5e3 build not working...

[cdc3jj]

Finally finished a ceriatone 5e3 kit but I get no sound. I double and triple checked my connections. I don't know what could have happened. Do the caps need to charge or something? I've been working on this thing for a month or so on and off. Totally bummed. Can anyone offer advice? My tubes are hot and the light is on. But no sound. I know I ran the OT right (it's a merc... PT is a weber) I'll try to put up some pics...

[jchabalk]

hi there - pictures are definitely useful.

and i only ask this because i've done this before and torn my hair out over it for a solid 15 minutes but... make sure the speaker is plugged in? it's easy to forget when you're in the middle of troubleshooting and building the amp.

[SamBooka]

pics are nice.. I use my ears first, eyes second and a DVM a close third.
Do you hear ANYTHING? Hiss, pops, static? If you do then the speaker is probably hooked up ok, as is the OT and the power tubes are running.

Double check your wiring (ugh.. )cold solder joints, bits of wire shorting out on the pots etc. Sucks but you gotta do it.


Tubes are lighting up so your filament voltages are probably ok. Make sure they are.
Plate voltages all ok?

As you check the voltages you might hear little pops as you touch the probes. That is useful. You hear a pop when you touch the grid of a power tube? Power tube ok

You hear a pop when you touch the grid of the phase inverter? Phase inverter ok.

You dont hear a pop when you touch the tone stack recovery stage? Uh oh.. lets take a look. You get the picture.

First

[cdc3jj]

My wiring is kind of a mess. I didn't realize until it was too late it's ok to trim the leads off the board. I'll send Nik an email too. Thanks

[cdc3jj]

More pics...

[cdc3jj]

Speaker was hooked up. I double checked that twice too. I'm bummed because after the holiday I'll be gone for a couple weeks and not able to mess with it. Arg... What do I do with all the extra wires coming off the PT?

[EdMax]

I See a mistake in the wiring,

The connection on the .022 cap in the middle of the board is incorrect.
The pink wire running from the cap to the jack should not be attached there, re-check the layout drawing on the ceriatone website.

[Scott S]

Originally Posted by cdc3jj

My wiring is kind of a mess. I didn't realize until it was too late it's ok to trim the leads off the board. I'll send Nik an email too. Thanks

When I built my first tweed clone, I soldered all the leads to the board like you see other people do, and ended up with several that were too short or too long. After that build, I realized that you could always solder those leads on *after* installing the board, which made my life much better.

- Scott

[SamBooka]

I find it is easier to mount the board with minimal leads, just the hard ones that run under. All the other ones I start at the socket and work back to the board.

[emu!]

OP:

No sound...or even a HUM when all knobs turned to 10?

What kind of speaker jack is that? It looks like a stero jack...just needs a mono connection there. Maybe it's wired wrong...

Also, test the speaker wire...

[EdMax]

Originally Posted by emu!

OP:

No sound...or even a HUM when all knobs turned to 10?

What kind of speaker jack is that? It looks like a stero jack...just needs a mono connection there. Maybe it's wired wrong...

Also, test the speaker wire...

That's a standard Cliff style Mono Jack, typically used in marshalls. I like them because they Isolate the inputs from chassis.

Clearly in the photo I edited/posted there is a wiring issue, and being grounded at that point will prevent any signal.

[Groovey Records]

Spaghetti for Thanksgiving

[BlueJim]

Originally Posted by cdc3jj

I didn't realize until it was too late it's ok to trim the leads off the board.

The great thing about building your own amp is, it's never too late.

[efnikbug]

Originally Posted by EdMax

I See a mistake in the wiring,

The connection on the .022 cap in the middle of the board is incorrect.
The pink wire running from the cap to the jack should not be attached there, re-check the layout drawing on the ceriatone website.

Damn, you're good. It should connect to one of the 68K resistors hidden underneath the input jacks. I suppose you would have to remove all the input jacks so you have access to those resistors and soldering point. I would remove the pink wire from the board, then remove all the jacks, solder the other end of the pink wire where it's supposed to be, and mount all the jacks again.

But I stand to be corrected.

[EdMax]

Originally Posted by efnikbug

Damn, you're good. It should connect to one of the 68K resistors hidden underneath the input jacks. I suppose you would have to remove all the input jacks so you have access to those resistors and soldering point. I would remove the pink wire from the board, then remove all the jacks, solder the other end of the pink wire where it's supposed to be, and mount all the jacks again.

