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Jolly's Tube Amp in a Tele Build


Jolly

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Here it is with some shellac!

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6 coats to be exact. Its hand rubbed with a process resembling French polish

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The rag has a bit of behkol on it wrapped around a shellac soaked cotton round. The finishing schedule was as follows with steel wool between most coats:

Coat 1: 1 part shellac to 3 parts behkol by weight

Coat 2: Same as first

Coat 3: I'm not exactly sure where my cut ended up but I took 1.5 oz. of my original mix and added another 1 oz. of behkol. I also added 2 drops of vintage amber dye.

Coat 4: Same as coat 3 plus 2 more drops of dye

Coat 5: Original 3:1 cut, no dye

Coat 6: Eyeball cut. I was running low on mixed supplies but wasn't happy with coat 5 so I added a little more behkol and a few more shellac flakes.... I'd say it was thinner than the 3:1 but not by too much.

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A little bit of paste wax for easy clean up and a superglued in toothpick should take your eye off of the extra headstock hole.

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I smoothed out my toothpick fix with a chisel and some light scraping followed by a little paste wax.

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I also super glued on another layer of grill cloth to the back of the grill guard. I had one taped in there for my last round of testing and didn't notice any adverse effects on the sound. Having two layers hides the speaker much better.

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Before I started putting parts on I gave the body a round of ceramic coating. You basically mist it on and wipe it off. Not sure how much it helps but figured it couldn't hurt.

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At this point it was basically assembling a normal tele.

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And the final weight, including the battery and such, is 8.5 lbs.! Surprisingly its actually a little neck heavy.

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I still have a few minor details to clean up and haven't done a proper set up yet but once I get all that done I'll post some better pictures and sound clips. in the meantime...

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That really is awesome! Building amps is way beyond my skills so I can't evaluate that. As a guitar it's enviably neatly built!

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm still working my way towards a proper demo but in the meantime here's a quick clip of the distortion channel! :rock

A few observations from the first month:

The battery lasts plenty long. I've played through a few charges start to finish but your ears are usually done by then anyway. I'd say on average I get 3-5 days of mild playing on a charge

Speaking of ears, its a great volume. The straight tube channels you can play pretty much indefinitely. With the solid state boost channel you start to feel it in the ears after a bit but nothing compared to even the smallest "regular" tube amps. Nothing like having a fully cranked tube amp you can talk over.

It "broke in" really fast. That's something I'd normally associate more with acoustics but the first week or two of playing this really "loosened it up" a bunch. This is speculation but fingers crossed the extra vibrations from the speaker is going to "age" this guitar well beyond its years.

 

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So looking through this thread, it is a cool idea.

I wonder though if a Cockroft Walton Voltage multiplier would be a better choice for getting to the voltage needed instead of the transformer? It would save space  and weight while accomplishing the same thing?  By using  the CWVM type of ladder whether half wave or full wave bridge rectification is used, you would have multiple points for lower voltages for heater filament or other needs.

You could also gate it if needed as well using something like an IR2153 IC using half wave bridges. This would allow to invert the Vdc and also pulse it if needed. Just a thought?

Also maybe use a thinner top or bottom plate and no speaker. Instead use a plate exciter instead to make the top or bottom act as the speaker?

Any way cool thread and nice looking.

mk

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On 6/4/2021 at 6:54 PM, MiKro said:

I wonder though if a Cockroft Walton Voltage multiplier would be a better choice for getting to the voltage needed instead of the transformer?

The only transformer is the output transformer. The amp runs straight off of the 12v battery, plates, heaters, everything. These tubes were designed to be battery powered for car radios back in the day. That being said the plates will handle up to 30v, a CWVM might work to bump the plate voltage and maybe squeeze out a little more headroom.

On 6/4/2021 at 6:54 PM, MiKro said:

Instead use a plate exciter instead to make the top or bottom act as the speaker?

I'm going to build a right handed version of what I already have designed next, but I already have plans to try something like this on the next prototype  ;)

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  • 1 month later...

I've been too busy playing to post anything lately, this guitar is really hard to put down! I ran across my original photoshop concept today and figured it was worth showing the side by side.  

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  • 2 months later...

I have a bad habit of getting a guitar playable and neglecting the last 2 or 3 small details to really finish it. Well, I finally got around to it on this one. I think its officially done. On to the next!

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  • 1 month later...

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