Discussion with Paul from Mercury Magnetics

[dguidry]

All,

I ordered a set of iron from Mercury today and had the pleasure of talking with Paul in great detail about Dumble, his amplifiers and so forth.

I ended up buying a Blackface Twin PT, the 100W BF Twin OT with 4/8/16 Ohm taps and a Blackface Twin Choke.

First it seems that the Mercury team is good friends with Mr. Dumble and Paul sees him on a semi regular basis. The poor guy is apparently not in the best of health due to his weight, but still sharp as a tack and amazing everyone with the work he does.

Paul told me of a story where Alexander called him just to come see an amp that Eddie Kramer had sent over for a little TLC. As it turns out this was the 100W Marshall that Jimi Hendrix used to record Red House with. I can't even imagine how surreal a moment that must have been.

In general Paul is of the opinion that what makes Mr. Dumble's amps so fantastic is the almost obsessive tweaking he does to bring an amp into shape. He told me to save my money on the Dynaco OT and put the effort into the same sort of philosophy. Mr. Dumble commonly uses surplus parts and about any suitable transformer.

I very much believe this forum is about taking the basic architecture found in an ODS and collectively learning how to do that. I would like to thank everyone for their contributing to this effort and hope this continues into the future.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Dave

[heisthl]

Sorry to hear about his health, but glad he's still getting amps under his hands.
I'm intriged by the "obsessive tweaking" comment for 2 reasons - 1. the ungooped areas of the gut shots I've seen are pretty consistant (i.e. not individually tweaked) and IMHO 2. Any minor Rp or Rk changes are easily rendered ineffective simply by the ageing (or changing) of the tube(s) and would not be practical for a touring professional. That only leaves capacitors.....
I will totally agree that his build style is consistant perfection (obsessively so) and pretty difficult (impossible for my level of patience) to imitate.

[jaysg]

The pics I've seen generally (or always?) have true pot values marked on them. I imagine his tweaking has to do with listening to the results within the +/- range of the parts employed.

[dguidry]

I guess there is always mythology associated with someone who has built amps that sound so good when played by such notable players. I can't validate what Paul said, but it does seem the man has an ear for what's good. Its probably also fair to attribute some of the credit to the players themselves. I'm sure Robben Ford could make a beginner guitar sound better than I'll ever sound.

Paul actually told me that their resident amp guru has been tweaking a particularly unremarkable silverface Bassman with dramatic results. The answer, he told me, was not more, but what. Perhaps Mr. Dumble figured out what that was and it was stable enough he didn't have to tweak every amp.