Weber has it, WP354AT.

 

Nice! I thought they had faded away when Ted passed, but they've got a ton of stuff.

 

thats awesome. looking forward to progress updates

 

Great amp. Project looks fantastic!

 

Good luck with that build Dave. I', still going to insist on you building me one at some point. Or helping me put something together. I will not relent! Those Amps in your music room look and sound fantastic.

 

You're welcome Lincoln !

 

I've made some progress on the amp. The 350K treble pots are installed and the control side of the amp is done. Back to working on the tube side again.

 

I've been working away at this build between glue-ups on a guitar repair. Put the transformers in, and I'm in the process of hooking up the PT and cap board wiring.

I can see a fire up in the not too distant future. Hopefully one without fire or smoke

I'm torn between hooking up the standby switch or not. The schematic has full B+ voltage interrupted by the standby switch. I know the heaters will be on and the tubes will be ready, but won't that still be a shock to filter caps and the tubes? I'm thinking that the GZ34 will provide all the protection I need.

Anybody know what to do with the orange wire on this Hammond 290CX power transformer? it shows between the primary and secondary windings. I'm not familiar with its function.
https://www.hammfg.com/files/parts/pdf/290CX.pdf

 

I'm torn between hooking up the standby switch or not. The schematic has full B+ voltage interrupted by the standby switch. I know the heaters will be on and the tubes will be ready, but won't that still be a shock to filter caps and the tubes? I'm thinking that the GZ34 will provide all the protection I need.

Agree that GZ34 is all the protection you need. If you can live without the standby's 'mute' function, I'd leave it out.

 

It's for shielding purpose, connect it to chassis ground.

 

Thanks guys

 

Here's the flip side. Wiring is all done now except the tube heater wiring. I always do it last so I can avoid all the other wires and things when running the heater wires.

 

And it's cabinet time! I use a jig on my table saw called an Incra I-Box for cutting the box joints for the corners

Like magic, you have a box. All you need is glue and some clamps. In case you're looking at this going "wtf", I always leave the top of the box run wild for width. It gets trimmed when I cut that top angle you see on all the Fender cabinets.

 

That brings back memories, most of them bad. I had a jig I attached to my bench and used a router to make the notches. It was a lot of work, especially for all the firewood byproduct. I surely would have used this if I'd known about it. Nice work!

 

Can anyone tell me, WHY on ever amp I build, I get feed back and I have to switch the blue & the brown wires from the power tubes to the output transformer? Every one. I position those wires according to the layout diagram. Is there a secret? Or is just truly hit & miss and I'm consistently missing?

Anyway........the fire up went well. I had to re-solder one heater wire on a 12Ax7. I found that while checking voltages before I put tubes in it. I'll swap those OT wires over and plug a guitar into it.
I broke a GZ34 while putting it in. The glass just broke when I pushed on it. Must have been damaged or something.

 

Can anyone tell me, WHY on ever amp I build, I get feed back and I have to switch the blue & the brown wires from the power tubes to the output transformer? Every one. I position those wires according to the layout diagram. Is there a secret? Or is just truly hit & miss and I'm consistently missing?

No, I can't tell you but it won't stop me from trying.
There are 3 places phasing can get flipped. Are these various models or same layout? Single ended are more prone to be miswired as far as colour code goes, but you said blue and brown wires, so I take it you mean push-pull.
The 3 places I referred to are OT primary, OT secondary, and PI plate/power tube grid connections.
1)If the OT secondary wires are reversed, you will end up out of phase. This is most likely when there are only 2 wires at the OT secondary (single impedance type). In this particular amp, and many other Fenders of similar vintage, make sure black is ground, not green. (an easy mistake to make as both colours can be used to denote 'ground')
2)If the OT primary wires are reversed, again you will be out of phase. This is the most common error when an OT is replaced.
3)If the wires are reversed at the power tube grids (or PI plates) you will end up out of phase. This is probably the most likely suspect. Sometimes the schematic/layout is in error as far as the PI pin numbers.

All that being said, it's better to always check that the phasing is correct anyway. Sometimes you don't get the obvious squeal and just get weird problematic oscillations. For any amp that uses NFB, lift the nfb resistor and verify that gain is slightly reduced when NFB resistor is connected.

 

Murphy's Law!

 

Dam that Murphy guy! He's really starting to chaff my bag.

