Re: Re: A few 2 Stroke Questions

[Chester]

Thanks for the helpful answers. As far as the MM PT and OT here’s what I used:
PT – Tone Clone FTPP-5
OT – Axiom SE-9K-OS
Both of these were correct for this amp. I called up MM and talked to them about the project. They were able to lead me in the right direction. I accidentally purchased the SE-9K and did not realized at the time that it was wrong. I only had two wires coming from the secondary; one common and one 4 ohm. Due to the fact that I’ve spent about two years saving up and collecting the parts, I did not realize this problem for, well, two years. MM were really cool. They sent me the upgrade; all I had to do was pay shipping both ways.

As far as the issues that the amp tech encountered, a lot of it has to do with grounding. While I’ve emailed Dave Hunter and seen some updates, most of them seem to apply to the newer version of the Two-Stroke. This man’s been designing and building tube amps for 20 years and made some changes.

One thing he really did not understand was the shielded wire; he really does not believe that there is a need for it. I did not realize that this has to be grounded, so that was one thing he took care of. If you look at the layout, there’s a wire going from the 16uF/500V capacitor going to ground. He completely removed that and attached a wire to the negative lead of the 40uF/500V cap and took that to ground. Also, he thought that it wasn’t a good idea to have the terminal strip attached to one of the screws on the PT. He drilled a hole in the chassis and stuck a star washer beneath that. The ring terminal is now on V3 instead of V2 and pin 1 is grounded there; pin 1 was grounded to the terminal strip, in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong, I made plenty of mistakes; I’m not trying to knock the book at all. For all I know, these changes have already been made and I’m just getting to the show kind of late. These just happen to be the changes that I noticed that he made that I can remember. He spoke quickly and I got a little lost. What I do know is that the amp does not hum to the degree I’ve heard on most Youtube videos from others who have made this. The tech told me that there is still a hum; it’s so minor that I’m not really worried. In fact, I expect a tube amp to make some noise.

I did say that it sounds great and it does. The only place that I’ve heard this was when the tech plugged it into a speaker that he had and used some dumpy tubes for testing the thing. Even with that, it sounded better than most amps that are available. I’m going to give Tone Tubbys a try for the speakers. So far, the one I’ve purchased is the San Rafael Alnico; it’s supposed to be a good replacement for Champ and Princeton speakers. Thanks again!