lespaul6
Well-known member
sah5150":366jfgve said:Of course it is going to vary, but not enough that it should require tweaking component values. That was my point. You are going to have variance that is going to cancel things out in different places as well. In my experience, using 5% components in a PCB amp with short flying leads should make them sound so close to each other that simple EQ changes would make them sound identical. This is certainly true of my amps and that is what I like about PCB...psychodave":366jfgve said:sah5150":366jfgve said:This is a little confusing to me. The CCV is a PCB amp with short flying leads. If you use 5% components of the same type in the same positions in every amp, they should all sound pretty much the same. I can say for sure that my amps sound almost identical from amp to amp. The variance is certainly not enough that you couldn't make them sound identical with minor EQ changes.psychodave":366jfgve said:scottosan":366jfgve said:im sure he can. I am only doing one. Big difference than going into mass productionnegaodapicona":366jfgve said:The funny part is:
You are building a CCV and Mark Cameron can't do it!!!
Exactly. One reason is Mark would end up tweaking every amp differently since part values will be different and create slightly different tones. Kinda like how Marshall amps all sound different. Mark likes to make sure all amps sound good, not just a few. It's a curse.
I totally get that Marshall mods would be tweaked by ear because you are changing a lot of leads and there were component switches all the time that also have big variances, And even a lot of the older PCB Marshalls have long leads and the lead dress varied from amp to amp. But with PCB amps like the CCV, huge variance from amp to amp requiring tweaking doesn't make any sense to me, unless you aren't using high tolerance components consistently from amp to amp. And not doing that doesn't make any sense to me either... If you don't do that, then you aren't building a "production" amp.
Steve
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you use a 5% tolerance on a 100k resistor, you could potentially get a 95k resistor or a 105k resistor. The difference could be 10k just on that one part between two different amps. Work that across dozens of resistors, capacitors, potentiometers, transformers and things can vary. In my original post, I never said amps will be completely different, I said slightly. This is where, IMO, Mark shines to make amps sound good to him.
Notice you didn't say amps would sound EXACTLY the same.
I think the need to tweak has more to do with the fact that Mark often used whatever he had on hand for parts, which would make a larger difference. Hell, the CCV I owned had a computer power supply in it for some DC heater implementation, which I presume wasn't part of the original design... not that I'm suggesting that particular change impacted the sound of the amp (except reducing hum)...
Either way, the CCVs I've played all sounded great to me and I could get them all dialed in to sound the way I wanted them to, so whatever he was doing worked. It would just seem that you'd want to mass produce them to have any reasonable shot at success and that means you can't sit there and tweak each amp. You've got to figure out a way to build them with greater consistency from amp to amp and I see no reason why that couldn't have happened...
Steve
I would agree with this... I mean if you really want to split hairs then the actual metal used in each transformer is different so every amp will sound different and so on ....
