I've looked at lots of videos covering the sb-220 and have not found a good explanation of how to tune the AMP. Plate voltage ECT. I can't think of anyone that could do a video like that than you. The best box builder. Thanks
Mr. BBI, You have a big fan base in the Ham community because of your technical skills and knowledge, as well as your ability to modify, improve and increase the quality of original designs and components. I've learned more about my SB-220 from you than from the original assembly manual !!
Thank you for not "butchering shit" and restoring these to there former glory. I've been a Ham Operator since '92 and I wish I had half of the knowledge you have. Thank you for your attention to detail and your knowledge about this stuff. If I need anything done, it's going to you! Thanks BBI!
This video and that China made adcom amp video you made are just spectacular... Just nice pieces of equipment and thanks to you others got to see it as well. 73👍🏻
That is one pretty SB220. Mine is a 50 yr old beater nowhere near as nice but it makes plenty of RF for me nightly on 80 meters. The tubes in mine are 26 years old and still do full output. I have fond memories of running one of these on 11 meters many years ago before I got my ticket. Back then a kilowatt was a big deal...today it's a driver. LoL
Damn, now THAT one is a work of art with a LOT of TLC invested in it ! I LOVE the gold plated tube sockets ! The electronic bandswitch is a very nice retrofit, cool ! I was wondering if those super heavy duty plate caps offered by RF Junk would be too large to fit the SB220 but this video just answered that for me, I ordered two of them for my 'SB-226' 'masterpiece today, thanks for mentioning RFJunk in one of your videos Luke ! I wasn't aware of their offerings until you mentioned them. 73 ! Mark, WN3SIX
"The input tune is still deplorable" Hmm... Too bad we dont know a damn good RF Tech? :) - BBI, Bro, seriously thanks so much for taking the extra time to film this stuff i've been a broadcast engineer for 20+yrs now, Playing with TH347 Tetrodes and 3cx15000 and im STILL learning shit from you every video! .. again, thanks a bunch!!!
That is the best SB 220 I ever seen.worked on a bunch. That 20 amp twist lock plug is the same on a generator .That may be what it plugged into at one time. I have seen this before that some hams camping with long wire strung between trees. much better video and audio !! 73s great gob to all that did this amp !!
That sequencer board might be for running full break in CW, which I have experienced and really enjoyed. With a large beam antenna and an amplifier, you can sometimes hear your own signal backscattering if the receiver recovers quickly enough. I've also heard round-the-world echoes with one beam pointed 180 degrees from another. It's fun when you have access to a ham radio contest station on a nice hilltop.
Looks like a lot of thought and care went it this amplifier, fwiw my TL922 has a much simpler work around for hot switching. I see that you always ground the grids, my amp seems happy with grounded grid but I went a bit madder trying to get lower inductance. I might have to look for an SB220 myself now, plenty of space to do decent improvements. Good to see comments enabled, not all of us want to give you stick. Great video, very inspiring.
Thanks for turning the comments on. As long as they are civil, I usually read all of them. There's always a tidbit or two to be found within. As luck would have it, I am waiting on the postman to bring me a Harbach metering board, new caps, and a soft start for my 6 meter monoband SB-220. Your previous video will be a great help in doing the job right. How about a short video on how you ground the grids and the reason why the stock grounding needs to be improved. 73, de WG2E.
