Tube Amp Wiring and Layout

I spent a lot of time changing component values up or down just slightly to make sure the sound and feel was good as well as the shape of the sine wave. A good clean sound will help the over driven tone better.

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testing-closeup

The 100 watt amp project has been pretty successful, now it just needs a cabinet and front and back control backing plates. I ended up with a Gain, Bass, Treble, and PPIV Master Volume.

Layout

My workbench: borrowed oscope, light bulb limiter, aluminum heat sink with resistor load, the Fluke 87 (love it), and Guitar Amplifier Preamps by Richard Kuehnel.

Bench Testing

The amp is kind of a combination of an Orange style power amp and phase inverter and a simple Fender two tone control preamp.

Here is the PDF schematic if you’re curious. Schematic 2012-09-03 100w

The Problem with Digital Music Equipment

I spend a lot of time discussing electronic repairs with customers. We talk about why the problem happened, what needs to be repaired, the cost to repair versus replace, and how to prevent it from happening again. The issue they face a lot of the time is many pieces are not worth fixing. Digital equipment is even worse when it comes to “cost of repair versus replacement” because of the proprietary parts.

The bottom line, many digital devices are overly integrated and force the user to discard the them rather than repair them.

The Solution
Computer powered systems are more modular and allow the user more flexibility. It’s far more advantageous to use a software guitar amp simulator than a digital all-in-one system, just as one common application. As the user you can choose the A/D converter, computer specs, and as new versions of the software are available you can update as needed. Best of all, you can use your system for a number of other things.

With computing power increasing all the time it just makes sense to use the processor you already own than have it integrated in a piece of electronics that will be outdated in a year. Then when you need, simply upgrade your computer on your terms.

Creating an admin account in Expression Engine from the database

I moved an Expression Engine site to a new server which meant I needed to update the path to the themes. The site style may be messed up and links may not work until you do this. I don’t know why EE makes you have an absolute path but I needed to change it which meant I needed the admin username and password. The owner of the site didn’t have the admin info so we were stuck.

The password is in the database but is encrypted so I can’t just change it. Plus, it’s attached to an email. So my thought, just change the email and reset the password. It worked fine!

Here’s how to do it:

  • Log into the database via PHPMyAdmin
  • Select your Expression Engine database
  • Browse the exp_members table
  • Click Edit (pencil) for the user you are going to take overmembers-table
  • Update the email to whatever and hit Go at the bottom.members-email
  • Now go to the login for the site and do a password reset.

This should reset the password and email you a new one for the username you edited.