Anybody built a two stroke?

[jcr1234]

I am reading Dave Hunters book and I am interested in the two stroke design. It seems very versatile since you can use diffrent tube types and I am interested in opinions from anyone who has built or heard one?

[mcrracer]

Try the search function. There has been a bit written about it. I have the schematic but changed my mind on building one as other projects have occupied my time.

[Mike Brannon]

Have you looked at the Victoria Amp web site? They offer the Two Stroke as a kit and also assembled. Unfortuantely, they don't have any sound clips.
MB

[Blindog]

Have you looked at the Victoria Amp web site? They offer the Two Stroke as a kit and also assembled. Unfortuantely, they don't have any sound clips.
MB

Check out the Video's section on Victoria's website. There's a couple of 2 Stroke vids there.

Mark

[jcr1234]

I saw the videos on the Victoria site, the amp sounds good, but theres is no way Im spending $1000 on a kit for a small amp, thats nuts.

[M Fowler]

Check out this site they build the two strokes.

http://tubeampnetwork.ning.com/

[yodermr]

I built a two stroke years ago after I read the same book. I expanded on the design, adding an extra gain stage, tone/gain switches, etc. So, can't really compare to the orginal design but all the same it was a great build, sounds great, tube swapping is fun. Got enough balls for live practice...no regrets

Here it is..My humble, incomplete collection of builds
http://www.jellyboneblues.com/ii.htm

Mark

[tyru007]

I built a Blackface Champ with parallel OT and oversized Hammond PT and 125ese OT. The power tubes used a common cathode resistor with a 5W/100R pot to fine tune.

I could not get parallel 6V6s to sound as good as a single 6V6, even after adjusting the cathode and OT impedance. Not sure why but just not as "musical".

I think its easier and cheaper just to put in a single power tube socket and use higher power tubes (EL34, 6L6GC, KT77 etc.) if you want more output.

Use a 220R/5W resistor in series with a 5W/1K pot with bias taps and you can adjust bias for any tube.

I'm adding a fender reverb circuit to it right now as I thing the little bit of extra gain from the reverb recovery stage will give it a nice boost and I use reverb a lot. If you use the tweed tone stack, you should get plenty of gain.

I have tried the the JJ and EH 6V6, the TAD 6L6GC and the JJ KT77 so far. The KT77 was my favorite so far and runs at about 9 watts of power output, which is plenty into an effiecient 12" speaker.

[mcrracer]

Real men use KT88s!!!! I looked at the Two Stroke when I was experimenting with high power SE amps. I built the Super Single Ended amp by Angela Instruments with dual 6V6s and dual 5Y3s. OK but not impressive. I built a KT88 SE with a three stage preamp and BOY!!!! Now that was impressive. Check the DLM thread under the Trainwreck forum on this site.

[AJD]

I too read Hunter's book and was inspired to use the Two-Stroke as the basis for my first-ever amp build. I tweaked a thing or two from Hunter's plans (bigger iron, different caps, filtering). It sounds very, very good and with the Eminence Swamp Thang speaker it is very loud. I like being able to swap tubes w/out biasing. My favorite tubes are either 6l6's or el34's. My brother thinks 6v6's sound the best, but I really don't care for them. They seem to lack bottom end. I rarely use two tubes however as the noise floor goes up perceptibly. It's not objectionable really and would be fine if the extra power were really needed, but for the volumes that I play at it is unnecessary. Also with only one tube the power tube distortion comes on at a more usable level. I'll post a few photo's later tonight or tomorrow.

[tubeswell]

I read Dave' Hunter's book too, and I found the pics interesting and the interview with the late honourable Ken F. I had already built about 3 or 4 amps by then, and I found some of the stuff in that book is a bit mojo-ish (like that stuff about Mr Fischer's ability to utilise the polarity of wire to get better tone mojo).

FWIW I built a 5F2A last year with a 12" speaker and a PT with 120mA 320-0-320 HT, 2A 6V and 2A 5V, and an 8k Pri Z OT with multiple secondary taps that can run a 6V6 with 5Y3G, or a 6L6 with GZ34 just by swapping the tubes and the OT secondaries. I used 40uF as the reservoir filter, which doesn't overtax the 5Y3G too much and still has enough juice to keep the GZ34 from being too flabby. I included a switch to cut the NFB for extra grunt. Total cost was about $500 - incl timber for the cab and everything. Does a mean stairway solo when dimed (and the NFB cut).

Here's a clip of me mangling a well-known solo on me strat with it (I couldn't hear the backing track properly - well that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it )

[AJD]

Here are a couple of shots of the one that I built almost a year ago. The schematic is pretty much up to date, except that I have since upped the first filter cap to 36uf from the 20uf shown on my schematic. I might have changed one or two other small things but I can't remember off hand.
Listening to the clip by Tubeswell reminded me of something that I forgot to mention previously. The amp does sound very nice on low/clean settings, but crank the thing up and it really howls (in a good way). I can get extremely long sustain and a really great growl. Depending upon how you set it up (rectifier type; tube type; high/normal/low boost switch setting) it can pull off very convincing Marshall, Tweed, and Blackface tones. Since building this amp I've sold all three of my other amps and have only used this amp (with the exception of my Line 6 POD which I do use occasionally for recording).

[tubeswell]

Very tidy little amp there AJD

[mcrracer]

Great work AJD! Do you have a copy of that schematic where the stuff in green is in a color that is easier to see? My vision is very bad and I can't see the green stuff well enough to see what's going on. I have a schematic for this amp and I would like to compare yours with mine.Thanks

[myfoot]

That amp looks taylor made for this amp I got in a box of tubes . Thought about converting to a 5E3 but could use what's there already , One 12AX7 26V6's and a 5Y3GT . Thanks for the plans

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