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So yeah, in addition to building some of my guitars, I've also been toying around with small combo amps for a while. To start off with these were using the the old tweed amp circuits 5f1, 5f2 - i had an old 5f2a with a 12" Jensen that i used to regularly do pub gigs with. Really simple tele into amp on about 8 = great classic rock/blues tone. Obviously these are great for that sound, but as i've gone back into more rock and metal stuff, they aren't that appropriate (and the old tweed circuits can sound very dark with humbuckers IMO).
So i have been playing with this 5 watt circuit which is started off from a Princeton but is very much marshall-ised. Basically, this means that while it's still a small simple tone/vol amp, the output tube has changed to an el84 (200uf/150r), and the cathode biasing has changed from (25uf +1.5k) / (1.5k) to (0.68uf + 2.7k) / (0.68uf + 820r). I've done away with the low input, and the negative fbk loop, but have included a tone stack lift instead. Double-checked my voltages with resources such as AX84 and i'm within a couple of volts, so pretty happy with it, particularly now i've got the biasing on the el84 about right (it was biased a bit cold before and the tone was a little bit soupy at lower volumes). I haven't totally cranked up the latest configuration (although the previous one sounded good once the volume went above 3), but certainly it's much more in the plexi/jmp ball park, and simply plugging in a boss super OD gets you definitely into that brown sound territory.
So anyway here's a couple of 'i was up till 3:30 am in A&E with my ex last night so i'm taking it easy' vids that i did this morning. one vid is my home built guitar, the other is the HS charvel. The settings are guitar > super OD (lev 6, drive 8, tone 4) > amp (vol 2, tone 4). The speaker is a warehouse 8", and the cabinet i built and covered myself as well (thought it's been knocking around for a year or two!).
So i have been playing with this 5 watt circuit which is started off from a Princeton but is very much marshall-ised. Basically, this means that while it's still a small simple tone/vol amp, the output tube has changed to an el84 (200uf/150r), and the cathode biasing has changed from (25uf +1.5k) / (1.5k) to (0.68uf + 2.7k) / (0.68uf + 820r). I've done away with the low input, and the negative fbk loop, but have included a tone stack lift instead. Double-checked my voltages with resources such as AX84 and i'm within a couple of volts, so pretty happy with it, particularly now i've got the biasing on the el84 about right (it was biased a bit cold before and the tone was a little bit soupy at lower volumes). I haven't totally cranked up the latest configuration (although the previous one sounded good once the volume went above 3), but certainly it's much more in the plexi/jmp ball park, and simply plugging in a boss super OD gets you definitely into that brown sound territory.
So anyway here's a couple of 'i was up till 3:30 am in A&E with my ex last night so i'm taking it easy' vids that i did this morning. one vid is my home built guitar, the other is the HS charvel. The settings are guitar > super OD (lev 6, drive 8, tone 4) > amp (vol 2, tone 4). The speaker is a warehouse 8", and the cabinet i built and covered myself as well (thought it's been knocking around for a year or two!).
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