Let's See Your Amps

Inspiring stuff in here.

Been wanting to build my own for a little bit here, though my first inclination would be to build a low-wattage (like, 20w max) stereo tube power amp.

I've had a couple of amps over the years. My first real amp was Marshall jcm800 2203, a 1968 fender showman that I rehabbed, a krank revolution, a mesa mark IV, and a mesa roadster.

Out of all, I miss the mark iv the most. But they were all too damned loud.

Nowadays...I've got one of those 25watt line 6/bogner things with the old HD models in the preamp that I really need to offload. That, and my helix floorboard/powercab 112 plus or pro or whatever

The helix is getting long in the tooth...fractal seems to be doing the modeler thing much better these days. Might eventually upgrade to that when the FM9 becomes...like...available. I do rather like the powercab though....not with any of the line 6 speaker simulations, mind you. God no. But loaded with a decent IR it makes for a damned decent little power amp combo.
 
I guess it's my turn. This has been my kit for the last decade. Stock Orange Tiny Terror. I built the cab. Speaker is a 15" Jensen MOD. It serves as both my bass and guitar amp. 15 watts but it brings the ice🥶. Drummers better mic up.
 

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Betty Wont said:
I guess it's my turn. This has been my kit for the last decade. Stock Orange Tiny Terror. I built the cab. Speaker is a 15" Jensen MOD. It serves as both my bass and guitar amp. 15 watts but it brings the ice🥶. Drummers better mic up.
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The color of that cab you built is really working for me. I love it. Is it sealed?
 
Here's what I've been up to in the past 4-5 months:

Princeton Reverb head/cab
- 3-way NFB switch
- Eminence GA10-SC64 in the cab

Tweed Vibrolux head/cab
- 12" Eminence GA-SC59 speaker

Tweed Champ "5F15" octal hybrid
- 6SL7 preamp, inspired by a builder on TDPRI
- 10" speaker

5C1 Champ
- pentode power!
- 10" speaker

Amps.jpg
 
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Diynot said:
View attachment 20774
My amps. The 2 Swarts in stereo are magical, as well as individually. The ‘65 Epiphone Pathfinder is my main amp. A clean and sparkly 15 watts with tube reverb and tremolo. And then there’s the Crate…. Had it since high school. It amplifies my bass and synth, nuff said.
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I have a couple Gibson Falcons (same amp as the pathfinder EA28-RVT) and they are my favorite amp after some changes. They can be modified to be magic. You just have to get that tone suck circuit out of there and install the tweed princeton 5f2a tone circuit.
 
@BeeSharp yeah, I have opened mine up and it appears to have been modded at some point to remove the Sprague tone suck block. Still has the original 6eu7 preamp tubes in it (which I think was one of the major differences in the Gibson vs epi amps. Gibsons had 12ax7s the Epis the 6eu7). Love that amp! Think I need to replace the reverb tank though since I am getting some serious howl sometimes
 
Big Monk said:
This is my amp. There are none others like it and this one is mine:

View attachment 21864

This was a partial scratch build. It started it's life a a Version 3 (black board) Epiphone Valve Junior board. Those who know the circuit know that in stock form, it's a farty, hotly biased, slamming the power tube with too much signal EL84 Tweed Champ.

I had no iron or chassis, only the board.

I had worked on a dozen or so Valve Juniors over the years and owned and kept a number in my time. I had an idea on a set of mods that was less intense than what was popular during the Valve Junior mod craze. Most people tried to turn these into a 5 watt Marshall but ended up making it a farty mess because of how much gain they gave it (the exceptions of course are the Plexi SE boards and the like because they actually control the gain much better hitting the EL84).

I didn't do much. Tweaked down the cathode bypass caps on the preamp tube, reworked the interstage voltage divider a bit and the volume control value, added a bypass or peaker cap across R6, added a "Drive" control and raised the grid stopper into the EL84, etc. No huge gain increases as this is the wrong way to go about these. Rather, I wanted to turn this on 10 and not have it fart out with the guitar plugged straight in.

It has a 15W ClassicTone Champ OT and a Weber RVB PT for iron, JJ tubes and a 10" Celestion G10-40N. Besides preamp voicing and controlling the signal into the EL84, the power supply got shored up and I added a screen grid resistor for the EL84. These things would kill JJ EL84s back in the day because stock they are putting out like 340vDC of B+ voltage. Since the Weber RVB PT is essentially an American only stand in for the original VJr PT, I had to do the same mods as anyone with a stock VJr.

This and my white socks are where all my power comes from. It's not the prettiest thing in the world and sometimes a Fuzz makes it sound like my amp is dying, but it's a blast to play.

Side Note: with the preamp and signal reduction mods, it actually stays "clean" up until about 11:00 with the "Drive" at max and lowering the "Drive" strategically can actually expand this almost to about 1:00. It won't ever replace a big blackface Fender for cleans but it works for a bedroom amp.
Click to expand...

Knobs go on pedals, no go on amp…
 
Big Monk said:
This is my amp. There are none others like it and this one is mine:

View attachment 21864

This was a partial scratch build. It started it's life a a Version 3 (black board) Epiphone Valve Junior board. Those who know the circuit know that in stock form, it's a farty, hotly biased, slamming the power tube with too much signal EL84 Tweed Champ.

I had no iron or chassis, only the board.

I had worked on a dozen or so Valve Juniors over the years and owned and kept a number in my time. I had an idea on a set of mods that was less intense than what was popular during the Valve Junior mod craze. Most people tried to turn these into a 5 watt Marshall but ended up making it a farty mess because of how much gain they gave it (the exceptions of course are the Plexi SE boards and the like because they actually control the gain much better hitting the EL84).

I didn't do much. Tweaked down the cathode bypass caps on the preamp tube, reworked the interstage voltage divider a bit and the volume control value, added a bypass or peaker cap across R6, added a "Drive" control and raised the grid stopper into the EL84, etc. No huge gain increases as this is the wrong way to go about these. Rather, I wanted to turn this on 10 and not have it fart out with the guitar plugged straight in.

It has a 15W ClassicTone Champ OT and a Weber RVB PT for iron, JJ tubes and a 10" Celestion G10-40N. Besides preamp voicing and controlling the signal into the EL84, the power supply got shored up and I added a screen grid resistor for the EL84. These things would kill JJ EL84s back in the day because stock they are putting out like 340vDC of B+ voltage. Since the Weber RVB PT is essentially an American only stand in for the original VJr PT, I had to do the same mods as anyone with a stock VJr.

This and my white socks are where all my power comes from. It's not the prettiest thing in the world and sometimes a Fuzz makes it sound like my amp is dying, but it's a blast to play.

Side Note: with the preamp and signal reduction mods, it actually stays "clean" up until about 11:00 with the "Drive" at max and lowering the "Drive" strategically can actually expand this almost to about 1:00. It won't ever replace a big blackface Fender for cleans but it works for a bedroom amp.
Click to expand...
Screenshot_20220120-172838-684.png
 
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