Meeting with Rafaël

So, I met with Rafaël last night about the amplifier and I thought it was incredibly productive and it has really helped me with what I'm going to do my project.

I learned numerous things about amplifiers that I didn't know previously. Some of these include:

- The position of all the components isn't incredibly sensitive when it comes to performance. Although it may produce hum or other unwanted sounds, it will still work which gives me a sigh of relief because I don't have to be incredibly careful where I put the components. Though, if I want to reduce hum, I should take some care.

- Twisting cables actually reduces hum. This is because of electron nature to flow in a helix which creates interference. By twisting the cables, the electrons flow naturally and there's no hum.

- Some holes that need to be drilled are better done with a press rather than a drill because it's always the exact size that you need and it's less crude.

Rafaël also showed me the chassis and internal components of an amplifier that he is currently working on. (Oh, and by the way, it works perfectly. He's played many music gigs with it.) Although still pretty mind blowing, part of me knows that it doesn't look as incredibly complicated as I expected,

I showed him my timeline and how long we have to finish this product. He thinks that it will be sufficient for finishing.

I also brought the design schematic for my bass amplifier. He made a few changes to it that will help me. Firstly, removing the "bass instrument" section sounds better on bass guitars in his opinion, so I'll get rid of that. Next, he wanted me to double the ohm capacity of some of the fixed resistors on the lower left area of the schematic. Lastly, he wanted me to remove half of the capacitors as they're arbitrary.

Overall, this was a successful session and I'm going to schedule more in the future in order to show him my progress as well as get help and ask questions.

The next step in my project is to completely decode my schematic. I'll create several copies and read them to find out what's in them. It might be a smart idea to start ordering some parts as well.

Timeline - Rough

Meeting

So I'm trying to schedule a time to meet with Rafaël to talk about the schematic he sent me and about building the amplifier. This will probably be sometime in the evening on monday or tuesday. My biggest question will obviously be: How do I go about this?

A few useful websites that I skimmed.

http://sound.westhost.com/project27.htm

http://www.aikenamps.com/SafetyTips.html (Safety Tips!)

I saw an interesting quote from the first website, "One major difference from any "store bought" amplifier is that if you build it yourself, you can modify things to suit your own needs."  I thought this was interesting because it's completely true! For example, if a treble dial is unnecessary, then it can be modified and discarded. (Not that a treble dial is unnecessary...)

Also, a good site for ordering valves is: http://www.guitar-valves.co.uk/index.asp

Schematic Websites

Found a good website that will help me decipher some the schematics that I'm looking at.

http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/symbol.htm

^ Useful because it shows me numerous different symbols and what they are so that I can actually read something like this.

That's the fender bassman 100 that Rafaël Sutcliffe recommended I do. Next step is to put it into an engineers circuit program. But before that, I think I'll finish building the small tube radio as a precursor to this project just so that I can get a feel for what I'm going to do. I also need to arrange a time to talk to Raphaël about all of this.

Triodes, Diodes, Ect!

Just figured out how triodes and diodes work (So... Basically I figured out how a whole tube amplifier works) So much simpler than I thought, but it makes sense since they figured this all out in the early 20th and later 19th centuries!

Phillips Oscilloscope Fire!

So today I was fiddling around with an old Phillips 50 MHz oscilloscope that I could possibly use for my project when all of a sudden after I pressed a button, caught on fire and smoked vigorously! I raced to get my phone to take a picture but it was already too late and the smoke had already died down. Quite frankly, I'm not even sure you can see the smoke in the picture. But I tried.

The start of a very long process it seems...

Books on Amplifiers

So, for a while now I have been reading several different books on bass amplifiers, guitar amplifiers, and just simply audio. So far, I've looked at 3 and I'd like to summarise how effective they've been. 2 I just found while googling, the other was recommended.

The first is a book called Self on Audio by Douglas Self. The author has been writing magazine articles on amplifiers and electrical engineering for the past 30 years and I thought that this book could be helpful. However, upon picking this book up, it was far too complex, technical, and mathematical for my skill and knowledge level on the subject of amplifiers. I later found out that this book isn't really aimed at novices, but "dedicated audiophiles who want to gain a more complete understanding of the design issues of a truly great amplifier, or a professional electronic designer seeking to learn more about the art of amplifier design, there's no better place to start than with the 35 classic magazine articles collected together in this book." (One of the review's at the back of the book. All others paraphrase the exact same thing.)


I was rather disappointed with this and so I tried another book. 

The next book that I was skimming simultaneously with Self on Audio was Success in Electronics Volume 2 by Tom Duncan. This book was not only easier to tackle for someone of my level, but it was also focused at teaching the basic principles of electronics to novices and beginners alike. The only problem with this book is that it isn't focused on amplifiers or audio devices, just general electronics. This disappointed me because I liked this book far better than the other one. Although helpful, it wasn't exactly what I had been looking for and so after skimming through a few chapters, I gave up to move on to a new one.

The third book was recommended to me by Raphaël Sutcliffe at Sutamps after I traded a few emails to him. It's called Building Valve Amplifiers by Morgan Jones. So far, I have only read/skimmed about 50 pages, but it already is clearly superior to the others because it is focused on the audio, it's written for beginners, and most importantly, it's about the actual construction of amplifiers. It clearly demonstrates to me how to drill holes in sheet metal, how to plan out an amplifier, what equipment and materials to use, ect. I'll have to be sure to fully read the rest of this book if I'm to build a good, working amplifier. 

Ibanez GA1B Transistor Amp

Finally, after a few weeks being away in the United States, I've got a good foothold to start the creation of my project.

This below is the Ibanez GA1B transistor amplifier that I've taken apart and looked at to see how it works. Although it's a different concept than a tube/valve amplifier, it's a start.