Geloso G.226 / soundclip of the stocker

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Geloso G.226 / soundclip of the stocker

Post by Racing » Sat Dec 24, 2016 6:52 am

Them Gelosos i´ve imported up here are starting to stack up. Ain´t no lie!

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So. I start shooting it out with this Dutch fella Tos. One thing led to another and...well. Here we are!
By now i´ve had my head into the -30s...-40s...-50s and -60´s Gelosos and...i like the -40s and -50´s amp the best. Unbelievable quality for money,in a nutshell.
I think it´s downright amazing that you can take an amp that old and toss a few spares and ideas at it and end up with an amp that basically will give any contemporary offering outt here a run for the money.

Anyways. Geloso G.226. From what i´ve understood it shares chassis with the 225..the 228 and the 229. In other words this is a twin 6L6 amp in push/pull as are the others.
For better for worse the old 6L6G flasks has been replaced by more modern offerings.

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Talking it out with Tos it became clear that someone had had his head into this one at some stage. Thankfully this wasn´t a "Mr Handyman" but more so someone technically inclined and within the loop as far as knowledge too.
All octal tubes as you can plainly see.

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Preamp is based on old 12SL7s. PI in turn is a 6SN7. Nice tubes IME. Heaters for the two 12SL7´s is rectified...and this on an amp from fall of 1953. Impressive..

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Yep. Amp´s seen work. That there sure isn´t stock but..from the looks of it a job done by someone competent.

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Judging by the components replaced this job must have been done quite a few yrs back.

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Nope. Old "mustard" sure ain´t stock either. The stock "radiator" diode for the bias and heater circuit has been replaced by later era BY series diodes.

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Re: Geloso G.226 / soundclip of the stocker

Post by Racing » Sat Dec 24, 2016 7:04 am

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...and the eagle landed. Took a mere two days from Amsterdam up here and that at a rate fo 22 Euros!!! :derp:

Upon closer inspection the honorable Tos was on the money. Amp was exactly what described (he works on tubers too)

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The mods pulled were all good. Happy as pie in short guys.
Now. Let it be known that this amp is a special order for me. A guy that lives pretty far up north here in Sweden has asked me to put this one together for him.

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Behind the shield up front it is all untouched,and all still works.

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Apart from mods to the bias setup the rest of the jobs pulled basically comes down to spares. Ie;replacing what has been broken/busted.

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For once an old Geloso that HASN`T been dipped in paint. The rust we see is IOW honest and..i know from experience that it cleans up well enough. Yep. This one´s gonna turn red too.

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Uhu. That´s exactly what it is. :w00t:

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Even the knobs are intact. That´s saying something for an amp that dates back to 1953.

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Nope. No news out back either.

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Now. Of course the amp is going to be "restoed" and...be it ceramic all it can be,it sure amounts to zip when broken.

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Stock 6L6G´s are gone. Replaced by that there and a quick google tells us that this is some form of german rebrand.

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Yep! Metal as F! After checking the wiring,checking ESR for the e-lytes i cut the stock "death caps" out of there and the stock mains wire. Replaced that with an IEC jack right off the bat which also included the install of safety ground. All good.
So. Out with the 5U4 rectifier and flick the switch....yep. All there,so back in the 5U4 went and..i very crudely jumpered a couple of telejacks in there and let her rip...
Sure enough. Sound.

Let it be known. The stockers are FORMIDABLE one-trick ponies with a sort of "Plexi" feel to them. Just not with a Plexi price tag. What i´m saying is that for anyone out there on a shoestring budget..this is friggin it.
Replace what needs to be,as far as service and making the amp safe,add a carrying handle and the odd tricks n pieces and you´ve got yourself an amp that f-in OOZES of rocknroll as we see it today.

This one will be torn down of course and built up to "my" specs again. This time including a digital Belton reverb unit.

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Re: Geloso G.226 / soundclip of the stocker

Post by Racing » Sat Dec 24, 2016 7:06 am

"Put yer money where yer mouth is".
Yeah. Will do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6JfspKJYo8

That´s what a stock Geloso G.226 sounds like. Marshall..eat your heart out cause..this bad boy was manufactured in fall of 1953... :D

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Re: Geloso G.226 / soundclip of the stocker

Post by NoiseNoiseNoise » Sat Dec 24, 2016 8:18 am

Do you ever find anything that would work as a bass amp? Maybe running around 200W? ;)
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Re: Geloso G.226 / soundclip of the stocker

Post by Racing » Sat Dec 24, 2016 8:56 am

Yeah. It happens.
ATM i´m putting together what´ll be a 300 watt one,i hope. 4pcs of KT-88s run at 800 volts.

