Tube Amp Archive

By the way... i bought my Ceriatone Express Kit 3 years ago ( that one with an "original" Trainwreck" Plexi-Logo for my headshell... I was always wondering about it's harsh and brittle sound. Finally it endet up modifying the tone stack. Changing the Treble Pot to 250K A instead of 1Meg made a drama...

Ghost notes at the 12th fret and up... perhaps... there is another thing that may be described like that... Lots of Strat-players know it as "stratitis". It is caused by a strong magnetic influence from the pickups, worst on the g -string around the 12th to the 16th fret. Adjust the neck pup away fr...

What about bias of the power stage... Check the grid voltages of the EL34s. If they're too negative, the tubes are cutting off. A good starting point for Bias is a voltage of approx. -35V. 40 Volts ore more can cause exactly that effect you describe. If it's so, turn down that bias voltage until you...

...anyone thought about using a cascaded stereo pot? Connect wiper from the first stage with the hot end of the 2nd. stage. Both "cold" ends of the tapers are connected to ground. Use wiper out from the 2nd. "stage" as output. Even a linear stereo pot will now deliver a logarithmic curve with approx...

6V6 Tubes from JJ are rated for plate voltages up to 450V. Depending on the desired sound i am using a pair of JJ 6V6 or a pair of Svetlana EL34. Both tube sets work fine with the same bias adjustment ( ~35V) so i can easily swap them. The only thing to recognize: Using the 6V6 doubles the output im...

I have used a kind of bitumen cardboard which is commonly used to dampen car doors or machine parts against vibration. The aluminium chassis easily tends to vibrate when the amp is placed on the cabinet. After treating the chassis with this 3mm self adhesive bitumen cardboard, there is no more metal...

An annealing to simulate the characteristic of a GZ34 ist a SAG Resistor of 100 to 150 Ohms. The GZ34 is lightly nonlinear: For very low currents it's like a 180R Resistor decreasing to 100 R at full load. So 100 R ist quite a good value. I've tested it with some DALE 20W resistors up to 150R. The a...

If you like 12AX7EH tubes and a 12AT7 (ECCC81) as a phase inverter, I'm guessing that your amp sounds too harsh and a bit uncontrolled without them. If you are using polystyrene-film coupling caps, you might want to change them for polyester-film types. The standard "orange drop" capacitors come in...

I also have a TWExpress Kit from Ceriatone. I use it with a Dynacord trannie set. I had some mail conversation with Nik about necessary transformer moddings, an he told me that his power transformer has a center tap for the heater, which is connected to ground. Tonesluts may not have this. My PT has...

Has anyone got experiences with low µ tubes like 12AU7 in Pos. V2 and a 12AT7 or 12AU7as PI? The overall gain of my TW is enormous, so i can hear a significant hiss when the volume is turned down. Currently i'm using 12AX7EH tubes in all stages and a selected low noise 12AX7EH in V1. Output tubes ar...

What about E.A.G.L.E. ? Full name is Easy Applicable Graphic Layout Editor. A freeware (limited to one page) is available at www.cadsoft.de Lots of special libraries are available there in the customer section (e.g. vacuum tubes, special caps and resistors etc. The schematic editor is very comfortab...

Couldn't you go from El34s to 6V6s and accomplish much the same thing? That's what I've done with my old Traynor YBA1. Sounds good! stew Will the 6V6 work with a B+ of 420V? Im am just thinking about doing a sacrilege to use a discrete built MOSFET High Voltage regulator to adjust the B+ and B1 vol...

Yes, that sounds really interesting... by the way ... ich komme auch 70 km westlich von Hannover

Companies like Tube Amp Doctor etc. provide an adapter socket to use an EL84 instead of EL34 or 6L6. There a two different types of adapters availlable: Class A Triode Mode and Class A Pentode Mode. The output power shall be reduced to 8 Watts (Triode) or 18 Watts in Pentode mode. No further modifia...