A
Arfa Daily
Guest
So, following on from my good experience every time when info is needed from
Fender, apparently backed up by Mr Cook's experience earlier this week,
today I tried the same thing with another reputable company - Gibson, as in
Les Paul.
I had a little Gibson Goldtone "Les Paul Junior" amplifier turn up, reported
"dead". And indeed it was, because the fuse in the IEC inlet was blown,
badly. It had an American power lead on it, plugged into UK adaptor, which
started alarm bells ringing. I replaced the fuse, and wound the supply up on
the variac, whilst monitoring the AC heater volts of the output valve. It
was at exactly 6.3 volts when the variac was at about 110 volts, confirming
that this was indeed a U.S. spec amplifier. A quick check with the owner
revealed that it was a recent acquisition, and the person that sold it to
him had told him that the adaptor was everything that it needed to make it
work in the UK ...
Anyways, I digress. Looking at the transformer wiring, there was a couple of
twisted pairs and a sealed-off white wire around the primary side of things,
so I figured that this might well be a split primary tranny with the two
windings currently in parallel, and a +10v tap that was unused. I went to
the Gibson website to see if I could find a copy of the schematic to verify
that it was indeed a 'universal' transformer. Of course, there was every
schematic for every guitar and amplifier they have ever sold, except this
little Junior ... So I emailed technical to ask for it. Some hours later, I
got a reply from somewhere in Europe saying that they did not have the
schematic, but fortunately, it was available on the net. This was followed
by a link about a thousand characters long, to Google images, where there
are several not-very-good GIF images that have been drawn by third parties.
And of course, none of them have bothered to show a split primary
transformer.
Sad to say, this made me a bit mad and I sent an email back telling them
what I thought of a supposedly reputable large company that did not have
schematics for products that they sold, and then had the gall to refer
people to third party schematics on the net.
Fortunately, having many years of experience in this game, I managed to
figure which wires were which, and to get the two windings wired in series
and in the correct phase to make it 240 volt. But how much easier it would
have been to have had a schematic with a configuration table to do it from.
Am I being unreasonable expecting them to have information on a product that
they proudly put their name to ? I mean, this thing ain't cheap. Looking on
the net, they seem to go for anything from $350 to $500 + which is a lot
for a very simple 2 valve 5 watt amp ...
Arfa
Fender, apparently backed up by Mr Cook's experience earlier this week,
today I tried the same thing with another reputable company - Gibson, as in
Les Paul.
I had a little Gibson Goldtone "Les Paul Junior" amplifier turn up, reported
"dead". And indeed it was, because the fuse in the IEC inlet was blown,
badly. It had an American power lead on it, plugged into UK adaptor, which
started alarm bells ringing. I replaced the fuse, and wound the supply up on
the variac, whilst monitoring the AC heater volts of the output valve. It
was at exactly 6.3 volts when the variac was at about 110 volts, confirming
that this was indeed a U.S. spec amplifier. A quick check with the owner
revealed that it was a recent acquisition, and the person that sold it to
him had told him that the adaptor was everything that it needed to make it
work in the UK ...
Anyways, I digress. Looking at the transformer wiring, there was a couple of
twisted pairs and a sealed-off white wire around the primary side of things,
so I figured that this might well be a split primary tranny with the two
windings currently in parallel, and a +10v tap that was unused. I went to
the Gibson website to see if I could find a copy of the schematic to verify
that it was indeed a 'universal' transformer. Of course, there was every
schematic for every guitar and amplifier they have ever sold, except this
little Junior ... So I emailed technical to ask for it. Some hours later, I
got a reply from somewhere in Europe saying that they did not have the
schematic, but fortunately, it was available on the net. This was followed
by a link about a thousand characters long, to Google images, where there
are several not-very-good GIF images that have been drawn by third parties.
And of course, none of them have bothered to show a split primary
transformer.
Sad to say, this made me a bit mad and I sent an email back telling them
what I thought of a supposedly reputable large company that did not have
schematics for products that they sold, and then had the gall to refer
people to third party schematics on the net.
Fortunately, having many years of experience in this game, I managed to
figure which wires were which, and to get the two windings wired in series
and in the correct phase to make it 240 volt. But how much easier it would
have been to have had a schematic with a configuration table to do it from.
Am I being unreasonable expecting them to have information on a product that
they proudly put their name to ? I mean, this thing ain't cheap. Looking on
the net, they seem to go for anything from $350 to $500 + which is a lot
for a very simple 2 valve 5 watt amp ...
Arfa
