A vintage mission! This video shows you how I made a national amp clone , including some improvements and a closer look at the schematic. Another beautiful Valco National, this time original here: • Vintage Tube Amp at it...
Very cool! You did a FANTASTIC job with the car foil! I’ll have to try that. I built a clone of a Gretsch 6161 with two 6x9’s and added tremolo depth pot to it. A friend built a Gretsch inspired head/cab set for it. Mercury had an OTX specifically made for the 6161 that I used. It’s one of my best sounding builds. I’ll get it up on RU-vid soon and give you a link to it. Once again ,nice job on this one ,man! 🎉
Thanks a lot! Yes, Valcos can be a rat nest, or look like an exploded spaghetti factory. But they sound and look cool. I like them , especially the tremolo versions. I build a similar amp with tremolo years ago. Other than the example in the video, I never sold it, it’s still my favorite. Welcome to the channel!
Very nicely done; I'm impressed. Could I trouble you for a bit more info about the 'self-sticking foil' you mentioned in regard to your faceplate labels, please?
Hi there, here are some further informations : it is a foil to cover cars, that makes the faceplate very reliable. The company is 3M. I don’t know where you located at and if such is available for you. These foils are printable , so any faceplate can be reproduced. I’m lucky, that a friend of mine runs a printshop, so I get these faceplates for little money. The biggest pain though, is to design it. Takes time and patience! Have fun.
1950's national amp would not have ceramic Jensen, it would have P10Q Alnico. What model are you building with a 12AX7, most National amps that look like this, I know have 6SL7 or 6SJ7 preamp tubes. Of course, a few late ones have 12AX7. I see now you say 6616 but where is the second 12AX7 for the Tremolo? That said you did a very nice work on the cabinet but this would only fool a young man.
I actually made the same amp with a solid state rectifier a few years ago. It is not easy to nail down the differences. The one with the solid state rectifier seams to stay clean a bit longer, before it starts to saturate. Sounds great though. But my latest amps all have tube rectification to come closer to the original. Looks cool, too😉
Hey John, did you watch/listen to that one?: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-S_9ZW8IGIkE.htmlsi=IXrjb6a5NtRhQtPs This sound demo is definitely longer than 45 seconds. Let me know what you think about it. Greetings
Great job Martin.I'm concerned about the DC present in the tone pot though, which could be dangerous for somebody else down the line.The blocking capacitor is there to block DC and the placement of the tone pot in the schematic defeats the purpose of this.I think this is a printing error and I wish that somebody who owns an original amp would confirm this.For what it's worth,this is the only version I know of any 5 watt Valco amp that has the tone pot before the blocking capacitor.
Hey Randy, I built this clone a few years ago, so I had to dig a little bit to get back into the subject. Actually it’s not a printing error, because the tone control is wired the same way in the Supro 6606, the Airline GVC 9045 A, the Gretsch 6151 and the octalsocket preamp of the Valco Spectator. Definitely not by mistake. Although I‘m playing that thing for a couple of years now, I’m still alive. But you did arouse my interest, so I’m going to take a closer look at the wiring and measure some voltages. By the way, whenever I had dc on a pot, because of an leaky capacitor, the pot caused crackling noise. But my Valco clone is absolutely unobtrusive. I’ll check that, and will let you know. Greetings from Germany
@@martinstubeampworkbench2299 Ah Martin, nice of you to respond.I was aware of the Gretsch having the same circuit but after seeing the Supro 6606 and the Airline which is essentially the same circuit as the Gretsch but drawn differently, now I realize it´s no mistake, but why? Was it for less attenuation? For me it°s safety first so I chose the 1959 Spectator circuit when I converted my Peavey Valve King Royal 8.Keep up the great work!Also, I sure am glad you´re still alive.😂
Allright…. I checked the circuit and in fact, I had 150 volts dc on the tonepot. Still wondering why there was no noise, at least a „whoosh,whoosh“ . Connected the wire coming from the plate to the other side of the blocking capacitor-no more dc. And this change did not affect the tone or loudness of the amp. So , yes you are absolutely right: safety first! Unfortunately we can not ask any Valco engineer, what they where thinking back in these days, designing such a circuit. Maybe they didn’t give a damn.There was no safety ground, but a deathcap. Who cares 😂
@@martinstubeampworkbench2299 Wow, really sounds beautiful, definitly gonna build that, could you share the schematic in pdf ? And a wiring layout if you have one ? Anyway many thanks, hope you do more stuff like this !
Maybe you can find something when you browse the internet for a Gretsch 6151. That schematic is pretty close. Any differences are explained in my video.
@@martinstubeampworkbench2299 drive.google.com/file/d/1kEWq1pLAzDeFjkoym9IqTKamsZ0uwDHN/view?usp=sharing Well here's the link of the 6151 schematic with your modifications, I just had a question about that, what's the arrow poiting to the C ? On the cathode of the first half of the 12AX7?
