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Looks the cat's whiskers to me. I expect it to sound like the dog's b......s!

Al.

Just looking at the pics again, are there any vents for the heat generated by the valves?

Certainly is Al, there's an air-gap between the top and the bottom for the heat to escape.
The valves don't give off much heat.
The 7806 regulator gives off more but it's mounted on the back.
You couldn't get a better heat sink than a 1mm aluminium enclosure 10 by 8 by 3 inches

Ecca has showed me the heat generated after several hours of use at our club and it is running quite cool for a valve based unit ...

I've had a couple of hours play with my Eccamatic valve jobby and I can honestly say that it is far superior to anything I have used previously.
It has far more ambience/presence than my EFTP units and just seems to add something quite extraordinary to the sound which give it those vintage vibes.

The echo can even be heard during the legato of the note when the string is not being damped and this is of course absolutely essential for an authentic Apache sound.If you increase the mix level on my other units to achieve that effect you end up with a far too powerful echo but not so with this little beauty.
In fact I have found that it is often necessary to reduce the wet/dry mix level from Robbo's settings. This may be because I am not, as yet, playing to any form of backing and I have got the volume LOUD!!! so I hear everything - including the mistakes! I will know more when I can remember how to record something and so hear the guitar in it's proper context.

I have not been able to overdrive the amp using the input and output level controls using CS54 pups but I haven't tried humbuckers yet.

One question for Dave Robbo. How come the heads level on your recommended settings goes up to 9 in some cases. I only have 5 settings - A,B,C,E and F, so are you just quoting the o'clock positions. Ecca tells me we both have the same controls so I am a little intrigued.

Can't find anything to criticise about this little box of tricks. Lovely smooth sound, great controlability (if that's a proper word!) beautiful echos, and vintage vibes by the bucketload. I can't be certain about this until I have made some recordings but I strongly suspect that I am actually getting a decent quack on the top strings , something which has always eluded me!

Fantastic, so thanks to Piet for what must have been countless hours of hard work and head-scratching and to Ecca for putting it into a form I can actually use!

Al.

Al,

The heads control equivalent values are;

A = 1
B = 3
C = 5
E = 7
F = 9

Some versions of the eTap2hw have the heads control labelled 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10, the Eccamatic valve version is labelled A B C E F and others like mine are a mixTURE: 0 A 2 B 4 C 6 E 8 F 10.

Phil.

I'm glad you like it Al.

Ahhhhhhh.... I see what you mean now.
The first units I built had knobs with skirts on numbered from 1 to 10 so the rotation of the mode knob went to a number between 1 and 10 which loosely translated to ABCEF .
The valve units now have the legend ABCEF engraved into the frontplates as per the Meazzis. It's not possible to get a knobskirt with ABCEF on it.
I'd forgotten that.

Ah, I see now, thanks Phil and Ecca. I don't know very much about knobs and skirts !!!

Devil.

Mine was delivered today and it looks great. Whoever said size isn't everything, is wrong. This looks great and is easily readable for anyone with impaired (and normal) vision, looking forward to trying it out tonight (if the wife remembers to get the psu).
My other Eccamatic (one of Ecca's first batch) is listed for sale in the Marketplace, so if your eyesight is ok, you'll have no problem seeing the controls/knobs.