On a budget tho...Peavey Alpha bass for instance. There´s more out there tho...

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Re: Geloso G.226 / soundclip of the stocker

Post by NoiseNoiseNoise » Sat Dec 24, 2016 9:02 am

Racing wrote:Yeah. It happens.
ATM i´m putting together what´ll be a 300 watt one,i hope. 4pcs of KT-88s run at 800 volts.

On a budget tho...Peavey Alpha bass for instance. There´s more out there tho...
Had a quick look for the Alpha, and there are none on Ebay UK. Maybe it's more a European thing?
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Re: Geloso G.226 / soundclip of the stocker

Post by Racing » Sat Dec 24, 2016 10:35 am

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It being a Peavey i strongly doubt it.

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Re: Geloso G.226 / soundclip of the stocker

Post by Racing » Wed Dec 28, 2016 1:15 pm

Still at that place where i´m "cleaning" the thing up and...basically pulling all the fresh holes and what not needed before teardown and fresh paint.

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Dirt and age of it has taken its toll. Nothing particular about that,which is why parts of the "floor" is now missing some of the stock paint. It basically gave way as i cleaned the thing out-and i´m still at it.

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Albeit the e-capacitors in there were still alive i saw no reason to cheap out...fresh meat is in order. Three of those,the last one will be installed completely within,will suffice to cater for the entire amps needs.

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Re: Geloso G.226 / soundclip of the stocker

Post by Racing » Thu Dec 29, 2016 5:20 pm

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Projects of this size..you´ve seen me pull them off many times before. Why rip the thing to pieces? Just to paint it red? Nah..not really. I guess rust can have a charm in its own too but.. When i do what i do here it to the letter is a new lease on life for the amps in case,in every aspect there is,so..fresh it is i guess. Or red,if you wish.
The red stands out in turn so..why not. :)

Anyways. Before fresh paint all added holes and what not,at least the larger ones,needs to be made. Otherwise it´d be less of an idea to paint the thing right.

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Uhu. All of it. Even the faceplate. Now..the 225 and 226 got faceplates that differ a bit in as much that they´re white with red and black. Dunno about that yet..

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Re: Geloso G.226 / soundclip of the stocker

Post by Racing » Sat Dec 31, 2016 6:00 am

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Think what you will,there´s something real about cloth covered wire.

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Well this was a relief! The amp´s never seen Mr Handyman right and that brought that getting the old paint off was a breeze. Ditto for the rust there was.

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Uhu. Clean as a whistle.

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Same went for the faceplate and so on. Some 800 grit a tad of water and detergent made short work of it.

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...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand primer to keep the rust from attacking the piece again.

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Re: Geloso G.226 / soundclip of the stocker

Post by Racing » Mon Jan 02, 2017 4:18 pm

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I still find it amazing what a little paint can do.

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All exterior fasteners are black per usual. Think it hands a nice contrast to the red.

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Three of the sockets are ceramic alright and in turn three out of plastic. The ceramic ones used for the rectifier and powertubes why i suspect it is due heat. Really needed nor not,who knows.
The two most upfront in turn rubber suspended. Not only that but handed rectified heater voltage too.

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Yep. They´ve been completely apart every damn one of them. Here you can clearly see the difference them between.

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As much as i was handed a blank piece of paper by the customer...i debated that whole thing with preamp and PI tubes a bit before settling on the stockers. Yep. 2pcs of 12SL7s and in turn a 6SN7 for PI. While the SL´s are about on par with regular 83s/12AX/s the 6SN7 in turn is about equivalent to ECC-82/12AU7. In other words,as this is to be a dual mode amp too,ample amplitude to handle distortion structure. There´s more than just casual thought put into the 6SN7 tho.
Like an 82 it will hand me LESS amplication factor but seing the 4 stages ahead of it..there´ll be more then enough anyways right. What it´ll also do is keep hiss down....

