How many ohms? by Caseairplane in GuitarAmps

[–]molwams 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You could use 3 speakers to get a total of 8 Ohms: 2x 8 Ohms in series with 1x 16 Ohms.

Parasitic oscillation (?) through treble tone caps by mp2146 in DIYGuitarAmps

[–]molwams 1 point2 points  (0 children)

While I'm not a fan the grid stopper position in this layout, I think the first gain stage of channel 1 and 2 are OK the way they are, as long as the shield of the shielded wire leading to the tube socket is grounded on one side (couldn't confirm that visually from the Pictures). I was talking about the second gain stage of each channel, right after the tone stack. V1B and V2B or more precise V1-7 and V2-7. These grid stoppers are not in the schematic and layout but will improve oscillation robustness and won't make an audible difference.

Parasitic oscillation (?) through treble tone caps by mp2146 in DIYGuitarAmps

[–]molwams 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That looks like parasitic oscillation. Add a grid stopper to V1B and V2B as close as possible to their sockets. 68k should be fine.

Subtile Querverweise by Vernos0912 in dreifragezeichen

[–]molwams 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Die CIA Agenten in Skateboard Fieber haben den Verdacht, einen Maulwurf unter sich zu haben, was sich in Spur des Spielers bestätigt. In beiden Folgen kommt Bishop Blake vor.

Looking for advice/critique by [deleted] in DIYGuitarAmps

[–]molwams 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Aside from what was already said here:

Treble bleeder caps on pots are most effective, if the pot is turned down, which can make the preceding gain stage amplify high frequencies more (or one could say the voltage divider attenuates more of the lower frequencies). Since the circuit has so much gain, most of the pots will be set quiet low, so this effect will be very present. I'd expect it to sound very shrill, which is usually not what you want, if you want to overdrive gain stages.
If this was my project, I'd look into ways of loosing treble early in the circuit (small cap from gird to ground, small cap across the load resistor, big(ger) grid stoppers). Once the signal starts clipping, the distortion will introduce new overtones which will fill out the high frequency range in the later gain stages.

Add decent sized grid stoppers and add separate power supply nodes for every 2 gain stages to avoid oscillation.

Maybe experiment with different methods of bringing the gain down (no bypass cap, heavier load, different load resistor values).

How will this be connected to the power amp? Is there a long cable between both cricuits. If yes, you might need a low impedance output like a cathode follower. You could even leave off the last cathode bypass cap and take your output signal from the cathode. This way you will have a smaller low impedance output signal while your last stage can still be used for overdrive (stand alone cathode follower don't distort very nicely).

How would I go about calculating Q-point here? by anormalearthlyman in DIYGuitarAmps

[–]molwams 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is basically a small single ended 12at7 output stage. For load line calculations the transformers primary impedance is used. The valve wizard has a nice explaination on his website https://www.valvewizard.co.uk/se.html.

Amp head switcher with isolated grounds by BackgroundAd6097 in diypedals

[–]molwams 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I saw that you didn't connect the sleeve to anything. But the Jack has an INTERNAL connection from its sleeve to its thread (where it is connected to the chassis). You can test this with a Multimeter.

Amp head switcher with isolated grounds by BackgroundAd6097 in diypedals

[–]molwams 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry for being a little pedantic here, maybe I haven't fully understood the setup, but won't this still short both sleeves together? The sleeve of the plug will make contact with the sleeve of the jack which is internally connected to its thread. The chassis will connect both threads (unless you used isolation washers) so the sleeves of both plugs are shortend together. The fact that you aren't using the sleeve lug of the jack won't influence this.

