More bent trannies and a tip for fixing

[SpiderWars]

Got losyboy's Quick Rod on Saturday (shipped FedEx at my request). It was packed well in the original Splawn box-within-a-box. The entire inner box was perfect inside and out. The outer box wasn't perfect but wasn't in bad shape at all.





The PT had all 4 mounting bolts exposed so that was easy; unbolt it, straighten out the ears, rebolt it. The OT had one exposed and one was near one end of the main circuit board, the other two were buried underneath the circuit board. But luckily only two of the ears were bent and it was the two bolts I could access. So I removed those two, bent em back, and remounted the one bolt I could get at. Now I had to somehow get the nylon-locknut threaded onto the other bolt while still having the circuit board there (I removed a couple of mounting bolts for the card and could bend it up a tiny bit but not nearly enough).

So I took a small piece of gorilla tape (extra strong duct tape) and put it over one open end of a 3/8" box end wrench. Stuck the nut inside the untaped side of the wrench and that allowed me to stick the wrench in there without the nut falling out. Then using a screwdriver on the bolt from the other side I finally got the bolt threaded on.

It had KT77s running at about 22mA each and imo sounded horrible (ear-piercing highs). I put in a set of EH EL34s and biased em up to ~36mA each (~470vdc plates) and it sounds 100% better. WAY warmer. And what a weird Treble control! I swear it gets MORE trebly turning down from say 9:00 to 0.

 

[RedB4Black]

I like to wedge something (foam/cardboard,etc.) between the transformers and the top of the headshell to give it support when I ship amps. That prevents the weight of the transformers from being totally supported by the legs and you don't get what you had with your amp

 

[mudf00t]

I bought a 5150 III amp from guitar center in WI - I am in NC. When I got it, the entire inside of the amp was packed with Bubble wrap. It was the first time I though GC was on the job.

 

[steve_k]

some of those mounts are so flimsy, you can put the chassis on its side and bear down on the transformer and bend it back. some amp builders choose to skimp on the strangest parts.

 

[thiswaythatway]

Ok, now who else googled BENT TRANNY and viewed the images tab?

 

[SpiderWars]

some of those mounts are so flimsy, you can put the chassis on its side and bear down on the transformer and bend it back. some amp builders choose to skimp on the strangest parts.

I tried that but it wouldn't really budge and if I continued I feared a disaster of some sort. I noticed extra brackets on the '76 SuperLead I recently got and Chris Merren said they did that (sometimes) just for this type of thing. Here's a pic of the Marshall OT:



The build quality seems good on this amp. Free-standing ceramic sockets, and the only things board-mounted are the Send/Return jacks and the Footswitch jacks (each pair of jacks has it's own circuit card). Not that I'd want to, but I could easily yank the main circuit card and have a perfect platform to build a lot of different amps. And I paid for this amp about as much as I would just to buy the parts to build that platform.

 

[Chris6870]

Bent tranny, sounds like a good band name.