I appreciate you turning into check this video out so thank you. I think I've done. No less than five specific videos on the reasons why we ground the grids in the sb-220 units. The primary reason that we want to ground the grids is that the inductor chokes that are on the bottom of the tubes at this point in the game are starting to fail and as far as we can tell with the thousands and thousands of three 500 Z boxes that are out there instead of just straight grounding the grids if you do a wire wound choke like this it makes zero difference in protecting the tube in any format it does nothing to help clamp off oscillation on different frequencies all the different things that they have claimed are the reason why you want to run an inductive choke on your grids we've come to disprove.. it creates by grounding the grids that creates a smoother better simpler operating amplifier. And it's one less thing to fail.. now the grid ring on the 3 500z has three posts the sb-220 only one of those post is grounded and that is through that inductor choke the others are connected with capacitors we found the one that chokes goes bad and there's no other point of ground Source either be from the pin breaking or the actual choke itself breaking down and it usually has a tendency to tear up the amplifier worse than any anything that you could do to it as an operator. Hopefully that answers all of your questions have a good day in it once again I appreciate the views.. and by the way I did this via voice to text so I apologize if some of the spelling isn't Rider the words are absolutely correct..
@@BoxBuilderIdaho Thanks a lot for the quick reply and taking the time to do so. You got me to spring for a variac too. I'm still working my way through all your SB-220 videos. A great resource. 73, WG2E.
Pristine Amp BBI, The 7-Duece Duece Mac Daddy from Dice Rollin Reno, NV! Are you training the next generation of young Amp Builders yet? Super Bowl Traditions!
After spending 30 years in the semiconductor industry working with Ion Implantation and other high vacuum processing equipment, it always makes me nervous when I see that someone has painted any surface that's adjacent to surfaces carrying HVDC. When the paint is non-conductive it makes a single-leaded capacitor that can charge up and that stray electrostatic charge can interfere with conventional circuitry. Also, placing surfaces that have been painted black beside the 3-500Z tubes will make those surfaces absorb lots of IR radiation. That's actually great for enhancing tube cooling but, it can damage the paint if it's not a high temperature type. Bear in mind that the Anode assembly inside the 3-500Z is mostly being Optically cooled by black body emission of IR light. Blowing lots of air over the glass vacuum envelope does very little to cool the tube's anode but, placing an air or water cooled black, steel plate beside the tube will do an excellent job of cooling the 3-500Z. Just look inside the Kenwood TL922A to see its' black body cooling scheme. If you place water cooled, black steel plates beside these tube you wouldn't need any fan at all because your cooling would be entirely optical.
Dude... All my buddies are gonna come over this weekend and have a drinking game while watching this video. Every time you say perfect, we drink. We should be f, ed up by the 10 min mark ! Thanks bro !
This is the only other sb220 with vacuum relays other than mine. And I'm not sure how it was done. Trying to reverse engineer it. Because my bias flop is 6.8v-30v. my black bias wire goes to a 24v power supply to run the relays
Apparently nobody told you that you must never touch these tubes glass with you bare hands because if you do so it will leave finger points on the glass and these finger prints will get hotter than the rest of the glass and this might cause the glass to explode during opération...
I really like that built, like any other project you show in your channel. Do you mind to build an amplifier using an old AM transmitter??? I’m planning to do that with a Heathkit DX-60... I’m looking for ideas (your channel have a bunch of them)
I wonder who put this amp together? I own one and would love to have a list of parts and wiring diagram so I could do the same to mine. Awesome build. Another great video BBI.
I thought I thoroughly covered that in the video who did it what is call sign was what his name was that this was a one-off creation if you have a standard sb-220 all that information is very publicly listed
@@BoxBuilderIdaho, some people seem to have a short attention span. Nevertheless this was good to watch again. I think most of us that love engineering appreciate the care that went into building it. I was lucky enough to get a mint TL922 with new tubes from an American that was leaving the UK. His "keeper" amplifier was a customised SB220, utterly beautiful, large transformer and improved cooling with black powder coated armour with black fascia. A random question, I have not modified the TL922 other than grounding the grids, I use it mostly on 40m/80m, the gain seems very high (about 16dB), with about 20w of drive I get 800w output. With UK power limits that means keeping to a miniscule 10-15w input, the gain is more than I expected for a triode amplifier. Is this typical?
Hi genius, jus want to know if I could get my radio fix, an get you to built a nice clean amplifier for me, am all the way in Jamaica west Indies, I watch your videos every day, great job, I do a little bit a technician work some times too, am a cber from in the 1970s !!
