Skully's next tube amp project: Fender PA100 + 2x12

[skullservant]

SHIT OF LIONS RULE THE DIVINE

Gonna scribe this on the inside. IN BLOOD

[Achtane]

What kinda wood is the cab made out of?

[skullservant]

The front is poplar, and the rest is baltic burch (as far as I can remember) hahah I'm horrible with naming woods

[friendship]

lion shit is an acceptable substitute.

[the Life Aquatic]

I love my PA100. Best drunken purchase ever!

[skullservant]

Headshell getting some poly:



Hoping to have it all together by next weekend!

[skullservant]

Cab is done! Just have to load it up. Beyond stoked.

[Chankgeez]

That looks sweet.

I was gonna say "It's not too late to make it a 2x15."...

but now it looks like it's too late.

[skullservant]

That looks sweet.

I was gonna say "It's not too late to make it a 2x15."...

but now it looks like it's too late.

hahahha

I wish I could have a 2x15. That would rule. I miss having a 2x15, especially for bass

[Chankgeez]

Yeah, 2x15 is my favorite speaker configuration.

I kinda wanna practice amp with a 2x15.

[skullservant]

hahaha I wish I could

[skullservant]

Decided today I'm gonig to order one of these from Avatar so that I have a ton of wiring options for my heads:

[skullservant]

ITS FINALLY ALL DONE!! Spent the day over at Brandon's house getting everything together.
All I can say is WOW. The cab rules. Tight low end, nice high end.
We started the afternoon by drilling out the hole for the Avatar jack plate:



After that, we loaded in the speakers, and I learned an incredibly valuable lesson.
WHEN USING CLAMP IN SPEAKER CONNECTORS (LIKE FOUND ON ALL PA SPEAKERS) MAKE SURE YOU ARE CLAMPING WIRE AND NOT SHIELDING PLASTIC.
Made the incredible, sad mistake of accidentally clipping the wire shielding plastic instead of the actual wire and ended up frying one of the drivers.
Not an incredible amount of frying, but enough to hear a buzz at low volume which was enough for me to want to swap the speaker out.
Luckily I had a Mackie PA that had it's brains fried but the speaker was perfectly fine, so I took that out of the Mackie and put it into this 2x12 along with the other RCF Driver.

Specs:

RCF (right): 8 ohms, 400w, 50Hz - 3.0kHz, 98dB
Mackie (left): neo, 8 ohms, 450w, 45Hz - 3kHz, ???dB

So they are rated about the same. The Mackie speaker has a little bit lower frequency rating, but I believe the dB rating might be a little higher (total overall original Mackie PA rating was 127dB, so I'd say the driver was over 100dB), but together the two speakers sound great and it makes me feel confident since they are rated for about the same power handling.

The PA headshell is 1000x stronger now after the deconstruction and reconstruction using modern wood glue and pocket screws. We cut a new face board for it and wrapped it in the left over grill cloth from the Dirge Combo Amp build, I think it looks awesome and a little better than stock Fender silver.

ANYWAYS, PRON:





Got to flex the cab live today, which was neat. At full volume the buzzing wasn't an issue (I hadn't swapped the speaker out yet) and it was incredibly, incredibly loud. I couldn't go past 2 with the Verellen.

Another thought/realization is that I'm going to have to replace the tube sockets on the PA100 sooner than later. I had mounted all 4 power tubes before I left out for home yesterday and I wasn't even two blocks from Brandon's shop before one of the 6L6 wiggled loose and fell into the chassis (luckily it was okay). Just makes me nervous that the power tubes aren't in there very securely. It's either replace the sockets or get retainers.

[Gone Fission]

I've heard of retensioning the metal sleeves in the sockets but never done it. If the info is online, you could save some bucks. If I have a snow day tomorrow I'll try to see if I have instructions in my library.

[skullservant]

Interesting! I'd be curious to read about it.

I'm just super thankful I had the Mackie driver to be able to load it in around the same specs for the time being.

The speaker was brand new, I wonder if it might be covered for me to send it back to RCF to swap out?