But I stand to be corrected.

I just hope the lead underneath the board on that end of of the 022 is still in place. It goes over to the 1 meg resistor over near the power supply cap.

Why do I know this? haha
I forgot to put that lead in my very first 5E3 build about 25 years ago. One of those I know it goes there but forgot it between building sessions.
Very easy to forget things in broken up build sessions..

[efnikbug]

I didn't mention it because I wasn't sure. But I had a feeling based on the value that it was a coupling cap. I just found the schematic for a 5E3 and, well, my guess was right. Funny, even on the schematic I'm lookin' at, which seems like a Fender original schematic for the 5E3, it doesn't say what the value of this cap is.

[EdMax]

Originally Posted by efnikbug

I didn't mention it because I wasn't sure. But I had a feeling based on the value that it was a coupling cap. I just found the schematic for a 5E3 and, well, my guess was right. Funny, even on the schematic I'm lookin' at, which seems like a Fender original schematic for the 5E3, it doesn't say what the value of this cap is.

The cap value is on the service guide for the re-issue.

[Scott S]

It's also shown on the original layout diagram.

- Scott

[cdc3jj]

Got back from two weeks in Montana yesterday. I thought I knew what cold was until being in Montana in December.

I checked your suggestion and realized the pink lead isn't going to the board. The pic is deceptive. That lead runs from the top of one input jack to the bottom of the second input jack. I took another pic. Hopefully this one is a little more clear. I also rechecked the layout and it's wired correctly by the layout. Thanks for the continued help guys.

[cdc3jj]

I just hooked it all back up to recheck and noticed the recitier tube got pretty hot pretty quick. Nothing else is hot to the touch. It was only on maybe 30 seconds. Could that be a problem? I did notice that there are some connections being made on the 5y3 in ceriatones layout that are not in webers.

[aegert]

If the 6v6's don't get hot.. are they lit? check to see that the 6v heater supply is hooked up.. It is not drawn in on his layout it is referenced as F1 and F2 (from lamp) they need to go to pin 2 and 7 respectively on V4..


PM NIK he is a good guy... Tell him Adam Amps sent you....

[aegert]

OK

Dude

No offence This is a learning experience. You need to look at other builds on line. The lead dress ( how long the wires are and who they are run) is a rats nest. If this ever lit it would howl with noise....

you need to keep AC (heaters) and DC (signal) away from each other as you will pick up hum from ac wires if 2 close

You need to rout the signal wires against the chassis as directly as posible. Where they cross do it as perpendicularly as possible...

From your V4 pic it looks like the heaters are not connected. In this case its good because you need to go through this with a fine comb shortning leads and re checking every connction before you light it. You might fry something..

Please don't take all of this badly.. We were all there at some point but put down the iron... look on line at completed 5e3 builds and then try to emulate the organization and neatness of them.. It is important

You have no sound because you have no Filaments heating the tube to cause the flow of electrons... no output. Oh make sure you balance that heater circuit with 2 x 100 ohm resistors to ground.. With this the way this is wired you don't want to smoke your PT


If that output jack is a shorting type get rid off it if no speaker is plugged in it is a short.. By By OT.... Open is no good either but you can plug in a speaker when open to relieve charge if shorted shorted forget it

[mfwalker1]

Hi TDPRIers. (First post)
I too have finished a Ceriatone 5e3 build that needs troubleshooting - but that's not what this post is about.
I'm questioning aegert's last post about removing the output jack shorting link if there's no speaker plugged in. I've read elsewhere that this is a safety feature in that better to run the amp into a short than no speaker at all.
What say you all?
Matt Walker

[aegert]

I wouldn't short out the output.. In this cast the secondary is the impedance that the primary sees. All the power is dissipated in teh OT and you melt windings.

Yes open ain't good either but if you throw standby on without a load you can plug a load in while lit. And it will take the load. You hurt the OT if you turn it off with no load.


