Best Clean Fender AIAB

A

ac30irons

Active member
Hey all, opinions please.

What do you feel is the best clean Fender AIAB, ideally with a 3 band tone control. I’m looking for something with as much clean headroom as possible.

In my obsession to find something HiWatt related and an absolute absence of a schematic for anything close, my plan is to take a clean Fender, and change up the tone stack to something Watty.

Thanks in advance
 
I was going to suggest https://www.pedalpcb.com/product/pcb609/, but I'm not sure how clean it really is, and it might be more on the early Marshall side than the Bassman.

https://www.pedalpcb.com/product/pcb333/ is apparently supposed to be a Hiwatt style tone, but again, I think it's more on the overdriven side than clean.

For some reason I thought https://forum.pedalpcb.com/threads/crazy-tube-circuits-hi-power.20875/ was going to be a PCB, but apparently I imagined it - maybe mixed it up with the MIGFET.

https://dirtboxlayouts.blogspot.com/2020/02/baja-hiwatt-dr103-amplifier-pedal.html might also be one option, although it seems like it might be a complicated build.

I'm afraid I can't give any actual clean Fender AIAB recommendations since I don't have any of those, but best of luck in your search!
 
Fama said:
I was going to suggest https://www.pedalpcb.com/product/pcb609/, but I'm not sure how clean it really is, and it might be more on the early Marshall side than the Bassman.

https://www.pedalpcb.com/product/pcb333/ is apparently supposed to be a Hiwatt style tone, but again, I think it's more on the overdriven side than clean.

For some reason I thought https://forum.pedalpcb.com/threads/crazy-tube-circuits-hi-power.20875/ was going to be a PCB, but apparently I imagined it - maybe mixed it up with the MIGFET.

https://dirtboxlayouts.blogspot.com/2020/02/baja-hiwatt-dr103-amplifier-pedal.html might also be one option, although it seems like it might be a complicated build.

I'm afraid I can't give any actual clean Fender AIAB recommendations since I don't have any of those, but best of luck in your search!
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Cheers dude ! I have actually done the Bajaman one and have a PCB for it. Unfortunately it’s wildly unstable (it’s quite well documented.) People have tried to de-bug it with no luck at all !
 
Not sure if that's what you are looking for, but you can check ROG Azabache project, maybe also read the reviews on musikding.

www.musikding.de

ROG Azabache AmpSim kit, 34,00

Amp simulation
www.musikding.de www.musikding.de

You will also find some mods here :

Chuck D. Bones

Thread 'This Week on the Breadboard - ROG Azabache'

I had been meaning to breadboard this one for some time now, finally got around to it during a break from compressors. I built it by the book, except I used fixed resistors (3.3K, 15K, 15K 15K) instead of trimpots and auditioned JFETs until I hit the recommended drain voltages. I tried a couple of mods: asymmetric clipping on stage 3 and increased gain on stage 2, but neither sounded as good as the original design. I am not a fan of the cab sim at the tail end, makes it sound too thin. This circuit would benefit from a PRESENCE control after Q5. It's a clever design, similar to some...
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The C2CE Particle Accelerator has quite a bit of clean headroom.

From the docs:
The Particle Accelerator is based on the Alembic F-2B, which is in turn based on the Fender Dual Showman preamp. This is an all-tube, mid-low gain preamp with a classic Fender/Marshall/Vox tonestack and sounds excellent on both guitar and bass.
Click to expand...

c2celectronics.com

Particle Accelerator PCB Set

This is a PCB set for building your own Particle Accelerator preamp. This is not a beginner project, so if you’ve never built a pedal before, then this isn’t for you. I’ve tried to make this as aff…
c2celectronics.com c2celectronics.com
 
ROG Tone Mender is just the 3-band EQ, to give the mid-scooped flavor. It could be modded to use the exact Rs and Cs as a twin deluxe or super reverb or whatever.
 
temol said:
There are very few "clean" amp emulations. There is certainly the AMT F1. @Paul.Ruby was working on the schematic, but I don't see it in the AMT thread, so perhaps it isn't
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jcpst said:
The C2CE Particle Accelerator has quite a bit of clean headroom.

