AMpeD Up!

It is time to fix the SLO Clone once and for all. Or at least figure out what is wrong with it. Or...try to.

I think I had some success today, and I didn't kill myself, which is always a fear when working with tube amps. It just so happens that the voltages these things operate at can kill you, although its not just the voltage. You can get shocked by thousands of volts (like a static shock) and nothing bad will happen. What will kill you is the current. If the current is small you will just feel a minor shock. If it is really large, you will probably get burned and feel a huge amount of pain. What is terrifying is that there is a range (50mA-200mA) that will STOP YOUR HEART! It is between this range that your tube amp operates at (the B+ voltage). Yay! It is critical that you do not touch anything in your amp when it is plugged in. I did that once, but I was lucky. I touched the fuse holder, which was 120V and however many amps was comming from the wall (>2A, I think is what my amp draws). It hurt. A lot. I was dizzy for a few seconds and I was out of breath. I was also very lucky. Had I touched any other part of the amp I probably would have been killed. I am now very careful when working on amps.

Anyway, I took a real good look at the schematic and layouts I had, and browsed around the SLO Clone Forums and determined that the schematic was labeled wrong. a few weeks ago I"corrected" a "mistake" I made in the amp, only to have it work even less than before, otherwise known as not at all. It turned out I had it right before. So tonight I uncorrected my mistake.


Before I go on, I should say one thing. I decided when building this amp that I wanted it to sound badass. So instead of putting the proper tubes in it (some 6L6 tubes) I put in some tubes that would have a "darker" "harder" sound. They were not quite designed to operate at the same plate voltage as the 6L6s. But whatever, I threw them in. They worked for a few weeks, then after a while, after playing for 10 minutes, the amp would die. So today I pulled the 6L6 tubes from my Fender Bassman and threw them into the SLO. Powered the thing up, plugged in a guitar, and played a chord. Sound! Yay!


But it wasn't loud. Hmm. Checked the tubes. Only one seemed to be working.





You can see that only the left tube is glowing. The right one was cold too. I think the right tube is blown. This means I need new power tubes. For both of my amps. Cool. I also need some new preamp tubes for the Bassman. The Bassman is probably going to get completely re-tubed. The SLO will only get new power tubes, the preamp tubes are fine (12AX7).


I will leave you with this photo, cause its cool: