Amp kit build....Trinity Tramp

[H]

Great work!

 

What's the next one going to be?

[Steiner]

Sweeet!

[LK155]

A lovely September morning here, time for one last view.

Am still discovering the variety of voices this amp has. There are many.

 

 

 

[SouthpawGuy]

Excellent photo !

[Gitfiddler]

I like the new logo on the head!

 

[SouthpawGuy]

I like the new logo on the head!

 

 

I noticed that also, like a TT maybe ?

 

 

As in Trinity Tramp

[LK155]

Clippage!

 

This isn't a single song. It's 7 snippets to demo some of the tones available with various guitars.

Tramp is using a Mesa 1x12 (Celestion V30). Shure SM57. Ambient temperature 68F. Humidity 76%. Barometer.....who cares....

Currently using a RUBY 6L6 and an RCA 12AX7. (Remember, this sucker's only got 2 tubes.) The 6L6 is quite a bit darker sounding than the JJ 6V6 that came with the kit, but has a great deal more headroom. I'm awaiting delivery of a Tung-Sol 12AX7 and a Winged-C 6L6. The folks on the Trinity Tramp forum swear these are the real deal.

The amp has a switch for Fender Tweed or Marshall tone contour--this clip uses only the Tweed setting.

It also has a Fat/Normal switch--this is the Normal setting. Not to be confused with Schundog's place of domicile.

I have found the best way to get a totally clean sound is to have the Gain, Volume, and Power Attenuator controls all maxed. Then control the volume on the guitar.

Snippets:

1. H137 dry, no effects.

2. H137 with just a touch of delay courtesy of a Carbon Copy pedal.

3. H150 same settings as #2.

4. H150 same settings but with the amp volume dropped to half. This generates dirt.

5. PRS CE24 dry, no effects.

6. PRS with delay. Blame this one on Koula901 and her post about 2-5-1 variants.

7. Suhr with a bit of delay.

 

Go ahead, waste 4 minutes of your day.....

One final word....my gawd, is this little thing ever touch sensitive! You hear every little slip, every flub, every scrape of a finger up a string. It doesn't hide anything.

 

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12488404

 

 

 

[H]

Nice I liked the Suhr bit at the end most.

[Steiner]

Very Nice! You two will do well together.

 

Hell, I'm amazed you got sound. Only thing I get out of those projects is smoke. You've done very well!

[Billgelder]

Very Nice! You two will do well together.

 

Hell, I'm amazed you got sound. Only thing I get out of those projects is smoke. You've done very well!

It must be the smoke that makes an amp work. Because when all the smoke comes out they don't work anymore.

[bolero]

how awesome is that??

 

 

I like the logo...

 

 

AUDI

 

Amp Undertaken, Done, In-use?

[TalismanRich]

Excellent work, Lyle. The sound is really nice! Love the crystal clean tone.

[LK155]

Thanks, Rich (and youse other guys too).

Got the Winged-C and Tung-Sol tubes installed. They're staying in. I should have waited for them before doing the recordings.

Compared to the JJ 6V6 and 12AX7 that came with the kit: cleaner, more definition, more harmonic content, lots more headroom. This may be only 12 watts, but it can get way too loud for my music room.

Compared to the RUBY 6L6 and RCA 12AX7 that I borrowed from the Vibrolux: much brighter, more definition and harmonic content, about the same headroom.

And here's the kicker:

Compared to the blackfaced Vibrolux Reverb (with the RUBY 6L6's and a battery of RCA 9-pins), the Tramp is significantly brighter and the mids are more pronouced. Bottom end's a lot cleaner than the Fender, but that's likely a result of the different speakers, so not a valid comparison. The closest the Fender gets to the Tramp sound is with the Bright switch on but the mids are still not as defined. This surprised me.

And with the power attenuator, the Tramp can get very dirty sounding at low levels; the Fender would need a pedal in front of it.

Hmmmm. I'm liking the Tramp.

 

And about the head emblem.....I wanted something to occupy the big, black, empty space on the front of the cab, but didn't want a 'Fender' or 'Marshall' (or any other legit) name there. Trinity put a tiny nameplate on the back panel, but nothing on the front. Walking up to my car one day, I realized what would work. Then the search started. Stealership wanted $65 before tax for that emblem. Absurd. Got one on fleaBay for $12.95 plus shipping. Spent almost as much time measuring and making sure the damn thing was exactly centred and level as I did assembling the kit.

[koula901]

A lovely September morning here, time for one last view.

Am still discovering the variety of voices this amp has. There are many.

 

 

 

 

Love the photo, clip sounds great, and I'm impressed how neat all the wiring is. Beautiful job, Lyle - I would never have the patience to under take a project like that.

[DetroitBlues]

Amazing job! You make it seem so easy. Congrats!

[JeffB]

A lovely September morning here, time for one last view.

Am still discovering the variety of voices this amp has. There are many.

 

 

 

 

 

Clippage!

 

This isn't a single song. It's 7 snippets to demo some of the tones available with various guitars.

Tramp is using a Mesa 1x12 (Celestion V30). Shure SM57. Ambient temperature 68F. Humidity 76%. Barometer.....who cares....

Currently using a RUBY 6L6 and an RCA 12AX7. (Remember, this sucker's only got 2 tubes.) The 6L6 is quite a bit darker sounding than the JJ 6V6 that came with the kit, but has a great deal more headroom. I'm awaiting delivery of a Tung-Sol 12AX7 and a Winged-C 6L6. The folks on the Trinity Tramp forum swear these are the real deal.

