A friend of mine who has owned two of my amps before asked me to build him something Voxy in a low wattage, with a master volume and a single 12" speaker combo. So I built this:
It's based on a Matchless Lightning. I used a chassis and tagboard from Ceriatone, transformers from Mercury Magnetics and made the cab in my garage. Once I had built the amp I found it felt really unpleasantly tight to play, and comparing the filtering with a similar Vox AC15 I had built recently saw that the Matchless circuit had about ten times the amount of filtering! Well, more anyway. So I gradually reduced the filtering to where it still sounds exactly the same but feels much more fun to play.
One thing I'm particularly proud of is how quiet this amp is. I have been learning a lot about the art of grounding - yes, I am convinced it is an art! - and this amp is virtually silent when I roll the guitar volume down. If there is any hiss it's coming from whatever pedal is switched on!
While this isn't my favourite amp ever it does sound very good, especially with a good OD. It sounds especially good with a 335 or Casino - My Casino loves this amp.
The amp's own breakup is nothing special - bit disappointing really. But it is loud enough to be a pedal platform and it does that extremely well. I put the Mercury badge on the faceplate to cover where it says "Ceriatone" as this is in no way a Ceriatone amp except for the chassis, faceplates and tagboard.
I just need to clean up the board a bit and it's all done!
It's based on a Matchless Lightning. I used a chassis and tagboard from Ceriatone, transformers from Mercury Magnetics and made the cab in my garage. Once I had built the amp I found it felt really unpleasantly tight to play, and comparing the filtering with a similar Vox AC15 I had built recently saw that the Matchless circuit had about ten times the amount of filtering! Well, more anyway. So I gradually reduced the filtering to where it still sounds exactly the same but feels much more fun to play.
One thing I'm particularly proud of is how quiet this amp is. I have been learning a lot about the art of grounding - yes, I am convinced it is an art! - and this amp is virtually silent when I roll the guitar volume down. If there is any hiss it's coming from whatever pedal is switched on!
While this isn't my favourite amp ever it does sound very good, especially with a good OD. It sounds especially good with a 335 or Casino - My Casino loves this amp.
The amp's own breakup is nothing special - bit disappointing really. But it is loud enough to be a pedal platform and it does that extremely well. I put the Mercury badge on the faceplate to cover where it says "Ceriatone" as this is in no way a Ceriatone amp except for the chassis, faceplates and tagboard.
I just need to clean up the board a bit and it's all done!