I find your videos very interesting, I owned a television and audio business for 37 years and was around several technicians through the years, and I can tell folks that watch your videos you are a top notch tech. You are definitely not a shotgun technician, you find the problem and then you find out what caused it, Most technician or so called technician only fix it and forget the possibility of what caused it, 9 times out of 10 it craps out agin, costing the owner money, I also enjoy you playing guitar.
Lyle, great work as usual buddy. A lot of us technical types appreciate the fact that you flip the middle finger to the orthodoxy on a regular basis and just call a spade a spade.
I have a Sportsman and love it, but the insides make my skin crawl. It looks like it was wired by Stevie Wonder. It’s one of the quietest, sweetest amps I’ve ever played so there’s obviously some method to the madness.
As an owner of a Rambler I appreciate this. Not gonna call you drunk because you clearly know what you are doing and I love all the videos that you do Lyle. I particularly like how you separate the objective from the subjective. Can you describe what the tonal effects of changing the cathode resistor and adding the bypass cap?
Thanks man. No change in sound, other than 12AT7s and resistors are less likely to burn. You'll get to hear the "new" reverb better in the final playing video once the new tubes arrive.
Maybe Marshall techs knows best but it’s the accountants that have the final decisions. And if the techs and designers had their way it wouldn’t be at the price point of an origin. I appreciate your honesty and devotion to tube amps 🙏🏼
Enjoying the videos. I am definitely learning a lot. I will say this though, Steve Carr is easily one of the best builders out there and one of the nicest guys you will meet. The Rambler is an absolute classic by this point. He did however have three different speakers in it at one time. The best is the Elsinore that’s in the newer models.
Hope you get a chance to go through a Carr Telstar! Unusual amp...would love to have your perspective on the two dissimilar tubes (el84 and 6L6) working in push-pull in that circuit, and just your overall take on the amp. Love your videos!
Great video! I saw your video working on a Mercury V. Do you remember if it too lacks the bypass cap as does this Rambler? Thanks, and I appreciate your channel providing fantastic information.
Right on man. Are those really ALPHA pots I'm seeing? Do you feel like they are in line with the quality of the other components of this amp? I've never pulled the chassis of my Rambler, but I am surprised to see those pots in this amp.
from my experience unbypassed driver gives a little bit cleaner and symmetrical waveform, rolls off bass and makes 12AT7 harder to drive, which can be desirable in some cases of fender reverb topology with dark modern springs. and that rambler probably have lower B+ than fenders and that can justify using smaller value resistor. but anyway, you fixed the issue and that's great)
Love your videos and troubleshooting. My dad did amps for a living for many years and I worked in shop with him. We're you military trained? Great content! Excellent playing.
Thanks man. No military training but I read the mil-spec and NASA documents. I don’t do everything they say (because amps rarely pull 4Gs) but I observe the stuff that overlaps with what I’m doing.
@@PsionicAudio He was just trained to troubleshoot components back when they used valves in the 50’s. Back before they just changed boards out to some manual a monkey told them to change.
In later fenders you can tell by the heat coming off the tube,its using the 680 cathode value,you won't be able to touch the tube for very long..").. and many times the resistor will be cracked..I always change them back to the old style values..
Oh wow, what a cool fix for the reverb. Id suppose most wouldn't hear little things like that. Im a stickler too 😝 and i seemingly effortlessly hear all those little nuances. 🙄🤣 I think when he heard it everything was cool. Hopefully anyways. Thanks for the vid
Lyle, did you get snow in Memphis? Got 13" up here in southern New England, but it's fluffy and dry like talcum powder, and weighs next to nothing.... (I asked this before watching the video, and Lyle's answer, at 4:00 in, is yes).
@@PsionicAudio silicone is some type of glue. My point here is that tube amps need to be built in a way that makes them serviceable and, in my point of view, this is not the best solution. I guess there are a lot of non certified people building amps. This is why i prefer to do the maintenance in my amps although I don’t have any experience with tubes and I don’t all the equipment I’m an electronics engineer and I like to have my amps working 100%. By the way, I’ve a funny story for you all, one I contacted Marshall to get some technical documentation. I told them that I had a BA in electronics engineer but they refused to provide the information and told me to contact the authorised repair centre in my country. The guys in the repair centre are not engineer and have no proper training, what about that!?