It is beautiful. But, can I tune it to the 15,000 meter band so I can run my KEFs or some Quad ESLs? The side and top panels look right, too. Like a custom car.
Hi bbi...love the vids. Question for you or anyone, what is the max reasonable power input the 2 3-500z’s can handle? Even in a sb220 with stock transformer....cheers
According to the datasheet the tube has a maximum dissipation of 500 watts on the plate and a grid dissipation of 20 watts translation into human English tube can produce about a thousand watts of power Peak and receive about 80 to 90 Watts worth of Drive Peak.. but according to the book the actual datasheet you should never put any more than 20 RMS watts or average Watts in you should only see about 500 average Watts out
My amp has a fuse off the high voltage. One little steel tube driving , three big steel tubes. One watt from radio . Gives me one thousand with a swing of 7000 . Amp has a drive, load, tune on back for radio. Plate load, antenna tune, power output. On front of the amp. Power output will vary from 200 to one thousand. I normally run 500 - 1000 with modulation down on radio swings 5000- 7000. Do not know who built the amp. It has no name on it. Turn modulation down on radio so as to not burn up the maco 5000 antenna.
What meters does this thing operate on? I found one on ebay SOLD!! !and it says Supported Modes SSB, AM, FM, CW Band HF, VHF, AM I'm only familiar CB band.
80, 40, 20, 15, and 10 meters are the standard SB-220 bands. You can probably find mods for some of the newer ham bands and 11 meters (which used to be a ham band.)
I left them on intentionally I talked about it in the video about how I'm going to leave the comments on but everybody needs to be nice and respectful to each other.. I do know how to do this believe it or not and I've been leaving them on on many of the videos here lately..
3 words! Lighted Magnifier Glass.
Just stumbled on your channel, FANTASTIC!!!!!
Thank You,
Semper Fi
Hooray Marine
Been doing radios my whole life. I can learn something from just about anybody....and that certainly has been true here. Thanks!
I've looked at lots of videos covering the sb-220 and have not found a good explanation of how to tune the AMP. Plate voltage ECT. I can't think of anyone that could do a video like that than you. The best box builder. Thanks
Mr. BBI, You have a big fan base in the Ham community because of your technical skills and knowledge, as well as your ability to modify, improve and increase the quality of original designs and components. I've learned more about my SB-220 from you than from the original assembly manual !!
Wow the Rolls Royce of restoration on an SB-220. Beautiful amp. 👍
Thank you for not "butchering shit" and restoring these to there former glory. I've been a Ham Operator since '92 and I wish I had half of the knowledge you have. Thank you for your attention to detail and your knowledge about this stuff. If I need anything done, it's going to you! Thanks BBI!
As a cb and Ham operator it’s refreshing to see things done right and have respect for other peoples gear and money
This video and that China made adcom amp video you made are just spectacular... Just nice pieces of equipment and thanks to you others got to see it as well. 73👍🏻
That is one pretty SB220. Mine is a 50 yr old beater nowhere near as nice but it makes plenty of RF for me nightly on 80 meters. The tubes in mine are 26 years old and still do full output. I have fond memories of running one of these on 11 meters many years ago before I got my ticket. Back then a kilowatt was a big deal...today it's a driver. LoL
Absolutely beautiful amplifier hands down nicest one I've ever seen on your bench! Thanks for sharing Luke and the time that it takes to do that. Joel
Use the Scotty formula. Always multiply your repair estimates by a factor of 3 then you can gain the reputation as a miracle worker.
