This started out as someone on TDPRI asking for some enlightenment on what the various components do in a 5E3… before I realized it I had described nearly every component! Here it has been consolidated and reordered, along with a copy of the Weber 5E3 Deluxe layout that was used as reference.
I had been wanting to try an octal preamp for a while, so I figured 2011 would be a good time to build one. This amp has gone through about a dozen revisions with tons of experimentation along the way. After 2 years without major modification, I ditched the cascode and moonlight tone stack on Channel 2 in favor of a two-stage design. After a ton of trial and error, attempts at all sorts of interesting preamps, the current “final” version squeezes roughly 50 watts into a chassis smaller than your typical 18-watter. It was quite a challenge, and it’s...
The idea behind the Revibe is brilliant: Take a standalone reverb unit and add the two-phase “harmonic vibrato” found in the 6G12 Concert. I first built this Revibe in 2010. I bought the fiberboard and power transformer from Weber, and used my own components for everything else. I modified the layout to fit a narrower chassis by relocating the power filtration section to a ‘doghouse’, but all the fundamental orientations remained the same as stock.
Building an all-tube-powered 5.1 channel surround sound home theater system is probably the most ambitious project I have attempted. My goal is to build a surround sound home theater system using all tube amps, and to do it without bankrupting myself in the process. To pull this off I had to set a few guidelines that would keep this project under control: