Tube Amp Archive

Another thing is to just play the thing for 10 hours after the build: I swear that the tone has filled and smoothed out a lot just by 'breaking it in', controversial though that notion might be with some folk.

I just installed a 100pF snubber at the PI plates, then a 100pF from plate to ground at V1b and V2a (cold clipper). Each reduced hiss - together, it's almost non-existent. The one at the cold clipper also drastically improved the smoothness of transition into overdrive, which had been bothering me a...

Hi again, Mark - I've tried such things and have only heard differences in hifi builds, not guitar amps. I think they could make a difference once a dozen other things were silenced, but probably at the expense of killing all coolness of tone

Hi Mark , I'm personally using a Budda 2x12 closed back. IMO, it's quite a 'hi-fi' cab, so as brutally honest as an Express-type amp. My experience of this and other Express-type builds has been that the standard high-pass filter stage results in an anaemic tone, except with an old WEM 2x15 cab (Dav...

Hi, I'm going to add a third tip, unsolicited as it may be. You want to cut the ice-pick... how about cutting the hiss into the bargain? The solution: connect a 33nF to 47nF cap in series with a 100k-330k resistor across the OT primaries. This cancels a load of high end at the latest possible stage ...

Having a built a couple now, I thought I'd share a couple of ideas that might help peeps starting out: - The 'AO' TW tonestack has a TONNE of high end when all controls are on 5 - lots more than a Marshall. Silly as it seems to point out, just turn down the treble and turn up the middle (not too muc...

It's also worth noting that the Ceriatone tone stack uses 1M pots for bass and treble: when set for flat EQ (treble full, bass low-mid and treble low), you will have about 5dB more volume than if using 250k pots. 5dB = almost twice as loud!