@@tonyrmathis haha
Damn, now THAT one is a work of art with a LOT of TLC invested in it ! I LOVE the gold plated tube sockets ! The electronic bandswitch is a very nice retrofit, cool ! I was wondering if those super heavy duty plate caps offered by RF Junk would be too large to fit the SB220 but this video just answered that for me, I ordered two of them for my 'SB-226' 'masterpiece today, thanks for mentioning RFJunk in one of your videos Luke ! I wasn't aware of their offerings until you mentioned them. 73 ! Mark, WN3SIX
"The input tune is still deplorable" Hmm... Too bad we dont know a damn good RF Tech? :) - BBI, Bro, seriously thanks so much for taking the extra time to film this stuff i've been a broadcast engineer for 20+yrs now, Playing with TH347 Tetrodes and 3cx15000 and im STILL learning shit from you every video! .. again, thanks a bunch!!!
Very nice 220. Makes me miss playing with radios and amps, had a lot of fun over the years.
That is the best SB 220 I ever seen.worked on a bunch. That 20 amp twist lock plug is the same on a generator .That may be what it plugged into at one time. I have seen this before that some hams camping with long wire strung between trees. much better video and audio !! 73s great gob to all that did this amp !!
Ight man, you got a sub. I'm 5 minutes in. I like your style.
Nice unit... Appreciate your vid's. "Have a great day"
That sequencer board might be for running full break in CW, which I have experienced and really enjoyed. With a large beam antenna and an amplifier, you can sometimes hear your own signal backscattering if the receiver recovers quickly enough. I've also heard round-the-world echoes with one beam pointed 180 degrees from another. It's fun when you have access to a ham radio contest station on a nice hilltop.
Thank you Luke for all the videos you put up ,ya make this old radio nut from Australia very happy 73 025.
Looks like a lot of thought and care went it this amplifier, fwiw my TL922 has a much simpler work around for hot switching. I see that you always ground the grids, my amp seems happy with grounded grid but I went a bit madder trying to get lower inductance. I might have to look for an SB220 myself now, plenty of space to do decent improvements. Good to see comments enabled, not all of us want to give you stick. Great video, very inspiring.
That's one sweet amp. I'd be proud to stare at that on a regular basis.
Speechless!!!! That's a 50ton ship in an 8oz bottle.
That was a beautiful specimen for sure thx bbi
Thanks for turning the comments on. As long as they are civil, I usually read all of them. There's always a tidbit or two to be found within. As luck would have it, I am waiting on the postman to bring me a Harbach metering board, new caps, and a soft start for my 6 meter monoband SB-220. Your previous video will be a great help in doing the job right. How about a short video on how you ground the grids and the reason why the stock grounding needs to be improved. 73, de WG2E.
I appreciate you turning into check this video out so thank you. I think I've done. No less than five specific videos on the reasons why we ground the grids in the sb-220 units. The primary reason that we want to ground the grids is that the inductor chokes that are on the bottom of the tubes at this point in the game are starting to fail and as far as we can tell with the thousands and thousands of three 500 Z boxes that are out there instead of just straight grounding the grids if you do a wire wound choke like this it makes zero difference in protecting the tube in any format it does nothing to help clamp off oscillation on different frequencies all the different things that they have claimed are the reason why you want to run an inductive choke on your grids we've come to disprove.. it creates by grounding the grids that creates a smoother better simpler operating amplifier. And it's one less thing to fail.. now the grid ring on the 3 500z has three posts the sb-220 only one of those post is grounded and that is through that inductor choke the others are connected with capacitors we found the one that chokes goes bad and there's no other point of ground Source either be from the pin breaking or the actual choke itself breaking down and it usually has a tendency to tear up the amplifier worse than any anything that you could do to it as an operator. Hopefully that answers all of your questions have a good day in it once again I appreciate the views.. and by the way I did this via voice to text so I apologize if some of the spelling isn't Rider the words are absolutely correct..
@@BoxBuilderIdaho Thanks a lot for the quick reply and taking the time to do so. You got me to spring for a variac too. I'm still working my way through all your SB-220 videos. A great resource. 73, WG2E.
Pristine Amp BBI,
The 7-Duece Duece Mac Daddy from Dice Rollin Reno, NV!
