Guitar Gear Forum

Here's my new Preamp (model 2 if you want).
No, it is not an X88R clone



I've changed the clean channel compared to the turquoise (Steve Rothery of Marillion uses one of these) and kept the circuitry of the two gain channels I'm always using, just dropped one gainstage from lead (5-->4 - more than enough anyway).

5ECCs, DC heated, Midi and it includes a "router" to switch another preamp to the fx/poweramp, so any looper/router is redundant.

Here's the board, just finished it.


It is not finalized yet, I have to do the soldering inside and then tease you with my crappy playing probably this weekend.

One dry clip:
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lO5QfHFsl0[/video]
and a wet:
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbj9z_WBBxE[/video]

That clean is really nice and sparkly! Listened to some of your other vids from your site as well. That wah stuff was really cool (think Satchmo)! Sehr gute!

Gain sounds pretty mean!

Thanks guys. I appreciate it.

Sounds fantastic as always

Amazing work as ever Olaf! Is this pretty much a refinement of your earlier designs?

Also that chassis is really nice. I've really struggled to find a nice chassis for rack builds

Merci bien !

@ Ian:
it is pretty expensive (so far) - an Adam Hall enclosure (40 €) plus front and back from http://www.frontpanels.de (100 Euro, expensive because of the custom color, black it should cost about 60-70€ for both).
Transformer is from Tube Town (tt56; 60 Euros). Most expensive is the PCB (due to one time costs for the film etc. around 100 Euros too.
You can use the "Frontplatedesigner" from Schaeffer to create the engravings (spelling?) with the programm . . .



Olaf

I'm currently building in a mild steel one which isn't ideal. Its going to be a real pain cutting the IEC socket in that with the tools I have at my disposal! I may see if one of the fine gents in out workshop can do the honours for me. If you're ever looking for a custom toroidal transformer than look at toroidy.pl. I have a custom wind from them on a 50VA core and it was only 30 euros for this:

Primary: 230VAC
Secondary 1: 6.3VAC @ 1.8A
Secondary 2: 285VAC @ 90mA
Secondary 3: 15VAC @ 70mA

I should have specified that I needed longer leads but that is a minor gripe. I've also had some quotes for power transformers than can run a quad of KT88s at full power (I'm childish ) and they were quite quite reasonable. Less than a typical hammond guitar PT would cost!

Sounds awesome Olaf!

Looks great too!

Thanks for the link, Ian. A quad of KT 88 - lol

You can get IEC punches at RS online btw . . .

Thanks for the kind words, Liam.

Soundwise I'm still tweaking some values in the pre, not 100% satisfied yet. The board fortunately allows to tweak it easily.

Yeah, I've looked at them before and damn they are expensive! I have a few q-max round punches which are great and priced will for tube sockets. I wish they'd do an IEC punch at the same sort of prices as I could justify the expense. Thankfully one of our engineers is doing it for me and I should have it next week

For future stuff I think I might invest in a drill mounted nibbler tool. I have a laydown mercury magnetics PT I was given a few years ago to use for something so I need to cut a large slot for that anyway.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YvuT5LXE_I[/video]

Here's a new lame Gary for the poor attempt with my new Motu thing . . .

sounds great so far

Thanks Neil.

Some clean shit?

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RDrd7w-Hao[/video]

Noise caused by fan (not mine, Randall's )