The amp has a switch for Fender Tweed or Marshall tone contour--this clip uses only the Tweed setting.

It also has a Fat/Normal switch--this is the Normal setting. Not to be confused with Schundog's place of domicile.

I have found the best way to get a totally clean sound is to have the Gain, Volume, and Power Attenuator controls all maxed. Then control the volume on the guitar.

Snippets:

1. H137 dry, no effects.

2. H137 with just a touch of delay courtesy of a Carbon Copy pedal.

3. H150 same settings as #2.

4. H150 same settings but with the amp volume dropped to half. This generates dirt.

5. PRS CE24 dry, no effects.

6. PRS with delay. Blame this one on Koula901 and her post about 2-5-1 variants.

7. Suhr with a bit of delay.

 

Go ahead, waste 4 minutes of your day.....

One final word....my gawd, is this little thing ever touch sensitive! You hear every little slip, every flub, every scrape of a finger up a string. It doesn't hide anything.

 

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12488404

 

 

 

Good pic! looks great.

 

Thats a nice sounding amp. Those clips are good. It does have a nice mid and the highs could be a bit addictive. Nice work Lyle.

[LK155]

Update: trouble.......

After about a week, the Tramp decided it wasn't going to play any more. It would turn on, but no signal from the guitar was getting through. The first time this happened, I spent some time trying to isolate the problem area, making sure the guitar was OK, the cable was OK, the speaker cable was OK, the speaker was OK. Problem definitely pointed to the amp.

Removed it from the cabinet and started looking. Checked everything visually, could find no fault. Fired it up again (without actually doing anything but poke around in its innards) and it worked. Put it back in the cabinet and played it for an hour or so, no issues.

Tried it again the next day. Nothing. Same problem--no sound other than a bit of faint hiss. Repeated all the previous debugging steps, still found nothing obviously wrong. Fired it up again and this time it remained silent. Bugger.

So I swapped out the tubes. Both of them. Magically, it now worked. Put the original 6V6 back in, and it continued to work. This, I thought, points to the original 12AX7 as being the culprit. Faulty logic, and dead wrong. But it was working again, so once again I put it back in the cabinet and played it. It was fine for a couple of days.

Wouldn't you know it, the damn thing died once again on me. Discouraging when you change nothing for three days, use it successfully every day, then on the fourth day it doesn't work. This time it stubbornly refused to work no matter what tubes I put in it. Time for for some heavyweight assistance.

Contacted the Trinity guru in a 911 email. He suggested a few things to check.

After verifying that voltage was actually getting to the board, something he wanted me to do was look for a short between the input signal and ground. With no guitar cable plugged in, this was exactly the case. But the input jack, when nothing is plugged in, jumpers the signal to ground, which explains why I was seeing connectivity where I shouldn't have. (The kit came with a Cliff switched input jack.) So I plugged my guitar cable into the amp (no guitar attached to the other end of the cable) and checked again. No change. Input signal was getting shorted out somewhere.

Spent some time verifying that the shielded cables used in the amp (fortunately, there are only two of them) had no accidental shield-to-core shorts. Dismantled a couple of connections in order to check them and then re-soldered. No issues found. Got frustrated searching for the short and went back to the visual/poke&prod method of checking every conceivable connection and solder joint. Checked some voltages across the tube pins and found an anomoly. One heater pin on the octal socket wasn't getting connectivity with a terminal strip connection not two inches away that it should have. Stood on my head, used a mirror, magnifying glass, and flashlight, did everything possible to get a close look at that terminal strip, and found the problem.....there were four wires connected at that point. The very bottom one (which was essentially impossible to see) was crimped but not soldered. Ergo intermittent juice to the power tube. Ergo intermittent sound. Five minutes later, it was fixed, and connectivity verified to the tube pin. Hooray. Put everything back together, fired it up, and it worked fine.

Totally forgot about the input shorting situation because, well, it was working again.

After several days of successful operation, I started to think about the input shorting thing again. Couldn't understand how the amp could possibly work with the input shorted out.

It dawned on me yesterday that the cable I was using during the debugging was one of Steiner's, with a 'silent-tip'.

Bugger again. That 'silent-tip', when not plugged into anything, itself shorts out the cable core to ground. And that 'silent-tip' cable end was sitting on the floor, innocently shorting out the cable, just the way it was supposed to. If I had realized that up front, I would have saved a couple of hours chasing down something that wasn't relevant. But it's nice to have that particular loose end tied up.

 

Yes, the Tramp is working.

Yes, I learned some things.

Like: with an amp kit, it's difficult to blame anyone but the assembler.

Like: just because a connection looks OK doesn't mean it is OK.

Like: don't assume ANYTHING.

Like: don't be shy about asking for help.

[Steiner]

Like: I apologize if I cost you effort. Nice sleuthing; eh?

 

Still a Beautiful amp and gorgeous photo!

[LK155]

Like: I apologize if I cost you effort. Nice sleuthing; eh?

 

Still a Beautiful amp and gorgeous photo!

 

No apology necessary, Steiner.

It was a learning experience.

The whole adventure was a learning experience.

Hell, me trying to play music is a learning experience.

[Steiner]

You remind me of the first crap game I ever played in, I lost 47,000 dollars in one night, but I learned as I went along. In time I was able to lose much more than that.

 

It's true. Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?