Are you training the next generation of young Amp Builders yet?
Super Bowl Traditions!
Her voice sounds so classy and sexy at the same time! And amps make her excited! What a lovely couple!! Keep up the fun BBI!
I enjoy seeing this and I really got a good laugh out of the guy that taught you telling you about the schematic and how he said it he's right
You can be a singer, pretty nice your voice.
I have enjoyed watching your videos, keep up the great work.
After spending 30 years in the semiconductor industry working with Ion Implantation and other high vacuum processing equipment, it always makes me nervous when I see that someone has painted any surface that's adjacent to surfaces carrying HVDC. When the paint is non-conductive it makes a single-leaded capacitor that can charge up and that stray electrostatic charge can interfere with conventional circuitry. Also, placing surfaces that have been painted black beside the 3-500Z tubes will make those surfaces absorb lots of IR radiation. That's actually great for enhancing tube cooling but, it can damage the paint if it's not a high temperature type. Bear in mind that the Anode assembly inside the 3-500Z is mostly being Optically cooled by black body emission of IR light. Blowing lots of air over the glass vacuum envelope does very little to cool the tube's anode but, placing an air or water cooled black, steel plate beside the tube will do an excellent job of cooling the 3-500Z. Just look inside the Kenwood TL922A to see its' black body cooling scheme. If you place water cooled, black steel plates beside these tube you wouldn't need any fan at all because your cooling would be entirely optical.
you can really see that someone put in the effort
For camera focus, try using something with vertical straight line(s), some cameras use horizontal lines, so try both ways and see which works best.
BBI just got down!!!Gooo BBI in da house!!Love your work man..I'm from NYC..the land of the mudducks lol!!
Beautiful amp
What is the part number for the Hammond transformer. Sounded like “M980”, but can’t seem to google it up… Thanks for your videos & knowledge.
A functioning work of art!
Dude... All my buddies are gonna come over this weekend and have a drinking game while watching this video. Every time you say perfect, we drink. We should be f, ed up by the 10 min mark ! Thanks bro !
Nice.. perfect
It looks like something a slightly built Japanese engineer built for fun in his spare time. 8-P * * * *
This is the only other sb220 with vacuum relays other than mine. And I'm not sure how it was done. Trying to reverse engineer it. Because my bias flop is 6.8v-30v. my black bias wire goes to a 24v power supply to run the relays
Awesome amp, awesome video.
Apparently nobody told you that you must never touch these tubes glass with you bare hands because if you do so it will leave finger points on the glass and these finger prints will get hotter than the rest of the glass and this might cause the glass to explode during opération...
this heathkit is beautiful. heart thumpin!!!!!! think i have an RF chubby!
I don't know that much about radios (what a weard language you speak ) haha what a great video
I really like that built, like any other project you show in your channel.
Do you mind to build an amplifier using an old AM transmitter??? I’m planning to do that with a Heathkit DX-60... I’m looking for ideas (your channel have a bunch of them)
Sweet!! keep up great videos.
I wonder who put this amp together? I own one and would love to have a list of parts and wiring diagram so I could do the same to mine. Awesome build. Another great video BBI.
I thought I thoroughly covered that in the video who did it what is call sign was what his name was that this was a one-off creation if you have a standard sb-220 all that information is very publicly listed
@@BoxBuilderIdaho, some people seem to have a short attention span. Nevertheless this was good to watch again. I think most of us that love engineering appreciate the care that went into building it. I was lucky enough to get a mint TL922 with new tubes from an American that was leaving the UK. His "keeper" amplifier was a customised SB220, utterly beautiful, large transformer and improved cooling with black powder coated armour with black fascia. A random question, I have not modified the TL922 other than grounding the grids, I use it mostly on 40m/80m, the gain seems very high (about 16dB), with about 20w of drive I get 800w output. With UK power limits that means keeping to a miniscule 10-15w input, the gain is more than I expected for a triode amplifier. Is this typical?
