Jim Kelley Amps Info wanted

[Runaway J]

Hi!
a few weeks ago I saw Lou Reed on TV and was amazed at the great sounding guitars. I recognized that he used a Jim Kelley FACS, which I have in good memory ‘cause I knew someone back in the 80’s who owned one. Googled a while and found Jims homepage which is very informative btw, but I’d like to hear some first-hand-reports, before I decide to buy parts for a clone or start gutting my old Fender 75. From what I’ve heard and seen on the schematics they are running 6V6’s at ungodly high plate voltage, use the power tubes for overdrive and are pretty versatile with their 4 controls. I may be wrong, but somehow the Kelley-sound reminds me on some TRW-clips I’ve heard, but there’s no real comparison through crappy computer speakers and the last time I heard a Kelley live is more than 20 years ago. Is anyone out there who would share his experience, pics, soundclips, … ?
Any information appreciated.
Thanx in advance.

[drz400]

Good sounding amp
I owned 2 myself years ago, Kelley is a great guy who wound up hating musicians (even though he plays bass himself) I believe he is teaching Physics now.

They are a one trick pony though with very active EQ stack Baxandal with no feedback
http://www.schmarder.com/radios/tech/tone.htm

I used to pop power tubes left and right , I could never trust the amp which was a drag. Knopfler used them as well. Even though the 6V6's were supposed to handle it they never did. The attenuator robbed the amp of some punch as well.
The amp doesn't resemble a wreck in the slightest

[Runaway J]

Good sounding amp
I owned 2 myself years ago, Kelley is a great guy who wound up hating musicians (even though he plays bass himself) I believe he is teaching Physics now.

They are a one trick pony though with very active EQ stack Baxandal with no feedback
http://www.schmarder.com/radios/tech/tone.htm

I used to pop power tubes left and right , I could never trust the amp which was a drag. Knopfler used them as well. Even though the 6V6's were supposed to handle it they never did. The attenuator robbed the amp of some punch as well.
The amp doesn't resemble a wreck in the slightest

Thanks very much drz, very informative.
I really like Jims concept with them two identical channels. Maybe an airbrake would do a better job. Do you think a lower plate voltage would kill the characteristic sound?
Any more opinions?

[Tavda3172]

Hi Guys,
Just to clarify, the Kelly amps did not actually use an active Baxandall EQ. It uses the passive Baxandall as it is not inside of a feedback loop. It also has a mid boost (switched parallel cap) added.

Drz400, I know that is what you said above but it seemed a little confusing as written.

FYI, JJ 6V6's are rated at 500v on the plates. If you built it as a head to get the tubes out of the sound field of the speaker you should have no problems with failures (other than JJ's quality control). So there is no need to scale down the voltage as 60W is within 4 6V6's max dissipation .
Regards,
Kevin

[CaseyJones]

I heard a Kelley (early '80s at Rudy's in NYC) before I heard a Trainwreck and long before I ever heard of Dumble. Dumbles were more of a West Coast thing, they were under my radar in New York in the '80s.

The Kelley was very impressive. I was impressed by the big fat clean tone, articulate pick attack, solid but not overbearing midrange. I filed it under, "I got to get me one of those someday" and that was that. They were expensive then and as far as I'm concerned they're expensive now. Compared to a real Trainwreck or Dumble they're inexpensive.

FYI, JJ 6V6's are rated at 500v on the plates. If you built it as a head to get the tubes out of the sound field of the speaker you should have no problems with failures (other than JJ's quality control). So there is no need to scale down the voltage as 60W is within 4 6V6's max dissipation .

We all tweak and mod so let's be sensible. The B+ on the Kelley is way too high and IMHO there's no good reason to run it that high. My best guess is that back in the '80s 6V6s were readily available and Kelley liked the way they sounded at those voltages. I spent a lot of time tracking down 6L6s and EL34s in the '80s, I'm here to tell you they were much more difficult to find then than they are now.

"No problems with failures"?! These amps are notorious for eating 6V6s. Just because there are 6V6s available that will work now doesn't mean that there will be a ready supply ten years from now.

I'd lose 50 volts from the power supply and build it as 2 x EL34.

I liked Lou better back when he shot heroin and had a bad attitude. The New Lou... all cuddly and introspective... brings on waves of nausea. A New Yorker who's cuddly and introspective?! C'mon, Lou... grow a beard, change yer name, buy a big ol' jazz guitar and move to Boulder. Or Santa Rosa maybe.

[Runaway J]

Thanks for the input guys.

