Home Forums Discussion Accident & Emergency What do you make of this 1bl?

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    • #127998
      1bassleft
      Participant

      Oh, it looks uglier than a Bull Terrier sucking a lemon, but I’ve left that alone. If ugliness ruled out band usage, there’d be a lot of people out of work 😆

    • #127996
      lee_UK
      Participant

      you forgot to mention the 2 meters of tolex and a lot of TLC.

      I can forgive the rug, but 16 amps in the house? unforgivable.
      As well as the amps you have in exile around the world.

    • #127995
      1bassleft
      Participant

      Having just removed some spam, I thought I might as well update this thread. Replacing the ugly Chinese EL84 got it running. Replacing one of the ECC83s got the “normal” channel working. Easiest fix ever and this is now very much my goto practice combo for bass. The 30W is more than ample and distortion-free, plus the 2×10″ suits the bass better than the standard 1×12″.

    • #127993
      1bassleft
      Participant

      1) I’ll try it this w/e. The valves may be one reason why it doesn’t work as it should. The other is that it hasn’t been played for eight years. The seller said it was improving with each plug in and there’s no puff around the filter cpacitor so it may have dried out a bit but not terminally so.

      2) 3 of the EL84s are Edicron-brand and have a Philips-plate style but no etchings. It’s very likely they were made by Ei in Nis, Serbia. The pre-civil war Yugoslav valves are decent enough but it’s no setback if I have to replace them (at least Mulls etc should be a straight swap without any change of grid resistor required). The 4th EL84 is the most hideous junk I’ve ever seen. Never clapped eyes on the like so it would have to be some early Chinese rubbish. This may not perform at all in this circuit and may be a part of the amp’s problem.

      3) The OT should be OK, seeing as the seller has got it playing. I’ll find out this weekend.

      4) It’s a rug, Lee. Polished floorboards and a rug. 🙂

    • #127994
      lee_UK
      Participant

      1. are the valves good?
      2. what brand are they?
      3. is the O/T in good shape?
      4. is that really your carpet? 😆

    • #127992
      1bassleft
      Participant
    • #127991
      1bassleft
      Participant

      F ❗ ❗ k me, I bought it 😆

      I’d been keeping a quiet eye on it from the moment it appeared on the Fleeb. Yes, it’s tatty looking and not working properly but I reckon that’s fixable. My plan is to sort it out (IIRC, the preamp layout is as with my earlier Doms but the power is 4xEL84 in parallel push-pull layout) and sell off my tidy Dom III which should clear £150. I’m hoping that the 30W is still cathode-biased but I have a matched quad of Teslas (Roznov, not JJ) if it turns out to be fixed/variable bias.

      Not much is known about this era of WEM (Steve Russell’s site is so scarce on info that I’ll probably have to send him pics and details to upload). Still, I think the Emminence speakers are possibly original. Charlie Watkins is still going and has a very high opinion of them. He may well have switched to them from the earlier Celestion-Rola and Goodmans once the output was raised. I’ll keep you posted on the outcome – seeing as you’re fascinated 😛

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