They call me Sandman on channel 38..lol..We're always competing on there...Been trying to crush those slush puppy stations lmaoo!!I need a BBI Amp!!
Just what we need. Illegally operating chicky banders on 80 meters.
Hi genius, jus want to know if I could get my radio fix, an get you to built a nice clean amplifier for me, am all the way in Jamaica west Indies, I watch your videos every day, great job, I do a little bit a technician work some times too, am a cber from in the 1970s !!
0UTSTANDING
Hi Luke a quick one What is the wiring trick to prevent rf getting into the cooling fan you ment it once but i forgot Lyle s africa
nice Job
How does a Forklift collide with an amplifier? Let me guess, it was installed on the forklift as a mobile? Jokin...
How long and at what voltage steps do you bring up the SB-220 on the variac?
Just had a look, PC5M is a Silent Key (He's passed on)
I have one laying around here some where that he could work on if he gets bored again .
It is beautiful. But, can I tune it to the 15,000 meter band so I can run my KEFs or some Quad ESLs? The side and top panels look right, too. Like a custom car.
Ohhh Baby👍👍👍👍
Looking to buy amplifier man for my CB for my car and I want to know if you can help me out
Builder should have signed it.
Wow
Wow what a build. It would be awesome to have a Sb-220 in the Smithsonian condition that this one is. Just frame it and plug it in and watch it glow.
Why would you need a high speed carrier wave key on the SB220? you dont send morse code with it can you?
This Extra licensed ham went to all of this trouble to use it on CB? Is that what you said, or are you referring to some other SB-220 owner?
What's up BBI??.
He is a duck !
Dont know what I would do with it , but I want one
Did you ever find out who did the build?
Where do I get that transformer
Hi bbi...love the vids. Question for you or anyone, what is the max reasonable power input the 2 3-500z’s can handle? Even in a sb220 with stock transformer....cheers
According to the datasheet the tube has a maximum dissipation of 500 watts on the plate and a grid dissipation of 20 watts translation into human English tube can produce about a thousand watts of power Peak and receive about 80 to 90 Watts worth of Drive Peak.. but according to the book the actual datasheet you should never put any more than 20 RMS watts or average Watts in you should only see about 500 average Watts out
My amp has a fuse off the high voltage. One little steel tube driving , three big steel tubes. One watt from radio . Gives me one thousand with a swing of 7000 . Amp has a drive, load, tune on back for radio. Plate load, antenna tune, power output. On front of the amp. Power output will vary from 200 to one thousand. I normally run 500 - 1000 with modulation down on radio swings 5000- 7000. Do not know who built the amp. It has no name on it. Turn modulation down on radio so as to not burn up the maco 5000 antenna.
Is that fan blowing in or out of the cabinet?
What meters does this thing operate on?
I found one on ebay SOLD!! !and it says Supported
Modes SSB, AM, FM, CW
Band HF, VHF, AM
I'm only familiar CB band.
80, 40, 20, 15, and 10 meters are the standard SB-220 bands. You can probably find mods for some of the newer ham bands and 11 meters (which used to be a ham band.)
@@JohnShalamskas Thanks! Somehow I missed your reply!😃
This is a beautiful beautiful amp!
OM Carel Mobach (PC5M), Silent Key he is not here anymore whit us.
All that and only just 1700 watts?
👍🏻
Just toying with THE master.
Seriously... sweet amp and great video (as always)
🇺🇸👍🏻
It's the relay
he forgot to turn comments off
I left them on intentionally I talked about it in the video about how I'm going to leave the comments on but everybody needs to be nice and respectful to each other.. I do know how to do this believe it or not and I've been leaving them on on many of the videos here lately..
Hey bbi I need a 16pill with a drive and a radio is that something you can help me with doesnt have to be new if so contact me thank you Eark
Avoid Auto Focus and practice manual.
Crap.
No more tube amps for me, Boring. Solid state forever
Wow