Matchless lightning with el34's

[guittech]

Hey guys

Sorry if this is in the wrong area, i've been away from forums (this one too) for a LONG time lol.

Anyways, quick question. Endless modder/tinkerer, building a new project amp and am thinking an el34 powered Lightning. I have been told the Matchless Brave was similar, but a schematic for that circuit is nowhere to be found.

It's a Weber 6a14hp chassis, and the iron has been replaced with Allen TP40d and TO40MT respectively (the weber iron was pretty wimpy, and I've never built anything in the chassis with the stock iron that sounded "good")

My tastes run to more Rock oriented sounds, but not always metal, and I like LOTS of low end, thus the bigger iron for this chassis. I am just starting to guy the old circuit from the chassis and figure out where i'll put everything, so there isn't a rush... but I'd like to get going eventually. I considered a Wreck, but I have never played anything that was more than an experiemnt with a wreck preamp, so I don't have much to go on. I know though that i DO like parallel 12ax7's in the preamp, I built my last marshall clone with it and find it thickened things up a bit.


Long story short, anyone have any experience building a "Big" lightning?

[AcornHouse]

Matchless Clubmans and Chieftans are EL34 based too.

[guittech]

Matchless Clubmans and Chieftans are EL34 based too.

Yeah, I considered working out a non reverb Chieftain, since i have limited space and power. The clubman with it's finicky pentode preamp tube. I did a few pentode based circuits already and use a 15 watt DC-30 clone as my main amp at home right now. I REALLY like the 12ax7 channel, which is pretty much a lightning. I have yet to play a clubman, but the simplicity of the lightning has it for me, just prefer some more BASS and low mids so i am leaning towards el34's

[ampfab]

I haven't looked at a lightning circuit lately, but wouldn't a el34 lightning basically be very similar to a marshall jtm45 circuit?
the non-reverb chieftain circuit is a good one!

[gingertube]

For your consideration -
I built a "Junkbox Trainwreck" with a parallel 12AX7 input.
The Preamp:
Note the different operating points for the parallel triodes on the input, this gave a "richer" tone.

[gingertube]

And the Power Amp:
Note I subsequently added 47K gridstops to both sides of the phase splitter to cure an oscillation problem with teh volume turned passed about 7.

I also changed the cathode bias on the output tubes to have separate resistors and bypass caps for each tube, I used the resistor and cap values from the BadCat (270R + 220uF for each tube)
http://bmamps.com/Schematics/badcat/bad ... cat_30.pdf

Output Tranny I used was a 3K4 Raa JTM45.

I also used 6CA7 in preference to EL34, the modern production ElectroHarmonix 6CA7 are recommended although I used NOS Philips.

This amp is used by the local guitar god for all his gigs.

The 47K feedback resistor on the power amp applied a lot of feedback to control his open back speaker cab, if you build it you may want to experiment with less feedback by shifting the feedback to take it from the 4 Ohm tap and/or increase the 47K to 68K, 82K or even 100K.

Cheers,
Ian

[Reeltarded]

i love those 'drawrings'

[guittech]

Wow Gingertube! That might be just what i needed! sort of a "best of both worlds" type amp

Been listening to a lot of Wreck samples the last 24 hours and it's moving me.

[gingertube]

Be aware that this amp like most non-master volume amps (all Trainwrecks) is very clean up to very loud. You need to push them hard to get an overdrive sound. Having said that, this "Junkbox Trainwreck" reacts well to a pedal like an old DS2 between guitar and amp.
Cheers,
Ian