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Old 22nd Apr 2017, 6:42 am   #27
Diabolical Artificer
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Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Sleaford, Lincs. UK.
Posts: 7,667
Default Re: Vintage WEM Dominator guitar amplifier?

I think we are overwhelming the OP here, with different advice in terms he can't understand, I'll drop down a gear.

Right Mr Candle... when you have a dodgy pedal, whats the first thing you do? Check the battery right? So in this case we want to check out your amplifier's power supply or PSU for short. So we whip out all of the valves to make sure your mains transformer (tfmr short hand) is ok. Make sure you know where each valve goes, draw a simple diagram.

So, pad of paper and pen, valves out, power on, left hand on top of your head or in your pocket, probe in your right hand, DMM/meter on AC volts, black probe clipped to chassis.. See that tfmr on the left pic 1, what do get? You should get something like 230/40v ( mains in Oz same as UK) on the brown wire, CAREFUL, THIS IS LIVE MAINS, then you should have around 230v 0v 230v or maybe just one 230v, then you should have either 3v 0v 3v or 6v ish. If so mains tfmr is ok.

I'm trying to walk the OP through here step by step, I know it could be a dodgy cap or resistor, but he's never worked on a valve amp before.

Next power off, make sure those big caps are discharged with the discharger I told you about. If your going to work on this amp, lets be safe. So discharge big cap, meter on DC volts, black lead clipped to chassis, red probe on cap +, you should have a few volts, about 3 or 4v, discharge again. See that other tfmr on the top right corner pic one? Meter on ohm's, pad of paper and pen, black lead in one hand, red in the other. See that red and white stripped wire and the yellow one? What do you get there? Take some other readings, you should get readings of about 5 - 100 ohms as in the the DCR table in the attachment below. Post your readings here.

Were mostly in agreement Colin, the G15 was in the Dominator bass model but sounds well on the guitar version. My Dominator has a 12" Goodmans. I managed to pick up 4 NOS Greenback G12's for less than a fiver, the Gods were smiling on the casa del Wobble that day. Ah, so he was reading the OPT, those readings are still high.

Anyhoo, back to the amp, your right using one anode R is unusual, I guess WEM were being cheapskates. My WEM Dominator has two normal inputs with a tremelo that can be switched in by a FS. I put a little SW on it for home use. It also has two mic input's. Looking at the pics in post one, it looks like we have an input stage, top valve in the screened can, whats the betting it's an EF86? I think that will be a mic input. then we may have a normal/guitar in, phase splitter and maybe a rectifier.

Hope that helps, Andy.
Attached Files
File Type: pdf EDB1650TA.pdf (244.2 KB, 64 views)
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Last edited by AC/HL; 22nd Apr 2017 at 2:39 pm. Reason: As requested
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