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Westlabs sells those three-way switches. I plan on wiriing my Lightning up with a 3-way for a standby position. Anyone else do this?

A basic question.... why no standby in the default configuration?

That would be cool with two pilot lights like a Vox Cambridge Reverb.

I did that with the tremolo lightning I just finished, I used a progressive circuit switch from Mouser, but it does the same thing as the one from west lab (and I think the west lab one is cheaper). IT works very well, especially for running different rectifier tubes that don’t have the delay time of the GZ34/5AR4.

Eddie

The stock GZ34/5AR4 rectifier has a built in delay so it wasn't necessary.

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

I don't believe the progressive switches like Westlabs sells (don't know about the ones from Mouser) have poles enough to handle lamps. I've done a couple with two lamps, one with two DPDT toggles:

http://www.18watt.com/modules.php?set_a ... _photo.php

and one with a rotary switch:

http://www.18watt.com/modules.php?set_a ... _photo.php

In both cases I used 120-volt neons from Radio Shack, but the switches would work for 6.3-volt lamps as well.

are you saying that all amps with 5AR4's do not need standby switches? I honestly had no idea that was the case. damn, learn something new every day!

Yup. But some people like to put one in anyway!

And if I was going to, I'd use the West Labs switch.

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

The tube (GZ34) has a fairly slow start up time...giving the other tubes ample time to warm up before seeing any action...

Most rectifiers give ample delay to avoid the need for standby switches. The only rectifier I can think of is the 5U4 which can actually benefit from a standby (not that it really needs one, but it can help extend tube life slightly). Otherwise, you need to hit the realm of 700VDC+ before you have to worry about cathode stripping and that only happens in hi-fi amps.

So in reality, standby switches serve 2 purposes:

1. Maketing mumbo jumbo hype stuff
2. An avenue for keeping your amp warm between sets if you really wanna.

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--s2
www.s2amps.com
www.category5amps.com

There's an interesting discussion on standby switching at http://ozvalveamps.elands.com/standby.htm

Lots of other useful info on the site too, especially if you're into vintage australian amps

Cheers,
Rick.

good link