"What a Mesa or a 5150 wants to be when it grows up"... That'll go down in the amp tech dictionary. 😆 awesome video once again Lyle! Keep em coming my friend!
5150 is a copy of the SLO100 which is itself an adaptation and arguably improvement on the earlier Mesa amps that Mike Soldano was repairing and modding. Inside and out that amp screams quality though, for a PCB amp.
I am a aspiring amp builder and possibly repair some also Guy’s like me depend on the correct information It’s great that you show us the right and WRONG way to do things I applaud you ! Love your channel
This amp screams like a beast! I am building one but without clean/crunch chanel, just overdrive with a low input that bypass the first stage, like a jcm800
Nice Pink Floyd Sorrow reference :) Btw if you crank the gain on the crunch channel to just below max and turn the bright on, it sounds great with a Strat! If it's too much gain, just pull the guitar volume knob back down.
You forgot to mention Posidrive screws (significantly better than Philips, *if and only if* you use the correct matching Posidrive screwdriver); and the square-drive Robertson screws. PS, athough generally I like Allen head hex key screws, the problem that arises is there are both metric and SAE versions that are close to each other without being exactly the same, so if anybody else has been inside the amplifier, they rarely stopped to ask themselves whether it's likely to be an SAE or a metric head (depending not only on the country of origin but also the era when it was made, because many American or even Canadian-made products, even from the last several decades have been assembled with Asian made metric hardware); and so the wannabe tech or equipment owner just grabbed whatever Allen wrench seemed to fit OK, and often stripped the screwheads or chewed the hell out of them. For that matter it was only a couple of years ago that I learned about JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) Phillips versus ordinary Phillips screws and screwdrivers ---- and that there is indeed a significant difference.
Very lucky indeed. Mercury doesn’t offer a standard replacement, so that gets pricey for a rewind. A Twin Reverb, multi tap output transformer would probably be the closest match off the shelf. Who knows, Soldano might have a stock of replacements and a new vendor.
Someone on TH-cam, perhaps FranLab or Technology Connections or even The History Guy, should do a historic overview of fuses (why so many variant sizes of glass fuses, for one). I don't know that Big Clive, AVE, PhotonicInduction or ElectroBOOM or (insert your fave "release the magic smoke" channel here) would be the ones to do it since those guys don't just love to blow s--t up, they basically live for it! And then there's Project Farm who would likely fill fast-blow fuses with Seafoam to see if they become slow-blow or have increased resistance to a sledgehammer hit, or put crushed fuses into the lawnmowers' oil reservoir with an oil additive to see how long it would run...... The History Guy might seem an odd choice for this, but the most viewed episode he's done was about screwdrivers! I just finished sorting through and organizing about a thousand glass fuses, and there's a bunch of oddballs that are shorter than 3AG, such as 8AG, and others that are a bit longer and fatter or even have integral bayonet-like locking tabs. Why so many different fuses sizes, and so little standardization of nomenclature? I Googled "history of fuses"; it's a long list of articles, gonna be a weeklong bedtime read!
Have you had any experience with the "new" SLO's, the ones not made my Michael Soldano himself? I know that he has retired and they are made by some company in So. Cal.
@@goodun2974 I'm pretty sure that's not the manufacturing date it's probably just the date on when they finalized the new circuit layout or something like that that's definitely one of the new style amps
@@th3drizzl378 , 2019 seems pretty "new" to me, although I don't know when Soldano retired and the company actually changed hands. Certainly the amp is no more than 2 years old. I had assumed this recent date means it was likely built by Soldano 2.0....Anyway, it looks nicely built, or at least the layout is very neat and clean, perhaps a bit too much so --- the insistence on having virtually no slack in the wiring may cause complications for future repair techs. I did notice that the solder connections which Lyle undid had no kink, dog-leg or J-hook in the bare lead to provide mechanical strength ---- kind of a no-no in my book, alhough the original soldering did look top-notch. Soldered wires and leads should generally have sufficient mechanical integrity to pose slight difficulty for even a good tech to undo them --- that's how you know the connection is unlikely to come loose from shock, vibration and thermal stress. Its difficult to have it both ways! (Also, a broken connection to the secondary wiring of the output tranny would possibly disconnect the speaker, and if it happened while the amp was being played, there goes the output transformer!)
