order, my heavily tatted mail dude drops off the goods.


I know your dying to get into the filthy technical details, but sparing myself that I decided on a full re-tube that consisted of (from the Eurotubes.com website):

1) Sextet of JJ 6L6GC's for the power section.
2) 3 hand picked high gain JJ ECC83S's for V1, V2, V3, a standard ECC83S for V4 and a balanced ECC83S for V5 for the preamp section.
3) Three JJ GZ34 rectifier tubes.

Here's how it went.

The Beast:


Out with the Old:



I pulled the guts from the chassis, and staying organized...



In with the bold. Pre-amp tubes in place.



Copious electrical contact cleaner application and careful direction following leads to completion.



I powered it up before I puts the guts back in the chassis. 14 little glowing embers and not a scent of burning electronics or a single bent pin.

Results? Whoa. Heavy Metal Hammer. Clean and clear tones, lots of gain, not a hint of noise, and searing feedback. Huge improvement. Perfect for blasting the paint off of the neighbors' houses and testing the strength of a marriage.

It's been a awhile...

Time to start picking things up around here.