Casey, thats exactly what I wanted to hear. Funny but every discussion about Kelley amps seems to end up as a discussion about the reliability of 6V6s .
The Kelley amps were so highly rated back in the 80s, I wonder there are not more people interested in them. At least here in Germany there was this 'top four' when the boutique thing started (Boogie MK I, Kelley Amp, Dumble ODS, Kitty Hawk Standard). All these amps have their own legendary reputation except the Kelley (and they DO sound great!)

Could anyone explain how KO'C modified the Kelley design in TUT 5 ? Don't own that book.

I liked Lou better back when he shot heroin and had a bad attitude. The New Lou... all cuddly and introspective... brings on waves of nausea. A New Yorker who's cuddly and introspective?! C'mon, Lou... grow a beard, change yer name, buy a big ol' jazz guitar and move to Boulder. Or Santa Rosa maybe.

Any further input appreciated.

[jjman]

....I liked Lou better back when he shot heroin and had a bad attitude. The New Lou... all cuddly and introspective... brings on waves of nausea. A New Yorker who's cuddly and introspective?! C'mon, Lou... grow a beard, change yer name, buy a big ol' jazz guitar and move to Boulder. Or Santa Rosa maybe.

I didn't like his attitude back then and usually experience the nausea when he is "singing." I'll have to check on his new attitude.

[Tavda3172]

"No problems with failures"?! These amps are notorious for eating 6V6s.

I thought we were talking about scratch building one. That would involve using components that are available now. As a head with tubes facing up, out of the sound field of the speaker, with tubes rated to handle the voltage you should have no problem with failures . Already stressing a tube that wasn't rated for 500v and bombarding it with the sound pressure from the speaker, plus having all of the heat rising into the seal of the tube will certainly worsen the situation. Turning them right side up and eliminating the speaker sound pressure will surely help the situation. Whats wrong with that? Then it is a personal preference whether the B+ is too high or not, and one person can build it as Jim did or another can build it with lower B+ and EL34s. To each their own. Why limit your options? There may not be any tubes aroud in 10 years... carpe diem.
-Kevin

[CaseyJones]

....I liked Lou better back when he shot heroin and had a bad attitude. The New Lou... all cuddly and introspective... brings on waves of nausea. A New Yorker who's cuddly and introspective?! C'mon, Lou... grow a beard, change yer name, buy a big ol' jazz guitar and move to Boulder. Or Santa Rosa maybe.

I didn't like his attitude back then and usually experience the nausea when he is "singing." I'll have to check on his new attitude.

Totally off-topic but there's Classic Lou and New Lou. I'm o.k. with Lou right up to and including "New York" but after that he got all mushy on us. Tunes like "Sweet Jane", "Heroin", "White Light/White Heat", "Rock 'n' Roll" (NOT a Zeppelin cover!) are the real Lou. He still had it on "New York" which coincides nicely with when I got the hell outta New York. "Dirty Boulevard" and "Sick of You" are clearly Old Lou. It's no accident that "Dime Store Mystery" is the last track on that disc, that one is clearly New Lou. Unless I'm most of the way through a jug of wine and I have my scented candles lit... that one makes me queasy, too!

He has at least as much vocal talent as Dylan... which is to say zero. If you understand he's a rock 'n' roll Kerouac then you get it. If not... then you don't.

Already stressing a tube that wasn't rated for 500v and bombarding it with the sound pressure from the speaker, plus having all of the heat rising into the seal of the tube will certainly worsen the situation. Turning them right side up and eliminating the speaker sound pressure will surely help the situation. Whats wrong with that?

Sure. The time is right for a Kelley Klone. We can build them exactly the same as Jim built them to begin with, it would be a nice amp to have in my collection.

But... you said it. 6V6s weren't designed to operate at 500 volts, I don't care which way you orient them or what measures you take to make their lives a little easier.

I'm a hot rodder, I can't leave anything alone. I'd build one with a zillion volts on the plates (maybe with the tricky screen trick so the thing has half a chance of living with the elevated supply voltage) but I'd just build it as a baseline. Then I'd build another with the supply voltage dropped to 385 volts, as far as I'm concerned that's as high as anyone should go with 6V6s. I'd diddle with the 6V6 version and see how it sounds with 2 x EL34 although I'm sure Version 2.1 would be happier with 435 volts and EL34s.

If it didn't sound good I'd change it.

