The Stoners Echo Chamber

I know that's so old, last time I heard that I fell off my pet dinosaur

 

It took awhile, but I finally got the capacitors changed in that 1968 Sunn Sceptre tube amp I got several months ago... For right now I left it all stock and even changed caps in the tremolo circuit. (which I probably won't use) Reverb works, Tremolo works, EQ circuit works, amp is loud as &!^#%....

I will be modifying it though, just because....

 

About as long ago I spent a season driving a modified Capri in street GTU class races at Sears Point. I learned to really hate racing there. It was worse than southern dirt for track rules. I got jammed into a rail and destroyed the body on the passenger side of the car and nobody said shit about the obvious intent of the asshole who did it. I realized it wasn't a gentlemen's sport and moved on.

What sucked was that the car was barely drive able, so I had to put the drive train into the only compatible body I could afford, a 1973 Pinto. It was so depressing lowering that 2.0L OHC Ford with the Holley 390 carb, Offenhauser intake, hooker headers and electronic ignition into that generic econobox rolling flamethrower.

However, I didn't realize until I drove it that the Pinto was a much lighter car with an exponentially bad rear suspension, but a decent front suspension with rack and pinion steering. I added traction bars and stiffer shocks and drove the car 2 more years, hauling ass the whole time. I even took it to Hawaii and ended up selling it for way more than it was worth.

My interest in racing shifted to drunken spectator!

 

No noisy pots?

 

They were cleaned as part of the rebuild...

 

I've had some on old equipment where the wiper had dug a groove into the conductor path. Cleaning couldn't save it. You got lucky with a Sun, one of the more abused amps because it can take it.

Gretsch is another, but I recall they ate up reverb pans. It's been like 30 years.

 

I've had that also... usually on Wah pedals or Volume pedals. They get a lot of abuse.

Another thing a lot of guys miss with "scratch" sounds on controls are bad DC blocking caps allowing DC to go through the pots along with the AC signal... Guys keep spraying and spraying, and it never clears up, put in a brand new pot and it's still there. Swap a cap in 2 minutes and good as new.

 

Vacuum tube cross reference book says that the KT88 and the 6550 are "The same tube".... They are not. They are a direct replacement, but they are not the same.

I just so happen to own a set of Mullard KT88's out of an old 50's Dynamark HiFi amp... I swapped out the 6550's I was testing this amp with, (good tested match pair) put in the KT88's and loud as hell amp will now crack walls.....

It is also much fuller tone, more headroom... I didn't even check the bias...

Yeah... Not the same at all.

 

The weirdest thing I ever worked on during my short musical instrument repair career was a CordoVox, a sort of analog synthesizer mated to an accordion. It had a snake cable about 30 feet long and a controller box that was the size of a sea trunk. One of the "voices" in the synth had a ringing sound that came in on high notes. I pulled the circuit card for that bank (the entire schematic was on the lid of the trunk) and checked every component. Everything tested good, so it was either a dynamic fault or it was on another card.

The simplest route though was to just shotgun all the parts on the card, it was like 9 discrete components, so I started with the cheapest, the caps. Right away the problem shifted, so I knew at least I was on the right board. I ended up dragging out the o-scope so I could see the ring develop in real time. The thing was so old that the issue was tied to RC timing, but for some reason adding loops to the cap lead chased the problem away. So I basically added a choke to the cap and sent the ring to ground. Dumb luck and a lot of experience with analog circuitry.

The owner was a kind of 1-man band in Memphis who was in high demand for weddings and other high brow events. He had been doing without that voice, a string instrument, for more than a year because few shops would even attempt a look at the hideous creation. These days I bet there's a phone app for the damned thing.

 

Yeah... I always stayed away from things like the CordoVox, Hammond organs, and stuff like that.

 

I'm considering ringing the emergency vet. Vet is open today, I might have to wake somebody up book in early.

 

Dog is booked in very early Saturday.

 

I'm more worried about my wife than the dog. She a strong woman but since losing her family when she was young, stuff like this hits her hard. Almost like she is cautious of giving her heart to something. She's on the research agenda, she's just hoping whatever it is hasn't attached itself to the muscle too much.

 

if you crop photos a bit they usually rotate properly.

 

You could have said he was really good at climbing...

 

Kitty Inception