Sound Garage Tales

Did your speaker develop a nasty buzz lately? Chances are that the voice coil became off-centered and it touches the magnet. Here’s how to check your speaker for voice coil scratching against the magnet. It happens even on new speakers — the magnet becomes off centered and the coil starts rubbing against it inducing some pretty nasty buzz.
The cheapest Celestion AlNiCo Blue on Planet Earth is here.

I am asked many times about the programs I’m using to design my amp layouts. So I thought of putting together a three part video tutorial about using Inkscape, a free vector based drawing program (for Win or Mac). I also made available the actual Inkscape amp layout drawing presented in these tutorials so you can use it as a blueprint starter template for your drawings. Please share your drawings! They are art!

Because the EF86 pentode is such a finicky tube but sounds so wicked (once you find the right one), I thought it might be worth showing the pain I’m going through (besides replacing Fallon with Leno), to keep things quiet:

This week’s video tip is about soldering the leads to the turret board to have a strong connection. The wire I am using is PVC insulated topcoat stranded wire (20 AWG).

Where I show how I am attaching the EM80 Magic Eye tube to the inside of the Gabriel 1×12″ Stinger Combo. The hole I drill has a 1-3/8″ diameter using a Forstner bit. Then I am using a transparent plexi and a metallic shield screwed on the front valance.
The electrical connections are made via an octal tube socket connection on the side of the chassis. The electrical layout of the Magic Eye can be found here.

The weekly tip on how to mount (solder) the copper buss wire to the front controls (potentiometers), and a jig. The buss wire can be found at any hardware shop and the one I’m using here is 14 AWG.

I thought this particular build (a Gabriel Stinger 7w Head with an Celestion AlNiCo Blue open back bottom) was worth of recording a video demo to keep for the records. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the way the Blue interacted with the Stinger. It is as if they were from the same movie.  The 100 dbs sensibility of the Blue helps making this Stinger rig pretty loud for it’s humble 7w power rating. Obviously what you hear is NOT what it sounds in reality since you really need to be in the room to get the full emotional vibe of the tone but you can get an idea. Sit back and enjoy! And of course please leave a comment!!

Thought of making a quick video of this deliciously sounding Gabriel Stinger 7 watt with a Greenback G12 going to Glen. The 12″ gives a nicer more round bottom end. Enjoy!

A quirky video on the art of soldering. It is an art – it really is! Enjoy:

So you finally received your tube guitar amp, you spent a fortune for it, and you love its sweet tone and all, but. . . You live in a small apartment, with sonically transparent walls, and you want to have happy neighbors. Your dilemma was addressed actually by a lot of amp builders by building attenuators that act just like a speaker load and output just enough power to the speaker that you need. But there’s an easier and more effective way of taming your amp by using a Variable Voltage Regulator (VVR) that will let you turn your amp’s Volume to where you want it, but control the overall amp output to an optimal level.

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