The modern version is this:
http://www.trapster.com/blackberry.php
Interesting; I didn’t think the 6146 would do that well down in the audio range - they were really planned as RF tubes; and the power dropped off quite a bit when you got below 2 MHz. (I’m thinking about the B revision here, maybe the earlier versions were a little more forgiving.)
My brother had a Bassman 50, for a while - until the oldest brother (the Civil Engineer/Guitar picker) told him about making it into a 75. Then Don was sent Art’s hand-drawn schematic (copied from a Fender manual) and a bunch of parts from The Chicago Store. Between the two younger brothers -I was playing the solder gun- we managed to make it go after only blowing two fuses in the amp and tripping the house circuit breaker only once.
OKay, I have to admit, the “conversion” didn’t go THAT easily.
After the bedroom circuit breaker popped; I discovered that “somehow” the tip of one of Dad’s screwdrivers was mis-shapened and had a bluish-black “tinge” to it. And from that moment onward, if Mom took a picture using her flash unit, the dog would run around the house and out into the back yard, howling
I’ve done so much amp work over the years I’ve had most of the fun electrical things happen. Screwdriver shorting 650VDC to ground, big spark. Finger getting too close to 550VDC, lightning bolt arc’d into the bone on my middle finger and burned a pinhole in my fingertip. Put an electrolytic capacitor for a bias supply in backwards, plugged the amp in and it blew up and sprayed oil on the amp board and fortunately not on me. Oh and if molten solder ever gets on your skin? Don’t try and brush it off with your hand. It just spreads it over a larger area. Lol.
Done that, twice. (Including the Bassman 50/75) Well, once was only a 330V plate supply.
Finger getting too close to 550VDC, lightning bolt arc’d into the bone on my middle finger and burned a pinhole in my fingertip.
600V off one of the plate caps on the Phantom. Only once - I learned not to do that the FIRST time
Put an electrolytic capacitor for a bias supply in backwards, plugged the amp in and it blew up and sprayed oil on the amp board and fortunately not on me.
35V 3300uF can placed across the power and ground leads for a motorized "buttonhook’ antenna in the feedhorn assembly of a “C-Band” (4.3GHz) satellite receiver back in 1986. Our customer (was at that time the owner of Tucson’s Lincoln-Mercury dealership, BTW) had a 250 ft run from his entertainment center to the 11’ KLM dish behind his back yard and poolhouse; the run was so long that the pulses from the rotator jack clicking on and off would induce on the polorotor signal line, causing it to park itself somewhere between vertical and horizontal. Hence, the cap. Owner’s wife’s cockatiel (sp?) was flying around the house, had once landede on my shoulder. Two minutes after my boss (Who, BTW, was the nimrod that wired up the can- NOT ME!) powered up the system, that cap decided “Enough was enough” and popped about 2 feet from the left side of my face. When my ears stopped ringing and as I was peeling little yellowish white pieces of “fluff” out of my face; the only thing I could think was “The D*MN BIRD EXPLODED???”
Oh and if molten solder ever gets on your skin? Don’t try and brush it off with your hand. It just spreads it over a larger area. Lol.
Yup. More times than I care to think about. It’s really nasty if you do that to the palm of your hand while soldering an N-connector on the end of some 1" hardline; on a tower, 125 feet above ground. Climbing down is somewhat painful.
Nowadays in my present job, if I’m not thinking and manage to touch an uninsulated binding post on some long-run T1 circuit using 130VDC line-powered repeaters; I hardly notice it.
I honestly believe it’s due to previous nerve damage.
Ha, DD, I wish you lived in Chicago, I’d buy you a beer or three! I bet there would be some great yarns spun. Cheers!