The tremolo on a 6G16 is awesome! The adjustable bias I put in is working perfectly. I've got some trouble shooting to do on the reverb however. It's not working.

 

Cabinet in clamps

Cabinet with the 23 degree angle cut on the face.

Next step is a total sanding, then a round-over of all sides and corners, then another sanding.
After that, I go over it with spot filler because every little mark on the wood shows up under the tolex. Pine is quite soft and easy to mark as you're working it.

Tolex time! Tolex and grill cloth purchased from Next Gen.

 

Yesterday was kind of a wash, but today I made some progress. Got 3 sides of the amp covered in brown tolex.

The Vibroverb is a fairly large cabinet.

 

Progress report on the Vibroverb. Just getting the chassis positioned so I can install the supports for the front & back panels.

The brakes came on this project. I've discovered I have no medium chassis straps.

 

Update on the 63 Vibroverb clone. Found some medium chassis straps, got the baffle in and the speakers mounted.

 

I've been working away on a 6G16 brownface Vibroverb clone build. A very busy board in some places, but I went slowly & carefully and I think it's all right.
View attachment 236116
One thing that threw me for a loop though is the treble pots the build asks for. 350K with a 70K tap. Huh???
Wtf? Of course you never notice that sort of thing until you're well into the build.......and none of your regular suppliers sells anything like that. I'm still looking for some. Guess I'll switch and work on the other side of the amp for a while.

Hello, Lincoln,

I know this thread is a couple of years old now, but I am setting out to build a 6G16 this weekend. I bought a complete kit from Mojotone. I built a 5F4 Super last year and enjoyed the process so much I decided to build another, more complex one to chase away some of the Covid blues. I have many years experience with soldering and a more-than-basic understanding of electronics so I'm not really concerned about the complexity, but was wondering if you might have any insights or cautionary tales for a guy just launching a Virborverb build.

FWIW, my Super turned out fantastic and worked perfectly once I figured out that the outrageous distortion I was getting on first test was due to a DOA 6L6. In fact, just for fun, I'll include a couple pictures of the Super. I will likely sell one of the two builds, depending on which I like more, when I've completed the Virbroverb.

 

Your Super looks super! You should have no problem.

To be honest, I find the brown face amps tougher/harder to figure out than either the black face or tweeds. If you can, find prints better than the original Fender stuff. They sometimes leave a little too much to the imagination. I see you are going Mojo, their stuff is pretty good in my experience.

And the 6G16's really are great sounding amps.

 

They're Virbroverbs now no take backs.

Nice work!

 

Vibrato, tremolo...Fender's Vibroverb, Mesa's Trem-O-Verb, it can be confusing and misleading as vibrato and tremolo are different effects.

 

Awesome build! I've got a 6G16 kit on order from Mojo.

Where did you source your faceplate? Ive been searching all over and no one sells them.

 

Awesome build! I've got a 6G16 kit on order from Mojo.

Where did you source your faceplate? I've been searching all over and no one sells them.

It came from eBay seller seller-1032canter1961
But it doesn't look like he has that model faceplate for sale right now. He may bring them back again, his stuff changes all the time. Try contacting him maybe?

 

I finished my Vibroverb 6G16 build about a month ago. It's a Mojotone kit, sounds absolutely killer. I'm still thinking about what I'm going to do for some branding on the faceplate. I'll likely go with "Pandemic Sixty-Three" or "Pandemic Vee-Two" or something like that. I had a plate made for my Super build, posted elsewhere in this thread. Anyhoo, here are a few pics...

BTW, I'm considering selling this one if anyone's interested.

Cheers.

 

What have you got going on right here? I've just run into a wall with my Mojotone kit. in this spot the layout calls for a 470 ohm resistor and they did not include one in the kit. It's not even on the parts inventory. I mistakenly put a 470k resistor there and didn't realize there was a problem until I went to wire in the tube sockets and found I'm short a 470k for V5.

So now I'm at a stand still because I'm missing a 470 ohm resistor. Could have been finished the build this weekend but now I'm going to have to wait 2 weeks for Mojo to mail the part.

 

My kit will take about 6 weeks to process and get shipped. Faceplate is in the mail. Just ordered a pair of 10A125's from Weber yesterday.

Now I sit and wait for stuff to show up.

 

I'm just about ready to test