SO IF YOU TURN ON THE AMP WITH STANDBY SWITCH CLOSED WITH NO SPEAKER OR NON INDUCTIVE LOAD. DO NOT TURN OFF THE AMP OR FLIP TO STAND BY> PLUG IN THE LOAD OR SPEAKER! YES IT SUCKS TO HAVE NO LOAD BUT A SHORT REALLY SUCKS. GRANTED FOR A PROLONGED PERIOD OF TIME THE OPEN OT SECONDARY WILL CAUSE THE FRYING OF THE PT AND MAYBE ARC SOCKETS> IT ALL SUCKS SO PLEASE LEAVE THE SPEAKER CONNECTED. BU THIS IS IN MINUTES

As An example Stereo Amplifiers have protection circuits that when the impedance drops to low... ala a short they shut down the output ie throws a relay open on output.. They do not have no load protection... why is that? :-)

A

[bwacke]

We shouldn't hijack a trouble-shooting thread, so I'll just say: open circuit jacks for solid state amps, shorting jacks for tube amps.

Solid state amp outputs in days of yore couldn't normally tolerate shorted outputs. The output transistors were destroyed by the excess current drawn through a shorting output. Newer amps usually have some current limiting circuits that buy you some time before the outputs fry.

A tube amp, on the other hand will flash over the output transformer and tubes if the amp is turned on or off with NO LOAD on the secondary. The inductive spike of an infinite impedance on the secondary causes the primary side to rise to 5 or more times the normal HV value of 360 - 500 Volts, yielding 1600 -2500 volts of transient spike during on or off switching. This voltage exceeds the insulation of the tubes and transformer and causes arcing, burning and sometimes lasting insulation breakdown that ruins the device.

I have personally turned on and tried to play through tube amps with the speaker disconnected, but the shorting jack saved the output circuit because there was no inductive spike. Obviously, whenever you don't hear a little bit of noise of SOME KIND when you power up an amp, you turn it OFF immediately and check the obvious things, especially the speaker load, before continuing your troubleshooting.

cdc3jj, if your rectifier is hot but your other tubes are lit (filaments) and cool, you have no high voltage on them. Check the connections around your power supply electrolytic capacitors. Missing or badly soldered connections, especially the dropping resistors between the caps that send lower voltages to the 12AX7's will give you fits.

Good luck!

Bob

[cdc3jj]

aegert... No offense taken man. I didn't know about the interference from the longer leads. I knew it was a mess, I tried to twist some of the leads together because thats what I saw but I didn't want to cut the leads shorter because I wasn't sure that was ok. Newbie mistake. I know now. I'll go through and shorten things up tomorrow. I messaged Nik and he responded within minutes and told me to check the voltage of my PT but I had to run out for a gig so I haven't gotten to anything yet. Thanks for the help, and trust me, I'm not going to get offended on something I know nothing about.

[aegert]

Originally Posted by cdc3jj

aegert... No offense taken man. I didn't know about the interference from the longer leads. I knew it was a mess, I tried to twist some of the leads together because thats what I saw but I didn't want to cut the leads shorter because I wasn't sure that was ok. Newbie mistake. I know now. I'll go through and shorten things up tomorrow. I messaged Nik and he responded within minutes and told me to check the voltage of my PT but I had to run out for a gig so I haven't gotten to anything yet. Thanks for the help, and trust me, I'm not going to get offended on something I know nothing about.

Right on! :-)
I don't know how much use of a soldering iron you have, so if this is a repeat for you skip it,,,

When you go to shorten your leads you should use a solder sucker to pull out all of the solder previously used. If you don't below the board and in side the sockets themselves you can cause shorts and a host of other problems like not being able to pu ttubes into sockets due to solder build up.... A solder sucker if you don't know is one of these..




When you shorten things. Make sure to pay attention to the way you rout lines crosss lines... Route along teh chassis itself and cross lines at 90degrees. I will go as far as raising the dc voltage lines into th epreamp tubes in a bridge arrangement the pins of the socket to keep them as far away from the signal as I can. Or vice versa

You could also run the heater wires as a twisted pair suspended in a bridge not along the chassis directly over the tubes and come to the pins from above..

here is a nice looking amp..





I hope this helps.. Tell Nik I said Hi..

A :-)

[aegert]

Originally Posted by bwacke

We shouldn't hijack a trouble-shooting thread, so I'll just say: open circuit jacks for solid state amps, shorting jacks for tube amps.

Solid state amp outputs in days of yore couldn't normally tolerate shorted outputs. The output transistors were destroyed by the excess current drawn through a shorting output. Newer amps usually have some current limiting circuits that buy you some time before the outputs fry.