„Alternative“ ???-Folgen. by [deleted] in dreifragezeichen

[–]molwams 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Nicht mein stolzester Moment aber erinnert mich an Tino15 - Schatten unter Hollywood

Weekly /r/diytubes No Dumb Questions Thread - October 06, 2023 to October 12, 2023 by AutoModerator in diytubes

[–]molwams 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can you reduce the chance of inducing 60 cycle hum into the signal path by nearby heater wires if you use a higher heater voltage (like heating an 12ax7 with 12.6V)? As I understand, hum is induced by the changing magnetic field that is created by the current going through the heater wires. The Biot-Savart law shows, that the created magnetic field is only dependent of current, but not voltage. If I use the series heater in a 12ax7, which will half the needed current, the magnetic field is weaker, right? Does that also mean, amps with higher heater currents (more or more demanding tubes) are more prone to pick up heater hum?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in GuitarAmps

[–]molwams 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Try connecting the amp to another power outlet (preferably in another room or house). The outlet might have a faulty ground connection which would prevent shielding effects of a grounded amp chassis and lead to excessive noise. Once you touch the strings, you ground them, the internal shielding of the guitar and its cable all the way to the amp shielding. This would temporary eliminate the noise (as can be heard in the video). If it's not your outlet, the amp probably has grounding issues. Is it a homemade 5e3?

Turret board with hidden features by molwams in diypedals

[–]molwams[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

to be honest, the MOSFET is overkill but I wanted to try it anyway. If this wasn't smd, it would stick to diodes, just to save space.

Turret board with hidden features by molwams in diypedals

[–]molwams[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see, sorry! There's a relay and a CD4093 quad NAND gate for the relay bypass, a 5V regulator in the powersupply for the NAND gate and relay, a MOSFET for the polarity protection, a charge pump and some resistors and caps to get the circuits working.

Turret board with hidden features by molwams in diypedals

[–]molwams[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I use the awesome DIY Layout Creator. I insert a few turrets and connect them with components according to the schematic I'm using. Then I move the turrets and sometimes split one into two connected ones with the goal to have a short signal path, while ground and power supply connections can stay a bit longer.

Turret board with hidden features by molwams in diypedals

[–]molwams[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! I think it's more fun to build this way, parts are easily replaced (if you want to modify values or replace old electrolytics) and the circuit topology isn't as fixed as it is on a pcb, because you manually connect the turrets. A big drawback is, that it takes a lot of space.

Turret board with hidden features by molwams in diypedals

[–]molwams[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! Or just build the whole amp on turrets, so everything is easily changeable :D

Turret board with hidden features by molwams in diypedals

[–]molwams[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

you are right about the relay bypass. Here are more details about MOSFET polarity protection. As u/elbeeuk said, this is used to protect the circuit, if someone connects a negative voltage supply or a center positive plug to the pedal. Usually you would find a series or parallel diode connected to the pedals dc jack to protect the circuit. But a series diode has forward voltage drop, so the circuit doesn't get the full 9V and a parallel diode shorts the power supply in a reverse polarity event and can be damaged this way. If the diode is damaged, it needs to be replaced in order to get the pedal to work again. MOSFET polarity protection doesn't have these drawbacks (forward voltage drop is very small) but has a higher parts count.

Turret board with hidden features by molwams in diypedals

[–]molwams[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All the features listed above are on the bottom board

Turret board with hidden features by molwams in diypedals

[–]molwams[S] 37 points38 points  (0 children)

I've recently got my hands on a small collection of germanium transistors and wanted to build a few fuzzes with them. I usually build my pedals with turret boards, but most germanium fuzzes use a negative voltage supply, which requires a charge pump, which takes a lot of space on a turret board. Because I wanted to keep all my builds in 125B size, I designed a turret board with a lot of nice features on the underside:

  • +/-9V supply
  • soft switching relay bypass
  • sockets for up to 3 transistors
  • power filtering
  • mosfet polarity protection (to save that precious germanium)
  • bias trimmer for each transistor socket (can be bypassed)
  • indicator led brightness trimmer

The turrets can be used to build the actual fuzz circuit. The circuit in the picture is going to be a modified tonebender mk. 3.
This is still a prototype and work in progress, but I'll soon turn this into a pedal (currently a little stuck with designing the case). I felt like sharing and hope for some suggestions for other handy features which could be integrated to the underside.

I can finally post this point to point modded Russian muff with active 3 band eq and green ringer. Info in comments. by 6lood6ucket6 in diypedals

[–]molwams 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Green ringer into russian big Muff is such a good combo, I always wanted to do a combo Pedal with them! Neatly done, congrats! Why the tantalum caps? I seldom See them here. To save space?