@@goodun2974 well these were displayed at namm 2019 so they def had some already made prob in smaller numbers though and i believe started shipping summer 2019 so it def is one of the early BAD made ones. i can assure you this is the new style as ive followed and own slo's myself.
I think this was a pretty rare failure. While the opening in the bell cover is smaller than I would have made it (the wires are pretty compressed there) I would think the chances of this happening are very small.
I’m ok with flat head screws as set screws on knobs. Anything larger. Should be relegated to the dustbin of history. That being said. For any screws I have to torque significantly. T25 torx are nice. T20s. Suck…
Was the initial insulation damage of the blue wire due to friction with the bell cover? It wasn’t heat AFAICT. I understand that the short caused heat damage when it occurred. Just trying to understand what happened. I have a Weber Mini-Mass. What is the problem with those? I’ve used mine for testing. Don’t really play through it anymore - neighbors are far enough away. My understanding was that the Weber attenuators use an actual speaker coil, just without a speaker cone.
I agree on the likely cause. Still an unusual failure. The Webers are usually pretty frail on construction with a lot of iffy solder joints and components that may or may not cope with heat.
@@PsionicAudio isn’t it more likely that there was external gear failure, such as a bad speaker cable or bad cabinet jack? Did the owner use an attenuator? Seems that if it was due to the wires rubbing breaking down the insulation that it would be occurring much more often in these amps.
@@PsionicAudio I used it once on a light switch, just replaced the switch but the wires were stripped back excessively, and it stinks and goes on ugly but it seems like a quicker fix. I can't remember any spec's on it. Just curious if you've tried it.
I call flat-head screws 'soviet technology'. I'd take it a step further and ban everything except Torx heads. I do not understand why anything less still exists in service.
Those new trace boards don't look as good as the original ones used to be and I kind of liked the fact that only 1 person used to work on an SLO from start to finish. But was unavoidably expensive. We need amp techs like you in Australia, half the dudes here are useless and crazy expensive.
Lyle's Aussie friend, Brad's Guitar Garage on TH-cam, looks like he knows what he's doing, though I don't know what his hourly rate is like. Of course, Australia is an enormous country, and he could be 1000 miles away from you.....
@@PsionicAudio, yeah, I watched that one a couple hours ago. Can't wait for Brad's part two. That amp does not look conducive to tweaks/mods or even just to being worked on in general. I don't know where you'd even start to try and fix the layout so it doesn't require filters to prevent oscillations. Maybe well-placed ferrite beads could be used in place of the snubber caps, and taking some of the signal path or power-supplies off of the PC board would help. The entire ground scheme is probably a mess.
@@PsionicAudio , go to the comment field on that video of Brad's which you linked to, and see my comment referencing Junior Brown, a blanket, an amplifier (or two), and a casino gig.
"What a Mesa or a 5150 wants to be when it grows up"... That'll go down in the amp tech dictionary. 😆 awesome video once again Lyle! Keep em coming my friend!
5150 is a copy of the SLO100 which is itself an adaptation and arguably improvement on the earlier Mesa amps that Mike Soldano was repairing and modding.
Inside and out that amp screams quality though, for a PCB amp.
I am a aspiring amp builder and possibly repair some also
Guy’s like me depend on the correct information
It’s great that you show us the right and WRONG way to do things
I applaud you !
Love your channel
Wow nice amp. That might be my next amp. The build quality looks great and the overdrive sounds warm and full. Nice work as usual Lyle great content.
Cool soldering tips - thank you!
I definitely like your Kidman’s for the Strat sounds. The Duncan Pearly Gates sounds awesome.