A tube amp, on the other hand will flash over the output transformer and tubes if the amp is turned on or off with NO LOAD on the secondary. The inductive spike of an infinite impedance on the secondary causes the primary side to rise to 5 or more times the normal HV value of 360 - 500 Volts, yielding 1600 -2500 volts of transient spike during on or off switching. This voltage exceeds the insulation of the tubes and transformer and causes arcing, burning and sometimes lasting insulation breakdown that ruins the device.

Yes you are right.. I had a brain freeze.. Was thinking of something else and it ran away with me..

but if you do have an open speaker jack plug in the speaker quick do not turn off the amp...

[tubeswell]

Originally Posted by cdc3jj

I just hooked it all back up to recheck and noticed the recitier tube got pretty hot pretty quick. It was only on maybe 30 seconds. Could that be a problem?

Well have you got a B+ voltage?

That hot rectifier tube is one sure sign of a dead rectifier (or one that's full of air). (What colour is the getter material on the inside of the bottle? Is it powdery white?, or is it black or silver?) Did you try another rectifier tube?

[cdc3jj]

I cleaned up the preamp section tonight as well as the inputs. I haven't dug into the power section just yet, maybe tomorrow. I was lucky enough to fit the amp in the car for the holiday trip to our home town so it will keep me occupied between family gatherings.

Also, I was looking at the output jack and it occurred to me it might be wrong. I rechecked Nik's layout and I had it wired right but maybe you guys could clear it up for me... On his layout it looks like the tip is grounded and the sleeve is the positive connection. That seems backwards to me. Shouldn't the tip be positive?

I wanted to clean everything up before I checked the B+. Hopefully I can get this thing cranking by the weekend. Thanks

[limbe]

Yes,the sleeve should be grounded and the tip carrying the signal,calling it positive implies that there is DC on the output of the transformer but I understand what you mean.(Don´t want to nitpick but it´s good to learn the "language" of electronics.)Don´t want to confuse you ,but if you use a plastic output jack that´s completely insulated from the chassi you can choose if you want to ground the tip or sleeve.If you think about it a sec you´ll see why.

[cdc3jj]

Ok, I think I get it. I thought about it last night and came to the same conclusion. I'm used to working on guitars and pedals where the tip is always active. Thanks for the info

[cdc3jj]

B+ climbed to 1.6v.

[cdc3jj]

So obviously 1.6v is wrong. I took some pics of the power section. Hopefully I'm missing something somewhere. I double and triple checked my wiring by the layouts. HELP! I need somebody...

[cdc3jj]

One more question... I read somewhere when there are resistors that bridge the positive leads from the caps there is no need to drain the caps. Is that true? Do they drain into those resistors? Thanks

[Scott S]

Originally Posted by cdc3jj

One more question... I read somewhere when there are resistors that bridge the positive leads from the caps there is no need to drain the caps. Is that true? Do they drain into those resistors? Thanks

You're thinking of "bleeder resistors" -- those are high-value (like 220K-1Meg) resistors that go to ground. The ones you're looking at are the power supply voltage-dropping resistors.

- Scott

[cdc3jj]

I rewired the grounds into a star ground after some awful humming and a nice hair-raising shock from the standby switch. Turns out the grounding was the problem. After the rewire I have a great sounding, super quiet and shock-proof 5e3. It's burning in over night, and getting gigged this weekend. Thanks for the help. I'm thinking about a allen hot fudge with nuts for my next build. Now I have to find some stuff to sell.

[Scott S]

Awesomeness! Personally, I'd remove the standby switch altogether, since it's debatable whether they help or hurt tube life.

Keep us posted on how it (and you) perform at the gig!

- Scott

[cdc3jj]

The ceriatone 5e3 completely surpassed my expectations. Tone is the best I've ever had in an amp. Got tone compliments from a few of the snobs I play with, one of which plays a 66 princeton. I have to say, the 5e3 smoked it. I was surprised that pedals really weren't nessicary. I'm going to work with it with a smaller compliment of boxes to see what comes out. Now I'm looking at starting this supro rebuild that's been collecting dust as well as a tweed champ I started months ago. Thanks for the help. Supro rebuild thread coming soon.

Got to love that goodwill hand made cover too. Thats my first attempt sewing a cover.

[jchabalk]

hey, looks awesome!

i don't know if the speaker mag is in the way of being able to remove the tubes or not. on mine the baffle board is flipped the opposite direction which places the magnet sort of directly between the two sets of tubes (right under the speaker jacks). i don't know if you're able to do that but if you can pull the tubes you might fix it by flipping the baffle.

nice job working through those issues.