Author: Laird Bedore

Amplifiers

6 Mar, 2011

6BM8-Powered 5F6A Bassman

IMG_1694

When I started this project, I had never heard of The Little Wing… I wish I had, it would’ve saved me a TON of work on calculations. Ironically I chose a lot of the same values (39k NFB, 5.1k grid stoppers, etc) that Geezer did; we must have similar tastes in power amp behavior! After tinkering around with the EF-Bomb for long enough, I decided to build something else out of the Frontman 15 chassis and cabinet that had been serving as guinea-pig for so long.

Effects

17 Feb, 2011

Boss AB2 Power Jack Mod

IMG_1673

The Boss AB2 is a relatively inexpensive and readily available buffered A/B footswitch. It suffers from one critical problem: it cannot be powered by a pedalboard supply. Boss decided to make this pedal run only from a pair of AAA batteries stored inside the unit, which must be disassembled to change. And if the batteries die, no sound gets through because it’s a buffered pedal. Because of these problems, the AB2 is a rare sight to see on pedalboards, but that can be fixed with just a few parts and a few minutes of work.

Motorcycling

30 Jan, 2011

2005 Honda VFR800 Interceptor

I was never really drawn to sport bikes, preferring vintage standards, oddball cruisers and one-off choppers. But when I had to scratch that itch for a new (and not just new-to-me) bike and the Honda Magna had been discontinued, my fascination with the V4 drew me to the Interceptor. Its mix of street-applicable performance, agility, durability and long-ride comfort really made me a believer in the sport-biased side of the sport-touring world.

Amplifiers

5 Aug, 2010

6BM8 Hi-Fi Amp

Final amp

This came up because I decided to start a little hifi project – something to push my bedroom TV’s audio to something better than the built-in speakers. So I thought, why not try to add adjustable compression? Warmly-biased triodes can compress one side of a soundwave, so what about sticking two in series to compress both sides?