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Vintage threads from the first ten years

Finished D-u-m-b-l-e-clone

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6/19/2000 12:05 PM

Graydon Stuckey

Finished D-u-m-b-l-e-clone

Guys,

I finished my D-clone recently, even so far as to use the Vox black diamond grill cloth (thanks for the tips on sources - that stuff was hard to find.) I posted a photo of the head and 1-12 cab on my webpage at

http://elektro.cmhnet.org/~graydon

There are also photos there of my D-lator-clone which I built into a half rack enclosure. That device works great. I have found that the D-lator-clone works great as a tube preamp into the front end of a SS guitar amp. I plugged my guitar into it, and then into my JC120head and the clean tones were very nice. Most of the time though, I use the D-lator-clone as an effects send from the D-clone into my effects rack, which then has its own stereo power amp and speakers.

I'll probably post some more photos once I get them back from processing.

Comments are welcome.

Thanks,
Graydon D. Stuckey
http://elektro.cmhnet.org/~graydon

6/19/2000 12:21 PM
A.S	Nice job. I´m impressed by your bench. Nice and clean. You should see my bench -Where´s that Marshall, I know I left it here yesterday???? A.S

6/19/2000 3:20 PM

Great job!!

Which circuit version did you build? Skyliner, or earlier?

The cosmetics are amazingly close. The only giveaway from the outside is the "NOT" preceding "Dumble" on the faceplate. This project must have taken quite a long time, especially with a family to attend to!

What I really want to know is: are you happy with the way it sounds, in clean and overdrive modes? How close does it get to the sounds you hear on records?

6/19/2000 3:34 PM

Graydon Stuckey

quote:
"Great job!!

Which circuit version did you build? Skyliner, or earlier?"

Thanks. I built the early version. I wanted the Larry Carlton sound from his early albums.

quote:
"The cosmetics are amazingly close. The only giveaway from the outside is the "NOT" preceding "Dumble" on the faceplate. This project must have taken quite a long time, especially with a family to attend to!"

It took me about 5 months working a couple evenings per week. Much time was spent waiting for parts to come from Mouser since I didn't know in advance exactly what I would need for everything.

quote:
"What I really want to know is: are you happy with the way it sounds, in clean and overdrive modes? How close does it get to the sounds you hear on records?"

I haven't recorded it yet, so I don't know if its recorded tone will duplicate a real Dumble's recorded tone. I have only heard a couple real Dumbles when I've seen Carlton live, so its hard to tell for sure if my amp sounds like a real one. I doubt that it sounds just like a real one, but it sounds great to me so I'm happy.

The cosmetics are close, but I used the wrong vinyl for one thing. The handles are close, and the corners are correct. I think that the dimensions of the chassis and cab are pretty close. Oddly enough, I wasn't trying to build a cosmetic clone, but a couple parts fell into place in the beginning and it became apparent that a close cosmetic clone was going to be easier than I thought so I went for it.

Now I have the bug to build amps... :-)

:-)

Later,
Graydon Stuckey
http://elektro.cmhnet.org/~graydon

6/20/2000 7:38 AM
Steve Ahola	Graydon: Looks great! I especially liked your relay board (sure beats those generic ones that Radio Shack sells!). And your D'Lator is a work of art... did you already explain why you have two transformers? Maybe you could post the Mouser numbers for both of them... --Thanks for sharing your pix! Steve Ahola

6/20/2000 11:02 AM

Graydon Stuckey

quote:
" Looks great! I especially liked your relay board (sure beats those generic ones that Radio Shack sells!)"

Thanks. I suppose it would have been more authentic to have two separate PCBs for the relays, but I thought it made sense to put them together. I am going to change the relay PCB to turn one relay around. That would allow me to bring the coil power in at the centre, and keep it away from the signal traces on the PCB. I wonder if that might help the noise issues.

quote:
"...did you already explain why you have two transformers? Maybe you could post the Mouser numbers for both of them..."

For the D-lator-clone the top tranny is the 230v flatpack from Magnetek. It is 553FP-230-25 and the bottom one is a 12.6v filament tranny. It is 553FP-12-475. For some reason, I seem to be getting too much voltage from the HV tranny though. It should be about 320 VDC but I'm getting almost 400 VDC. I'm not sure if its a faulty tranny, or if I screwed up the pinout. I just got a couple more, so I'll check them out and see. I'm getting set to build a MKII D-lator-clone to see if I can make it better.

Thanks for the kind words.

Later,
Graydon Stuckey
http://elektro.cmhnet.org/~graydon

6/20/2000 6:46 PM

quote:
"It should be about 320 VDC but I'm getting almost 400 VDC"

Yeah,me too. I got the same tranny from Mouser for my pre-amp and was getting 400+ DC from it. Maybe they screwed up winding them. If you figure out a way to hook it other than the typical parallel primaryseries secondary arrangemet, please let us know.BTW, beautiful workmanship!
Stan

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