This amp screams like a beast! I am building one but without clean/crunch chanel, just overdrive with a low input that bypass the first stage, like a jcm800
Nice Pink Floyd Sorrow reference :)
Btw if you crank the gain on the crunch channel to just below max and turn the bright on, it sounds great with a Strat! If it's too much gain, just pull the guitar volume knob back down.
one of my old co-workers always used to say "friends don't let friends use flat head screws". I'll take a Robertson 👍
With all that this awesome video contains, here’s a strange takeaway. I HATE slotted screws too! Phillips, Hex or Torx all the way!
You forgot to mention Posidrive screws (significantly better than Philips, *if and only if* you use the correct matching Posidrive screwdriver); and the square-drive Robertson screws. PS, athough generally I like Allen head hex key screws, the problem that arises is there are both metric and SAE versions that are close to each other without being exactly the same, so if anybody else has been inside the amplifier, they rarely stopped to ask themselves whether it's likely to be an SAE or a metric head (depending not only on the country of origin but also the era when it was made, because many American or even Canadian-made products, even from the last several decades have been assembled with Asian made metric hardware); and so the wannabe tech or equipment owner just grabbed whatever Allen wrench seemed to fit OK, and often stripped the screwheads or chewed the hell out of them.
For that matter it was only a couple of years ago that I learned about JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) Phillips versus ordinary Phillips screws and screwdrivers ---- and that there is indeed a significant difference.
Very lucky indeed. Mercury doesn’t offer a standard replacement, so that gets pricey for a rewind. A Twin Reverb, multi tap output transformer would probably be the closest match off the shelf.
Who knows, Soldano might have a stock of replacements and a new vendor.
Just a hello 👋
Someone on TH-cam, perhaps FranLab or Technology Connections or even The History Guy, should do a historic overview of fuses (why so many variant sizes of glass fuses, for one). I don't know that Big Clive, AVE, PhotonicInduction or ElectroBOOM or (insert your fave "release the magic smoke" channel here) would be the ones to do it since those guys don't just love to blow s--t up, they basically live for it! And then there's Project Farm who would likely fill fast-blow fuses with Seafoam to see if they become slow-blow or have increased resistance to a sledgehammer hit, or put crushed fuses into the lawnmowers' oil reservoir with an oil additive to see how long it would run......
The History Guy might seem an odd choice for this, but the most viewed episode he's done was about screwdrivers!
I just finished sorting through and organizing about a thousand glass fuses, and there's a bunch of oddballs that are shorter than 3AG, such as 8AG, and others that are a bit longer and fatter or even have integral bayonet-like locking tabs. Why so many different fuses sizes, and so little standardization of nomenclature? I Googled "history of fuses"; it's a long list of articles, gonna be a weeklong bedtime read!
I agree ! Ban them flat head screws ! :-)
Nice Police T-Shirt ;-)
Have you had any experience with the "new" SLO's, the ones not made my Michael Soldano himself? I know that he has retired and they are made by some company in So. Cal.
this is one of the new ones.
At 2:30, it looks like the manufacturing date or at least the circuit-revision date (06- 2019) on the circuit board.
@@goodun2974 I'm pretty sure that's not the manufacturing date it's probably just the date on when they finalized the new circuit layout or something like that that's definitely one of the new style amps
@@th3drizzl378 , 2019 seems pretty "new" to me, although I don't know when Soldano retired and the company actually changed hands. Certainly the amp is no more than 2 years old. I had assumed this recent date means it was likely built by Soldano 2.0....Anyway, it looks nicely built, or at least the layout is very neat and clean, perhaps a bit too much so --- the insistence on having virtually no slack in the wiring may cause complications for future repair techs. I did notice that the solder connections which Lyle undid had no kink, dog-leg or J-hook in the bare lead to provide mechanical strength ---- kind of a no-no in my book, alhough the original soldering did look top-notch. Soldered wires and leads should generally have sufficient mechanical integrity to pose slight difficulty for even a good tech to undo them --- that's how you know the connection is unlikely to come loose from shock, vibration and thermal stress. Its difficult to have it both ways! (Also, a broken connection to the secondary wiring of the output tranny would possibly disconnect the speaker, and if it happened while the amp was being played, there goes the output transformer!)