From the docs:


c2celectronics.com

Particle Accelerator PCB Set

This is a PCB set for building your own Particle Accelerator preamp. This is not a beginner project, so if you’ve never built a pedal before, then this isn’t for you. I’ve tried to make this as aff…
c2celectronics.com c2celectronics.com
Click to expand...
Nice - I probably should have added that I’m incorporating it on a PCB with maybe a muff or something else Gilmourish.
 
phi1 said:
ROG Tone Mender is just the 3-band EQ, to give the mid-scooped flavor. It could be modded to use the exact Rs and Cs as a twin deluxe or super reverb or whatever.
Click to expand...
Thanks - I was looking at this earlier and wondering if it would be possible to add some form of gain control to give it a little push.
 
ac30irons said:
Nice - I probably should have added that I’m incorporating it on a PCB with maybe a muff or something else Gilmourish.
Click to expand...
Have you considered the Cattle Driver (Tube Driver emulation) it’s excellent for Gilmour. There’s also the Hiwatts or Colorsound Powerbooster? Gilmour used both. Might consider the Cornish Soft Sustain as well or the Aion Fx ST-2. I’m a big Gilmour fan and I’d for sure go with the Cattle Driver not necessarily to use in conjunction with the muff but to have the tube driver sound.
 
ac30irons said:
Hey all, opinions please.

What do you feel is the best clean Fender AIAB, ideally with a 3 band tone control. I’m looking for something with as much clean headroom as possible.
Click to expand...
The Alembic F2B clones would be my choice for a Fender AIAB, I think I'd start with the Particle Accelerator. But if Hiwatt is your end game why not just use tubes and work off a Hiwatt schematic of your choice?
 
What amp are you going into finally? Or DI? I’m always skeptical of amp in a box, since your final amp/speaker have their own coloration to the sound. IMO a pedal that makes a Marshall sound like a fender may not make a vox sound like a fender.
 
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bluedmc777 said:
Have you considered the Cattle Driver (Tube Driver emulation) it’s excellent for Gilmour. There’s also the Hiwatts or Colorsound Powerbooster? Gilmour used both. Might consider the Cornish Soft Sustain as well or the Aion Fx ST-2. I’m a big Gilmour fan and I’d for sure go with the Cattle Driver not necessarily to use in conjunction with the muff but to have the tube driver sound.
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Hey man, I actually build and sell all of those on my own PCBs. I’m specifically looking for the amp side to pair one of those with, on the same PCB.
 
Passinwind said:
The Alembic F2B clones would be my choice for a Fender AIAB, I think I'd start with the Particle Accelerator. But if Hiwatt is your end game why not just use tubes and work off a Hiwatt schematic of your choice?
Click to expand...
Thanks dude, I’m just not looking at going that deep with it. I’m basically looking to do my own version of the Crazy Tubes HiPower.
 
phi1 said:
What amp are you going into finally? Or DI? I’m always skeptical of amp in a box, since your final amp/speaker have their own coloration to the sound. IMO a pedal that makes a Marshall sound like a fender may not make a vox sound like a fender.
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My own setup comprises of Anolouge and Digital. It ends up in FRFR with IRs for the speakers.
 
ac30irons said:
Thanks dude, I’m just not looking at going that deep with it. I’m basically looking to do my own version of the Crazy Tubes HiPower.
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Cool, just riffing on my usual workflow. For clean stuiff I typically would start by modeling the actual original tube circuit in LTspice, then look at impedance scaling to an opamp circuit as appropriate. The only guitar AIAB tangent I've really worked so far outside of many Fender bassed ones was Dumble oriented, and all three I've built so far are radically different from each other. That's not necessarily such a bad thing though!

For my wants and needs Hiwatts have gotten my attention more as a bass thing, and in my case using a DR103 output transformer clone with 4 x EL-34 worked out really well for me.
 
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