Sound Garage Tales

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

This is what happens if you have too much coffee before building guitar amps! In a way, I wish this would be the case! I could build with the speed of one amp every 3 minutes or so!

The time lapse amp building video features me building a Gabriel Stinger 7 watt that’s now at Fat Tone Guitars. There were a total of 8.45 hours of amp building spread out in a span of 7 days (an hour or two of work every day). There were 3,657 shots taken at an interval of 7 seconds with a Nikon D40.

Leave a comment if you like coffee!!

Congratulations to the winner of the Pink Diamond Lava Cable giveaway! And thank you for the new subscribers and video comments! Please stay tuned and subscribe to Sound Garage Tales on YouTube for more exciting amp building videos and of course giveaway contests. You never know what you might win!

Welcome to the first GSG giveaway of a $30.00 high end Pink Diamond 12′ Lava Cable!
It Features G&H Industries Gold-Plated Show Shavers™ plugs, a 99.9% pure copper low strand count conductor, 23 pF/ft low capacitance, a 93% spiral shield for excellent RF rejection and it is and assembled with 4% silver solder to maximize signal flow. Made in U.S.A.

Not affiliated or sponsored by Lava Cable, so this one is personally from me!!

The rules are simple:

1. Subscribe to GSG’s YouTube Channel
2. Favorite this video
3. Leave a comment (on the YouTube video page NOT here!) with a random number between 0 and 1000.

The lucky number will be announced on the same video on March 21st, 2011! Details in this video:

Speakers

So I finally edited the video with the Gabriel Stinger 7 watt speaker shootout results. Quite impressive. Some performed as expected, some below and certain speakers were just outstanding! certainly I picked the one I liked but I am curious of your impressions. Please leave a comment below with the one(s) you liked.

Gabriel Stinger Rig

Played yesterday with the first Stinger Head and shot this video to have an idea of how wicked this amp sounds!! Drove it with a Gibson LP Standard, both pick-ups, and with a Weber Silver Ten speaker in the 1×10″ cabinet.

Eat your heart out, Jimmy Page!

Please understand from the beginning that I have nothing against the NAMM show. It is a wonderful trade show and I would like to go one day to look around and try out great gear!
Trouble is that the exposure of my amps to the NAMM crowd could generate requests from dealers which at this time I cannot… deal with.

Read the rest of this entry »

With help from my buddy Peter, I narrowed down the speakers I’m going to try out with the 1×12 (or 1×10″) Gabriel Stinger 7 watt combo. For some mysterious reason I lean towards the 10 inch speaker configuration more than the 12 inch. The Stinger is a 7 watt single ended amp, and I assume it will  perform better through a 10 inch speaker because of the more focused sound dispersion characteristic. I suspect bass will also be more tight as compared to a 12 inch speaker. Here is a list and also a video update on the Stinger status. Hope you enjoy it!

Weber 10F150T (replacement for Jensen 10q)
Weber AlNiCo Signature 10
Weber 10A125
Webber AlNiCo Silver Ten (Silver Bell)
Webber AlNiCo 10V (paper or hempcone)
Webber AlNiCo 10VS (paper or hemp)
Celestion Greenback 10
Celestion AlNiCo Gold 10″

And of course I’ll have the 12″ counterparts available, like the Celestion G12H30, the AlNiCo Blue, and the Greenback G12M.

Later on I will post the results of this speaker shootout for the Stinger amp. Will post a video with the sound bites also and let you guys vote for the best speaker!

I am curious to hear if you have a specific speaker in mind that you would suggest testing the Stinger with! Please leave a comment below!

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s official!  The latest amp project I’ve been working on–a single-ended 7-watt switchable EL84 and 6V6 tube–has a name now, thanks to Matt LaPlaca, a Gabriel Sound Garage Facebook fan: The STINGER! I chose that name because it describes its character the best. . . and it fits into the Gabriel Sound Garage beehive family just perfectly!

Read the rest of this entry »