@@goodun2974 well these were displayed at namm 2019 so they def had some already made prob in smaller numbers though and i believe started shipping summer 2019 so it def is one of the early BAD made ones. i can assure you this is the new style as ive followed and own slo's myself.
In your honest opinion. Do you believe a small design flaw caused this? Like the bunch of cables being too tight or without enough protection?
I think this was a pretty rare failure. While the opening in the bell cover is smaller than I would have made it (the wires are pretty compressed there) I would think the chances of this happening are very small.
I’m ok with flat head screws as set screws on knobs.
Anything larger. Should be relegated to the dustbin of history.
That being said. For any screws I have to torque significantly. T25 torx are nice. T20s. Suck…
Was the initial insulation damage of the blue wire due to friction with the bell cover? It wasn’t heat AFAICT. I understand that the short caused heat damage when it occurred. Just trying to understand what happened.
I have a Weber Mini-Mass. What is the problem with those? I’ve used mine for testing. Don’t really play through it anymore - neighbors are far enough away. My understanding was that the Weber attenuators use an actual speaker coil, just without a speaker cone.
I agree on the likely cause. Still an unusual failure.
The Webers are usually pretty frail on construction with a lot of iffy solder joints and components that may or may not cope with heat.
@@PsionicAudio thanks Lyle
@@PsionicAudio isn’t it more likely that there was external gear failure, such as a bad speaker cable or bad cabinet jack? Did the owner use an attenuator? Seems that if it was due to the wires rubbing breaking down the insulation that it would be occurring much more often in these amps.
No no Lyle cut the other green wire!!!!
I wonder why that fuse looked so bad? Was it an incorrect value?
Because it exploded when the plate arced to the grounded bell cover.
It did exactly what it was supposed to do. Just a bit of a drama queen.
Uhhh, hey so melted insulation,, could you repair the wire with that black insulation that you can paint on like nail polish????
I wouldn't trust it. Would be very susceptible to abrasion and I don't know how it would handle heat.
@@PsionicAudio I used it once on a light switch, just replaced the switch but the wires were stripped back excessively, and it stinks and goes on ugly but it seems like a quicker fix. I can't remember any spec's on it. Just curious if you've tried it.
@@PsionicAudio I tried to get specs on temp but I think it's rubber based.
Shaky-cam courtesy of Soldano.
I call flat-head screws 'soviet technology'. I'd take it a step further and ban everything except Torx heads. I do not understand why anything less still exists in service.
Those new trace boards don't look as good as the original ones used to be and I kind of liked the fact that only 1 person used to work on an SLO from start to finish. But was unavoidably expensive. We need amp techs like you in Australia, half the dudes here are useless and crazy expensive.
Lyle's Aussie friend, Brad's Guitar Garage on TH-cam, looks like he knows what he's doing, though I don't know what his hourly rate is like. Of course, Australia is an enormous country, and he could be 1000 miles away from you.....
Yup!
th-cam.com/video/G9vZFRUST7I/w-d-xo.html
@@PsionicAudio, yeah, I watched that one a couple hours ago. Can't wait for Brad's part two. That amp does not look conducive to tweaks/mods or even just to being worked on in general. I don't know where you'd even start to try and fix the layout so it doesn't require filters to prevent oscillations. Maybe well-placed ferrite beads could be used in place of the snubber caps, and taking some of the signal path or power-supplies off of the PC board would help. The entire ground scheme is probably a mess.
@@PsionicAudio , go to the comment field on that video of Brad's which you linked to, and see my comment referencing Junior Brown, a blanket, an amplifier (or two), and a casino gig.
@@goodun2974 I'll have a look. Been tryin to find a decent tech for ever.
Flatheads are only good for old guns. Old Winchesters and fine SxS shotguns. Other than that, yeah they suck