@@livekaos This build style is very serviceable. It's old school 50s style wiring. The components are right there in front of you. I agree it looks messy at first glance, but they are pretty damn well built, and sound fantastic.
Perhaps Fender should have used a dual triode with higher dissipation, like a 6CG7/6FQ7 (larger, taller plates and a taller bottle), but that would have required them to stock one more tube type and would have required a taller tube shield or tube retainer, plus the pin out is different from the 12AX/AU/AT7 family. Good, tough, linear driver tubes, however, often used in hifi amps, and in some Ampeg and Silvertone amps; and made in large quantities back then because of the high demand for them in televisions. I also wonder if a 6BM8 or 6GW8 triode/pentode would be a better reverb driver (with an adaptor or socket rewire).
Like Old Guy, I really like the of the layout, but I've done some rehab on older p-to-p amps, and what a pain. Lyle, what do you think about the Solens as filter caps?
Vjntage Magnatone models with smaller chassis can be messy; point to point, with terminal strips, and the wiring running every which way and looking like an explosion at the spaghetti factory!
Amps that use tag board or turret board construction are also "old school", but are far easier to service than those using point-to-point assembly via terminal strips. They also tend to have better lead dress and overall more consistency among units of any given model.
This stuff you got to put up with on RU-vid especially, people get offended about a product they own and take it personal. I've owned and had some amps that people rave about that I couldn't wait to get rid of. I guess after many years of playing and really using my ears I've come to realize there are fewer amps that I really like. Money is usually the damper.
That's a lot of hot glue in that amp! It certainly could be laid out and assembled better, considering what it sells for. The additional parts cost of a turret or eyelet board would easily be recouped by the time saved in assembly. And why use 6L6's in a Princeton-clone circuit?
Sounds like a ring modulator I thought you explain your views quite well. Every brand has fanboys who may not have been exposed to criticism of their favourite products before. TThey probably aren't regular viewers and stumble on that one video by you because they searched for their own product on youtube. And it will be the first bad word they might have heard about their gear (and everyone wants to think their gear is special, or if it's cheap they like to think it's a sleeper amp or guitar etc). Whereas all previous exposure would have been sponsored "reviews" or marketing material (or worse, forum discussion by people who don't know anything). Thus the hysterical responses.
Not a bad sounding amp, but for that money, buying a vintage black panel Princeton would be better money spent, IMO. Its interesting, my '67 Deluxe Reverb has that sort of weird flutter in the reverb too... I checked the v3 cathode circuit, and its correct (I guess its possible the resistor has drifted, so I will check that too. Maybe I should try another AT7 and see if it clears up. You always have such great info in these videos, Lyle!
Hey Wes, a Silverface Princeton Reverb gives even more bang for the buck. Substantially less expensive and it doesn't take many changes to restore it to the AA1164 circuit. I like the cosmetics and the purists won't label you as a heretic if you modify the baffle and install a 12.
Sounds like motor boating triggered in reverb but it stops . Could be some thing triggering low freq added a effect. Fix one problem find two more. The life of a Tech.
Those #47 lamps are BOG stock for all of the old pinball machines. You can buy 1000 of those things for around $23. As for a polarity switch, my house is OLD, and a lot of the outlets have no grounding wires to them, so regardless of having 3 prong outlets a switched death cap really does help with reducing hum. Cathode resistor in some Silver Face amps 470 Ohms and 680 Ohms. These CBS amps almost always had the pull for volume boost tone disaster feature and they sometimes had a master volume too.
That "pull for volume boost" did one or two things. It always rammed signal through the reverb driver around the tank and back into the reverb recovery giving the amp a lot of very nasty yucky dark and dirty gain but not much reverb. With the mater volume there was another way to add gain by adding 1 Meg Ohm to a 12K Ohm & 10nF cap to ground off the anode DC supply into the remix stage, so the gain went right up through the roof and the tone went straight down into the toilet. Using that pull boost was really hard on preamp tubes and the tone was pretty darned awful. Those were good wires to cut and cap off.
