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No not me just wondering if there are any other ladies out there that are playing/building triwatts

Just purchased the Triwatt kit to build my partner a really ripping amp for her birthday. She's got a JCM800 right now, but while liking sludgy/brutal distortion (her band is heavier than mine, bit jealous), she also likes to be able to play melodic stuff and I think this will cover both those grounds a bit better with the help of some pedals.

She's got a keeley modded ts-9 right now that sounds great so if there's room on the chassis for some extra holes I might I might get her another one; take out the casing and mount it permanently in the amp while routing the controls to the front + an on/off. Loses the footswitching, but she leaves it on permanently with the jcm800 anyway - this way people can stop stealing her batteries/patch cords.

really excited! (hence posting needlessly about it) I'm in southern ontario so shouldn't take too long to get here, and I've got a month to finisht. I'm making the cabinet too with some artwork silkscreened by one of her favorites



hope it turns out! will post pics



edit: I'm selling a '79 Marshall JMP combo to fund this. Great amp, but I can't wait for the Triwatt to blow it away

Hmm, maybe Donna Granits played one in the studio. Check her out!

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

She's a luck lady!


I doubt that's going to be a real good idea. The beauty of having pedals outside of an amp is that they don't pick up all the signal and AC noise floating around inside the amp chassis. Let's just say, there's a huge possibility of a lot pf squealing and buzzing. And it will be somewhat of a PITA trying to fit a TS-9 physically inside the Triwattt chassis, which is somewhat tight to start with. The Triwatt itself has a lot of gain when you engage the Overdrive stage. With the OD on it's same number of gain stages as a SLO 100. So she probably won't need the TS-9 as much as with the JCM800.

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Great tones come in small glass jars!

I didn't think about the interference - goooood point. I would probably take the guts out and mount the guts of the pedal outside of the chassis but in it's own little chassis in the head cab. That's good to know about the OD channel though maybe then build in a fuzz . I'll cross that bridge after I build it though

I think you're missing the point. There's a lot of stuff going on inside the head and putting effects electronics inside the box is just asking for trouble IMO. I would take Zaphod's advice because he's been tweaking this design to eliminate noise. Effects pedals need to stay on the floor where they belong.

yeah I should have said 'that's what I probably *would* have done - im going to take phil's advice. Just thinking of ways out loud to make this a bit more 'unique'. Really only one way to find out would be to try it - there's ways to shield things.

Getting there.. packing it in for the night. I thought once I got the board all wired up that I was close to being home free. Oh, ho ho was I ever wrong. about 4-5 nights later and I'm still not done. Tons
of fun though. Despite measuring continuity across the heaters which seemed counter to what the guide mentioned, I wired up the power as per layout/experience and gave 'er the lightbulb test and got positive results. I'm hoping to have everything done by tomorrow night..

graphics got done today and I'm pretty happy with the results. I have the TRIWATT panel too if she ever wants to switch it up (yes we're beer fans)



edit: man my traces looked straight from the top down... gotta do some house cleaning on those

I like the front panel!! Build looks pretty neat too.

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

Thanks! I got it finished tonight - double, triple checked the wiring against the layout and phils photos and it appears right... but I.. it's late, I'm tired, and the urge to bypass the power up procedure was getting too great near the end. Out of town for the next few days - suspense is killing me

I think my build-cleanliness fell by the wayside as I started to run out of wire-color/lengths - I should've waited and picked up more, but I was so jazzed to get done tonight

I'm headed to KUKA robotics today for controller training. Maybe they'll let me cut my cab out as part of the training time...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FYT8x9vpLU

Or a new guitar!

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

Wahh!!! It works!

I took 2 hours tonight, went through everything, followed the power up steps (thank god) and Gave it a whirl and... something wasn't right. The bias voltages made no sense?? Yes, I didn't flip the switch. Argh! I'm a moron. Okay, got that sorted out,
Now my bias range is 15 as soon as I touch the probes, but it slowly idles down at 13 when the pot is MAXED.. I turn it counter-clockwise, and it goes up to 25?
checked the pot wiring a million times and it appears to be correct. I'll post pics

I'm going to bring it to my jamspace and see if anything nutty happens when I turn it up. I set the bias for 17.

playing it at home it's dead silent unless I'm playing, but I DO get the squal issues with the OD turned all the way up so I'm going to try and rectify that too.

Sounds like its almost there. Set the bias according to the manual, there are definitely sensitivities in the OD circuit! In fact, even the tube selection can affect squeal. But it all works.
But the bias is important - even if it seems backward.

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

yeah I'm just wondering if something is wrong - I mean I can reverse the pot functionality but that doesn't seem right..

Tube Pin1 Pin2 Pin3 Pin4 Pin5 Pin6 Pin7 Pin8 Pin9
V1 148.3 0 1.175 - - 132. 1 0 0.917 -
V2 174.6 -0.013 1.25 - - 106 -0.013 0.73 -
V3 267.4 64.7 68.7 - - 185. 1 0 1.524 -
V4 267.5 68.4 71.7 - - 255.2 62.4 71.6 -
V5 0 - 439.3 408.6 -42.7 -42.83 0.016 -
V6 0 - 439.4 408.5 -42.7 -42.9 - 0.018 -


these are my voltages. only thing that really jumped out at me is the 255 on my PI pin 7..

with the bias set to 17, the amp sounds pretty solid, but farty in the bass when turned up.

Leave the bias pot alone, set it to the correct bias for the TRIWATT (15-23ma - go high or go home!! )

Voltages look good.

Farty bass? Would normally suspect a too large bypass cap on power tubes or too high value coupling cap. or the power supply is weak - rectifier?

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

haha - I say go high too! maybe I should try it more around 20ma

so I decided to try EL34s just to see how they sounded vs. the 6v6. I went to set the bias and I could again only read from like 13mv-25mv ? Shouldn't I be seeing more range for the el34s or is this going to be relative? I was usually setting bias for like ~45-50ma on my marshalls.

I set the bias to 23ma figuring it was as close as I was going to get to something it liked.. and man, wit hthe mulard el34s this thing sounded pretty stellar??

for about 45 minutes... then something weird started happening (granted it had been cranked the whole time) I started getting a crackle when I would attack the strings aggressively on the front of the note. like a crackle/fizzle, and then would play normally. if I didn't touch the strings, or just plucked lightly it was fine. Hitting hard, and yeah

I'm thinking maybe I have a bad solder joint somewhere that is making a bad connection when the amp is hot? or when there's a strong signal, it's inducing arcing somewhere? granted I haven't tried any other tubes - I got these brand new from tubestore, but stranger things have happened

The EL34 won't be biased as hot as you would normally see in a dedicated EL34 amp. I'd bias them as high as you can.

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Assume you flipped the switch to KT66 as well? There is a post about using EL34 and changing impedance to match properly as well as the bias set resistor value. Look for it.

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

I found that thread before, but it says several times to set the switch to 6v6 operation? viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3021&hilit=EL34

OK, the point of all the discussion was basically to use the 6V6 bias resistor so that the bias could be set, not so much the voltage. In a few places, it mentions to short out the zener (to get the higher voltage.)

My suggestion, so as to get full advantage of the voltages available, is to set up the bias resistor in the KT66 mode, to match what is required for an EL34 (different than 6V6 Resistor due to higher voltages) . There was another thread on that ... I can find that.
Dont forget to mismatch impedances as per that thread as wel.

Guess this chould go into tha manula as a mod suggestion.

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps