My favorite subject, the DRI…thank you. I realize you’ve done so many it’s probably shear boredom for you. But, I’m still learning and my DRI needs the love. Thanks again.
Thank you for your Fender '65 DRRI videos. I wanted to start teching again and decided to do a Fender amp. My research led to your channel and I studied your techniques and suggestions. I have successfully and pretty much fully rehabbed an 2013 DRRI and the result is exactly as expected. Let's cool off an Blues Jr. next. Peace Regards and cheers!
This has been an incredibly helpful video - thanks so much for posting it. With the price of black and silver face Deluxe Reverbs climbing out of sight, I went ahead and bought a 1996 vintage 65 reissue. Not surprisingly it was noisy, still having the original IC caps. Fender outdid themselves on wiring V3, not only were the grids looped, the ran the loop vertically to better get it close to the filament wiring. Correcting that and replacing the filter caps did wonders for the noise level, but I went ahead and ran the coax to V2 as well. The only other bad parts were a normal channel volume pot noisy and the ground pin on the power cord had been pulled out so those got replaced. Did most of the other mods you showed including replacing all the caps with Vishay or Panasonic as appropriate, although I left the filament center tap resistors on the board. I did replace them with 1 watt resistors on mounted them about 1/2 inch off the board. Also went with the WGS ET65. I’m really pleased with the result, all for less the the cost of a new 65 reissue. Having an electronics background eliminated labor costs, but even taking it to a tech would be cost effective. I think it would only take a couple hours plus parts.
The polyprop is a very nice cap much sweeter than the mylar having said that it not the best choose always . Voicing is an art with amps. your doing a fine job of voicing those amps.
I know people don’t even realize they can check dimensions on parts before they buy them. Panasonic Mylar caps are fantastic. They sound great and you can build a very compact amp with them. They fit perfectly as a replacement for the brown turd/tropical fish film coupling cap in Fender reverb circuits.
Lyle - Nice work and info sharing as always. You pepper some of this throughout your other videos, but it would be very helpful to hear your recommendations on your current preferred sources for 12AX7, EL84 and 6V6 tubes. I have been busy lately and the cool thing about that is that now that my time is freed up, I can watch all of the great new content you've been posting :)
Ha, I also noticed the slow switching on the vibrato on mine! Here's a question: my mate got his Princeton 65RI's circus boards removed and made into a point to point amp. Do you think there is any advantage in this sound wise? I gather from the point of view of longevity and reliability it has advantages. Great video thanks. I'll look at the Deluxe RI vids to see what the noisy reverb solutiuon is. I replaced my tank to fix my buzzing reverb and it seems to have fixed it.
Have you heard of CBB capacitors? It looks exactly the same with those Panasonic caps. The CBB are made in China tho. Been using them for a while now, so far so good
Lyle, do you also run into problems fitting larger resistors in place of the originally undersized resistors due to the larger-diameter leads of higher-wattage resistors? I've occasionally had to ream out the PCB holes on old s-s hifi gear in order to upgrade to larger, more wattage-appropriate parts, but those usually had larger, thicker solder-pads. The pads and traces on these modern guitar amps are so thin and fragile that there's precious little mechanical strength for securing the components, and reaming the holes leaves even less copper to solder to. Sometimes I've had heat-stressed pads push away off of the board just from pushing a new component lead through the board at a slight angle instead of perfectly perpendicular.
There's a sucker born every minute. 6:32 Capacitor hype: Are Bumblebees and other PiOs the most linear capacitors? Actually, yes. Are polyester or polypropylene caps significantly non-linear? Not so much. But the most laughable part of using $30~$40 tone caps (and you need TWO of them) in a Les Paul are the testimonials like "Clean, shimmering highs!" When the tone controls are fully CW , the caps are for all intents and purposes out of the circuit. lol
Lyle, I appreciate you have no time to reply, so just tossing this out there to see if anyone else would be interested, but I'd really like to hear your thoughts when you go through these reissues where the "tone" is in component terms and where what they've done really won't matter etc. I grew up on P2P and spent a lot of summers just swapping out each component in turn and seeing if it sounded "better" for it (or not). I never really managed to get Fender circuits to sound "good" (or maybe just "like the originals") without reverting to the same components in key positions: carbon comps, ceramics discs etc. I will say that IMHO metallised polyester (your old style yellow Mallory 150's) are cleaner and still retain the warmth of the old Paktrons but I still use a sprinkle of the old caps to "warm" things up. TL;DR When working on the AB763 or similar, what - for you - are the really important components tonally? Just the stuff in the signal path?
I've done exhaustive blind testing of parts in the AB763 circuit, and I know where it makes a difference and where it doesn't. And in an eyelet design or similar where you can change parts easily without damaging the board I'll use CCs in certain spots. But on a PCB you want to avoid repeated parts changes (even if only every 10+ years) so I used CFs here. But in general, the biggest things are iron, grounding, layout/lead dress, and distance between components and between triode stages.
I am an Electrical Engineer too, I have the greatest respect for your opinions. I have done the Fromel mods to a 65 RI Deluxe Reverb that was given to me, that I didn't really like. (didn't really like the amp that is). Without me giving my opinion, what is your opinion of this mod?
Hi Lyle, great videos. On the deluxe reverb reissue, when you move the grid stop resistors and plate resistors to the octile sockets, what pins get which? Looking at the old deluxe reverb schematic they used 4 and 6 for plate resistors, and 5 and 1 for the grids. But the reissue has wires on the socket differently. Will you advise? Thanks.
I don’t do what you’re saying. Please don’t change anything in your amp until you have everything very well understood. If I understand you, you mean the grid stoppers run from pin 1 to pin 5 and the SCREEN GRIDS run from pin 6 to pin 4. The RI has grids to pin 5 and screens to pin 4 as they have the resistors on the PCB.
I already relocated the heater spade connectors to the tube socket but now would like to move the heater balance resistors and R63 and R64 to get them off the PCB (the 470 ohm green ones) as you demonstrate in the videos. I just want to be sure of the pins to connect to on the sockets.
I'm interested in sending my 2003 TBX to you to have the JMI upgrades done. What's the best way to reach you? I also sent you an email. Thank you and love your videos!
Is this built any better than the 68 Custom Deluxe Reverb? I prefer the sound of the 68 Custom because I like the sound of the first channel. Just curious if these amps are similar quality and do they use the same transformers? I know they advertise a Schumacher output tranny in the 68. Be nice to here what you think about those 2 and if one is better than the other or not. Thank you sir.
Can you reference info on Gibson's use of cheap Asian "bumblebee" caps? I bought replacement "bumblebee" caps from Luxe Radio and Musical Instrument Co. and they are exactly the same down to the registration mark on the cap as what came with my R8 LP.
My favorite subject, the DRI…thank you. I realize you’ve done so many it’s probably shear boredom for you. But, I’m still learning and my DRI needs the love.
Thanks again.
Thank you for your Fender '65 DRRI videos. I wanted to start teching again and decided to do a Fender amp. My research led to your channel and I studied your techniques and suggestions.
I have successfully and pretty much fully rehabbed an 2013 DRRI and the result is exactly as expected. Let's cool off an Blues Jr. next. Peace
Regards and cheers!
This has been an incredibly helpful video - thanks so much for posting it. With the price of black and silver face Deluxe Reverbs climbing out of sight, I went ahead and bought a 1996 vintage 65 reissue. Not surprisingly it was noisy, still having the original IC caps. Fender outdid themselves on wiring V3, not only were the grids looped, the ran the loop vertically to better get it close to the filament wiring. Correcting that and replacing the filter caps did wonders for the noise level, but I went ahead and ran the coax to V2 as well. The only other bad parts were a normal channel volume pot noisy and the ground pin on the power cord had been pulled out so those got replaced. Did most of the other mods you showed including replacing all the caps with Vishay or Panasonic as appropriate, although I left the filament center tap resistors on the board. I did replace them with 1 watt resistors on mounted them about 1/2 inch off the board. Also went with the WGS ET65. I’m really pleased with the result, all for less the the cost of a new 65 reissue. Having an electronics background eliminated labor costs, but even taking it to a tech would be cost effective. I think it would only take a couple hours plus parts.
The polyprop is a very nice cap much sweeter than the mylar having said that it not the best choose always . Voicing is an art with amps. your doing a fine job of voicing those amps.
Brilliant!….learned and earned knowledge. Thanks for all you share.
Thanks for showing me those Square Plug SP500’s. I found the smaller SP400 to be perfect for my pedal board. I’m soldering cables as I type this.
I know people don’t even realize they can check dimensions on parts before they buy them.
Panasonic Mylar caps are fantastic. They sound great and you can build a very compact amp with them. They fit perfectly as a replacement for the brown turd/tropical fish film coupling cap in Fender reverb circuits.
Lyle - Nice work and info sharing as always. You pepper some of this throughout your other videos, but it would be very helpful to hear your recommendations on your current preferred sources for 12AX7, EL84 and 6V6 tubes. I have been busy lately and the cool thing about that is that now that my time is freed up, I can watch all of the great new content you've been posting :)
Dazzling us with new riffs, brotha. Look at yo’self!
I love how American amps have parts and narbs.
Panasonic ECQs for the win.
Orange drops - the sign of a rookie.
Ha, I also noticed the slow switching on the vibrato on mine! Here's a question: my mate got his Princeton 65RI's circus boards removed and made into a point to point amp. Do you think there is any advantage in this sound wise? I gather from the point of view of longevity and reliability it has advantages. Great video thanks. I'll look at the Deluxe RI vids to see what the noisy reverb solutiuon is. I replaced my tank to fix my buzzing reverb and it seems to have fixed it.
