Twisting wire

The only way to twist two pairs of wire properly is with one end clamped in something and the other end in the chuck of a drill.

Pull the trigger and wait until the wire is nicely twisted.

Was quite difficult clamping the teflon wire in the drill as it's extremely slippery.  In the next post I'll explain why this has made things so difficult as I tackle one of the hardest parts of the build - the valve heater wiring.

PTFE wire

After some thought, I decided to use PTFE (teflon) wire for the build.  It's quite weird stuff.  Almost greasy to the touch because it's so slippery.

It's ultra-thin and rated at 1000V 14A so is ideal for hook-up wire in valve amps.

What's more, the sheathing doesn't melt so it's great for connections like the ones below where you need to get quite a lot of heat into the thick wire or turret to get the solder to flow properly.

Initial turret board soldering

After lots of bending and trimming the turret board was ready for soldering.

I took a lot of care bending and cutting the leads of the Mullard mustard capacitors.  They're older than me!

 And after soldering:

Ground bus connections:

Neater from the top:

Caps and resistors:

My SE-5a 5W build

I built this from a kit from Barry at Amp Maker, who's a very helpful chap.

http://www.ampmaker.com/store/SE-5a-5W-British-overdrive-amplifier.html




I used an undistinguished Fender Frontman as a donor amp, which I picked up on ebay, not working, for about 40 quid (I then sold most of the guts of it for about 20 quid, so I reckon it was a bargain. I kept the reverb tank which will be part of another project...) It wasn't a difficult build but there were some challenging aspects of it.

In particular, the valve heater wiring (seen below in green) was particularly fiddly.  I can imagine that with five valves to run heater wiring to (neatly) it's going to be a bit trickier.

Resistors on turret board

Starting to place the resistors on the turret board and complete some of the links to the ground bus ready for soldering.

The plan

These are the plans I'm working to:

Sorting

Do an inventory of all parts. Before you start.