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Well it damn well turned red didn´t it! :D Most of what´s needed now is on hand. What i DO however lack is the digital reverb unit from Belton that i aim to use.

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Re: Geloso G.226 / soundclip of the stocker

Post by Racing » Tue Jan 03, 2017 2:36 pm

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All said n done i had to move the pulldown resistor. Mainly...heat. This thing radiates a bit of that stuff so..

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The bias board,complete with smoothing caps for the rectified heater voltage for the two 12SL7s. Seing that i´ve replaced the stock "radiator" style diodes with modern day n era silicon...voltage will jump a bit and thus i need to adress that. Simple enough,comes down to a drop resistor i guess.
Then.. Yeah. I really shouldn´t use radial e-caps..then again the legs of them are folded a bit down from the body and they will both be secured by a generous dab of Loctites hyrbid glue.

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I guess you´ve already noticed the two JJ cans located the other end of the chassis. That there will be the third and this third will take first hit and g2.

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Uhu. Handed the hood yet a few coats of clear and..it´s coming along as well.

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Re: Geloso G.226 / soundclip of the stocker

Post by Racing » Thu Jan 05, 2017 1:30 am

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Some of this is highly temporary. As you can see there´s now two golden highpower resistors in series working as a pulldown. It came down to this as i went fire in the hole. B+ came all in at approx 380VDC,and that simply doesn´t suffice for what i have in mind. To be noted is that we sure have AC enough inbound for the rectifier. So. Installed yet a 10k resistor in series with the first one,and sure enough B+ jumped to approx 415VDC under load.

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As it turns out the winding for negative bias voltage and rectified heater ditto kind of made me worried too. Approx 38VDC negative maximum vs each powertube...and they´re 6L6´s.
Now..B+ is one matter,after that there´s a first drop resistor of 1k followed by a 47V/5w zener for each powertube socket. Mind you,raw voltage from that winding was a mere minus 44 volts. Hm.

What i did was to question the 5U4 tube rectifier. A 5U4 is to cope 225mA at least...and see,we don´t really need that so i poked through my stash of rectifiers and came up with a 5V4GA. Supposed to handle approx 175mA,and that will in short do too. The two golden resistors in turn will eat up approx 20mA+ of that if i´ve done my math correctly. Seing that B+ was now all in at 435VDC under load,which will suffice just fine for my purposes. This whole deal with tuberectifiers sure has its merit as it turns altering B+ voltage into childs play. So. 435VDC@approx 30mA per powertube..sure. We can make that work no doubt. A sidenote here is that swapping for different rectifiers brings that you can basically alter the character of the amp for it´s entire lifespan. All that needs to be done in doing that is reset bias really. Nifty.....

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To get the amp up and running heater wiring had to be installed. Of course. AC for the two powertubes and the 6SN7 phaseinverter and in turn rectified DC voltage for the two 12SL7s up front. Latter needing a minor drop resistor i guess as there´s like 14VDC across the heaters of each tube due to the more modern day n era rectifier bridge installed.

In other words the amp is up and running again per se. The 6L6´s used at this stage is regular 6L6GC´s and as such not really what the amp was designed to sport. Stock it uses 6L6G´s and that´s a rather far cry from what i put in there. It will sure work..that´s not the issue... The G´s rated at 19 watts a pop and the current day GC´s at 30 watts a pop. It has been brought to my attention that the "Welter" brand 6L6´s the amp came with are in reality russian ones,and indeed rated like the old days 6L6G´s. Supposed to sound the part,and i guess we can attest to that looking at that YT flick above. Well. I´m going to try the amp with new 6L6GC´s...the Welter ones...and in turn old stock 6L6G´s-ie;coke bottle ones,and see where that takes me.

So. The platform of sorts is there in other words as the amp is up and running again in its new guise. That brings that the next step is the preamp,and i´ve already explained my intentions on that one. In other words this´ll be a running amp soon enough,according to the deal,it´s just that it will NOT be complete. Deal also entails the install of one of Beltons "new" digital reverb units and sorry to say that brings a little lead time....just ordered it before new years. Not an issue per se as the 5VDC needed to run the thing...we´re already covered seing the switched 5VDC transformer to be used for channel switch asf.

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