AX84 Moonlight Amp Build Project

[Marcel]

I know it's your project Doc, however if it were mine and I was intending to use the EF86 I'd be looking at mimicking the AC30 circuit in terms of gain and biasing. The clean channel AC30 input is pretty special and would be a very nice to have.

My AC15 clone build will only be the Tremolo channel with two different gain inputs as that channel uses only 12AX7's of which I have plenty.

In the past I found tag strips pretty easy and very flexible. A bit more planning and earlier commitment is needed with any form of turret board layout. On my tag strip 50W 2204 build I got the circuit and built it from input to output in that order by adding tag strips and components as required. The AC15 clone has a generic turret board so will need much more early planning and adjustments to component placement as I build it. Turret board pretty well defines where your connections are right from the start but the result looks neater and is much easier to repair and service. At the moment my biggest headaches with the AC15 clone turret board planning is wire lengths minimisation and then separation of HT and the earth points, and there are a lot of earth points...

[DrNomis_44]

I know it's your project Doc, however if it were mine and I was intending to use the EF86 I'd be looking at mimicking the AC30 circuit in terms of gain and biasing. The clean channel AC30 input is pretty special and would be a very nice to have.

My AC15 clone build will only be the Tremolo channel with two different gain inputs as that channel uses only 12AX7's of which I have plenty.

In the past I found tag strips pretty easy and very flexible. A bit more planning and earlier commitment is needed with any form of turret board layout. On my tag strip 50W 2204 build I got the circuit and built it from input to output in that order by adding tag strips and components as required. The AC15 clone has a generic turret board so will need much more early planning and adjustments to component placement as I build it. Turret board pretty well defines where your connections are right from the start but the result looks neater and is much easier to repair and service. At the moment my biggest headaches with the AC15 clone turret board planning is wire lengths minimisation and then separation of HT and the earth points, and there are a lot of earth points...

What if I modded the preamp circuit of the Moonlight Amp so that it was more like the AC30's preamp, wouldn't that be cool?, I'd end up with a 1 watt AC30 style amp which I'd be able to crank up to get that nice AC30 chiming overdrive, the power amp section is a self-biasing setup like the AC30, I'll definitely have to look into that for sure, I'm currently in the process of fixing an intermittent power switch in one of my Digital Multimeters (the one that can measure capacitance and inductance), the intermittent switch in question is a latching push-on push-off type, and I think it's not latching reliably due to it being a bit loose due to manufacturing tolerances, I'm thinking of trying some judiciously applied super glue to some strategic places on the switch to try and make it more reliable without getting any super glue inside the switch, but knowing Murphy's Law something will go wrong like my fingers being glued together, etc...lol.


Getting back on track, when I get round to soldering in all the parts I might first do a drawing and plan it all out so that I can get the layout all neat and tidy, I've always wanted to try using tagstrips to build a guitar amp so this amp build project is a good excuse for it, so that's that decided, tagstrips it is.