Have you heard of CBB capacitors? It looks exactly the same with those Panasonic caps. The CBB are made in China tho. Been using them for a while now, so far so good
Ever think about doing a book or video book on standard upgrades to get the most out of modern off the shelf amps?
Lyle, do you also run into problems fitting larger resistors in place of the originally undersized resistors due to the larger-diameter leads of higher-wattage resistors? I've occasionally had to ream out the PCB holes on old s-s hifi gear in order to upgrade to larger, more wattage-appropriate parts, but those usually had larger, thicker solder-pads. The pads and traces on these modern guitar amps are so thin and fragile that there's precious little mechanical strength for securing the components, and reaming the holes leaves even less copper to solder to. Sometimes I've had heat-stressed pads push away off of the board just from pushing a new component lead through the board at a slight angle instead of perfectly perpendicular.
There's a sucker born every minute. 6:32 Capacitor hype: Are Bumblebees and other PiOs the most linear capacitors? Actually, yes. Are polyester or polypropylene caps significantly non-linear? Not so much. But the most laughable part of using $30~$40 tone caps (and you need TWO of them) in a Les Paul are the testimonials like "Clean, shimmering highs!" When the tone controls are fully CW , the caps are for all intents and purposes out of the circuit. lol
Lyle, I appreciate you have no time to reply, so just tossing this out there to see if anyone else would be interested, but I'd really like to hear your thoughts when you go through these reissues where the "tone" is in component terms and where what they've done really won't matter etc. I grew up on P2P and spent a lot of summers just swapping out each component in turn and seeing if it sounded "better" for it (or not). I never really managed to get Fender circuits to sound "good" (or maybe just "like the originals") without reverting to the same components in key positions: carbon comps, ceramics discs etc. I will say that IMHO metallised polyester (your old style yellow Mallory 150's) are cleaner and still retain the warmth of the old Paktrons but I still use a sprinkle of the old caps to "warm" things up.
TL;DR When working on the AB763 or similar, what - for you - are the really important components tonally? Just the stuff in the signal path?
I've done exhaustive blind testing of parts in the AB763 circuit, and I know where it makes a difference and where it doesn't. And in an eyelet design or similar where you can change parts easily without damaging the board I'll use CCs in certain spots. But on a PCB you want to avoid repeated parts changes (even if only every 10+ years) so I used CFs here.
But in general, the biggest things are iron, grounding, layout/lead dress, and distance between components and between triode stages.
I am an Electrical Engineer too, I have the greatest respect for your opinions. I have done the Fromel mods to a 65 RI Deluxe Reverb that was given to me, that I didn't really like. (didn't really like the amp that is). Without me giving my opinion, what is your opinion of this mod?
I do believe that Fromel use Wima Caps with correct pin spacing and diameter.
What values did you use for C1, C6, & C11? C11 looks bigger.
Hi Lyle, great videos. On the deluxe reverb reissue, when you move the grid stop resistors and plate resistors to the octile sockets, what pins get which? Looking at the old deluxe reverb schematic they used 4 and 6 for plate resistors, and 5 and 1 for the grids. But the reissue has wires on the socket differently. Will you advise? Thanks.
I don’t do what you’re saying. Please don’t change anything in your amp until you have everything very well understood.
If I understand you, you mean the grid stoppers run from pin 1 to pin 5 and the SCREEN GRIDS run from pin 6 to pin 4.
The RI has grids to pin 5 and screens to pin 4 as they have the resistors on the PCB.
@@PsionicAudio ok thanks again. Yes I miss spoke, I’m wanting to move them from the pcb to the sockets as you show in the videos.
I already relocated the heater spade connectors to the tube socket but now would like to move the heater balance resistors and R63 and R64 to get them off the PCB (the 470 ohm green ones) as you demonstrate in the videos. I just want to be sure of the pins to connect to on the sockets.
I'm interested in sending my 2003 TBX to you to have the JMI upgrades done. What's the best way to reach you? I also sent you an email. Thank you and love your videos!
Is this built any better than the 68 Custom Deluxe Reverb? I prefer the sound of the 68 Custom because I like the sound of the first channel. Just curious if these amps are similar quality and do they use the same transformers? I know they advertise a Schumacher output tranny in the 68. Be nice to here what you think about those 2 and if one is better than the other or not. Thank you sir.
The 68 is just the 65 with a slightly differently populated board and a lot of mistakes that make the 68 noisy.
Can you reference info on Gibson's use of cheap Asian "bumblebee" caps? I bought replacement "bumblebee" caps from Luxe Radio and Musical Instrument Co. and they are exactly the same down to the registration mark on the cap as what came with my R8 LP.
www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/gibson-bumblebee-caps-complete-b-s.1017476/
How do Nichicon caps stack up against similar style Panasonics
Nice work! What's your opinion on WIMA caps for the tone stack??
You mean the red box caps? So long as they fit the LS and board space, fine choice.
@@PsionicAudio Thanks!!