[Tavda3172]

Casey Jones,
Do what you will and enjoy . However, some 6V6's are rated for 500V. If we had enough heater current and a VVR or powercaling card we could change output tubes and voltages on the fly!! Everyone would be happy! Have a great weekend.
-Kevin

[drz400]

Hi Guys,
Just to clarify, the Kelly amps did not actually use an active Baxandall EQ. It uses the passive Baxandall as it is not inside of a feedback loop. It also has a mid boost (switched parallel cap) added.

Drz400, I know that is what you said above but it seemed a little confusing as written.

FYI, JJ 6V6's are rated at 500v on the plates. If you built it as a head to get the tubes out of the sound field of the speaker you should have no problems with failures (other than JJ's quality control). So there is no need to scale down the voltage as 60W is within 4 6V6's max dissipation .
Regards,
Kevin

I thought I was clear but maybe confusing when I said "active" what I meant is that it is more active than a Fender tone stack. You can say anything you want about 6V6's handling high voltage. It just was never my experience. Maybe they are better now than they used to be, back in the mid 80's it was hit or miss for me, and...my FACS amps were well serviced by Kelley, they were both heads. Knopflers were heads as well and I watched one go puff on stage. As I undertsand it MK stopped using them because of problems not because of the tone which was on a lot of brothers in arms. The Kelleys were nicely made hand wired amps, just in my experience the tubes never lived. Kelley is a smart man, it was just the tubes were not living up to their specs. I tried 5881's which survived just fine but didnt sound the same at all. I used to have to bring 2 quartets of Groove tubes every place I went. Also when it popped the tubes many times it took out the bias light and the amp couldnt be used until the bias circuit was fixed, eventually I took that out.

[km6xz]

A real 6V6 was never intended to operate at those levels with a dynamic signal. There are no current or past 6v6's that would survive on 500+ volts and they never lasted in Kelly amps either back when RCA NOS was still around. But they sounded great when they worked. Stressing the tubes did sound good. One of the reasons Kelly amps worked as long as they did was his speakers provided proper load matching, which was not 4, 8 or 16 ohms for any standard output transformer. The plate Z will required a non-standard turns ratio to match 8 ohms with an elevated plate voltage. If you build it with 385VDC as suggested(still 35 volts above maximum spec), you can use a Hammond off the shelf transformer for 8 ohms, but the sound will be different due to a different operating point.

I had a Kelly amp for my studio, and a few others types of 50 watt or less amps for recording. It was the second most used by visiting musicians, the most popular one was an old old Marshall plexi that was used on dozens of hit albums. We had a store room full of new Mesa amps that no one used, the factory used to send a truck over every time a major group came and started handing them out. I guess that was cheaper advertising then print ads.

Sounds like a fun, not terribly expensive, project. The 6V6, either original RCA or Tunsol were some of the best sounding guitar tubes ever made. Their 14 watts of plate dissipation was their main drawback for larger than practice amps however.

[Tavda3172]

There are no current or past 6v6's that would survive on 500+ volts and they never lasted in Kelly amps

Kelly had 485 volts on the plates at idle. This is even lower when the amp is under load. Look at the limiting values for a JJ 6V6 in attachment please.
-Kevin

[CaseyJones]

There are no current or past 6v6's that would survive on 500+ volts and they never lasted in Kelly amps

Kelly had 485 volts on the plates at idle. This is even lower when the amp is under load. Look at the limiting values for a JJ 6V6 in attachment please.

You can't argue with a cloud of electrical smoke. I hear guys justifying absurd combinations all the time, that doesn't make said combinations sensible. "Will work under ideal conditions" isn't the same as "will be stone hammer reliable under all conditions". I know which one I prefer. While we're at it I prefer stone hammer simple.

[Tavda3172]

Hi guys,
There is something to be said for "stone hammer reliable under all conditions". I can't argue with that.

My only point is: has anybody tried JJ 6V6's in an amp with these voltages? Have they personally experienced a cloud of electrical smoke with these tubes? I have personally had a set in a Twin Reverb For the past 3 years with no cloud of electrical smoke, no failures, and the amp has been gigged with quite often. It was modified for individual bias pots, and individual 1K screen resistors, but that is it. And this is in the worse scenario of upside down tubes in a combo, in the speaker sound field, which is not my preference or recommendation. In the end, everyone finds their own truth, but I think this particular tube may be overlooked in this discussion. As I said before, to each their own. This happens to be my experience and it works for me. YMMV. Maybe it is the individual, higher value screen resistors that make it more reliable.

We probably should use solid state if we want an amp that passes the stone hammer test. Tubes are made of glass after all and easily mechanically upset especially when hot. We all make compromises we can live with.
-Kevin