An Ampex showed up alright...
This then how you carry the thing. As a suitcase.
All said and done it was kind of smaller then i expected it to be. Not tiny,by any measure,but smaller. Mind you the stock speaker is one of the old man JB Lansings own...of 8".
Weight of it tho..is on the hefty side seing what it is. Haven´t put in on a scale yet but a guesstemate would be around the 12-13kg mark.
Sticker residue. Came right off with some washing acetone.
These XLR jacks ain´t stock. Most likely a way to use instruments or whatever,in contrast to the RCA plug on the other side of the amp.
Yep. An inventory number for Swedish Radio. Our national broadcasting company.
That jack there in turn..is the mains one and...
F-ing idiots. That jack isn´t stock by an means and an adapter plate had been cut rather crudely to make the thing fit. In turn this jack is bolted to a bracket,including the RCA input, that is bolted to the chassis.
What they´ve done is basically strip a piece of wire and in turn wrap that around one of the M3 screws... *shakes head*. Yeah...right.
So i fabbed another adapter in a hurry...
..which made that there fit sans any real surgery. In turn,safety ground now hit the CHASSIS via a solderprong that´s bolted in with an M3 screw...and is soldered at both ends.
For the innards then. What you see here is in essence the components used for the "equalizer" when you opt to use an external speaker.
As you can see the faceplate is out of cast aluminium.
This rats nest in turn...is the actual amplifier.
So? What gives? Well,the tubes are...
1 EF-86 / preamp
1 ECC-82 / phaseinverter
2 6V6 / power
1 6AX5GT / rectifier
That there then is the business end of the onboard multisection electrolyte. As it turns out tho....
...it wasn´t doing all that well. Ironic...seller told that the amp works just fine as is. Guess not is my reply to that...
Same thing went for this one which is the e-lyte across the powertubes cathode resistor. Mark the proximity between the cap and the resistor. That resistor gets REAL hot as you start to load the amp rendering that the cap in turn will cook sky high in notime flat. Ie; there should have been left ample room between the two when the thing was put together.
Atop then is the stocker for the cathode resistor of 25µF/25V and the lower one is a new one of 22µF/63V capacity.
My aim here was clear,to get the thing to work...
As this thing was intended for the US market the powertransformer had been replaced,obviously. Seems to be an older job tho..
As stated,sticker residue could be made to vanish with some washing acetone alright.
The entire amp/chassis is rubber suspended in every way imaginable. For the better if you ask me.
That said i took to hook the thing to the wall and flicking the switch and.....life. Amp did NOT conform to "the golden rule" so i handled that right off the bat while replacing e-lytes. That said the thing is REAL quiet in idle. Didn´t sound all that hot tho,which was to be expected seing that it was most likely put together with 775mVAC in mind-Ie;line level.
It was manufactured as an "add-on" for Ampex tapedecks at the time after all,leaving us with the mere fact that the signal out of a guitar comes up a little short-to say the least.
None the less.
It was in a word boring.
This is a setup i´ve used before in cramped chassis. Putting a "capacitor bank" together like this makes for one rather compact setup seing the capacitances involved.
Old teq´s were used to wire the thing together. In turn the entire "bank" came to fit real snug between the screws for the PT. Yeeeeees....enough of the cathode bias setup already. That there is a small "bias board" i put together for it...
Uhu. Cleaning the thing out from that old "air castle" takes a wee bit of time TBH. All well that ends well though...
As you can see i´ve started to tidy the wiring up,considerably. In stock form it was all over the friggin place.
Gonna keep the HT and heater wires and what not close to the powertube and rectifier socket...
Zeners and 100 Ohm resistors already installed for g2...
So. ATM i´m debating how to handle this. Seing the age of the thing i´m to keep it blues/bluesrock. I don´t wanna mess with that old beautiful faceplate anymore then needed so..
What i´m thinking here is a two stager. However,i want to keep the EF-86...seing it´s a part of the amps heritage,so what i think i´ll do is that i´ll install yet another noval socket and then use that for PI. In turn one socket for that EF-86 aaaaaaand...let that head into ONE of the two triodes of an ECC-83. Ie;still at twostager but with ample capacity as far as gain/amplification factor.
