Cetiatone Overtone - are they any good??

[bluesfendermanblues]

What about them? The're great

I bought an Overtone one month ago, and Nik shipped it, the same day the paypal payment was received. I ordered mine without transformers and tubes.

I live in Denmark and the extra shipping cost of trannies, would be much more expensive, than buying original Hammonds with tubetown.de in (our neighbouring country) germany. I have a 59' RI Bassman, that I had upgraded with a Mercury Magnetics OT. I just put the original back in the 59' RI and used the Mercury for my overtone instead.

I have seen some posts in here with people kind of dishing Ceriatone/Overtone a little (like they are inferior somehow), which I don't think is quite fair.

On the Upside: It's delivered with
- Sprague 6ps OD,
- Dale RN65's and CC resitors.
- APS potentiometers.
- The chassis is 2,5 mm thick and
- connectors are all in excellent quality.
- All wires (and i do mean ALL) wires are included in the kit.

On the down side:
Only nickel is the connection of the included switch pedal, which is connected via DIN connectors in stead of 5-pin XLR. However, I just drilled the hole a little larger and fitted a Switchcraft XLR. And we're back in the top league quality wise.

The only thing missing was the 6mm indicator lamp. Nik included a traditional Fender juvel lamp, instead and emailed me straight away, that the original lamp was in backorder and would be delivered ASAP. I received it a week ago.

So IMHO quality is excellent and Nik is a trustworthy person.

Sound:
How does it sound, well it didnt quite have the Robben Ford sound I wanted - until now.

You have to give a new amp at least a month with a couple of hours a day to settle in properly. I haven't tried this but I guess you could attach it to a CD player and leave on. Perhaps with a dummy load instead of speakers. This is also important with new preamp tubes and speakers, but you all know that I guess.

However, I can't wait I am the pushy type So in the last month I've done every possible tweak I could think of - gotten hits from fine board menbers like Funk, Heistl, Bob-I and others.

Tweaks:
I've ended up with 220k-3,3k/150k-2,2k on both VI and V2. the caps on V2 have been changed to Xircom and I use 10n throughout.

The trimmer (220k into 100k trim) is on 10 o'clock and the 2,2k resistor in the PSU is changed to 3k, which has lowered the V1 voltages to 190v and V2 to 195v.

The mid cap is 47n with 100k slope and the bright cap is 120p. And the mastervolume has got a 39p.

Lead dress:
The lead dress is real important !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have followed Nik's layout in regards to grounding and checked the #040 and #124 pictures to get correct the schielded wires to/from the overdrive pots. THIS IS Really important. I thought the Overdrive was way too bright utill I got these wires a little further apart (½ inch). The result was a much more 'grainy' and mellow overdrive.

I had fitted a post OD treble control with 3,3nF plus 470k trimmer from OD Level to ground.

The altered Lead dress rendered the treble control obsolete.

Guitars:
I use
- Strat (with SD antiquities and trembucker in the bridge pos),
- Tele 52 RI with original PU's and
- Les Paul (74' Yamaha 'Lord Player' w. N: SD alnico II+ B: SD Jeff Beck)

and I feel like I'm able to go from RF to John Mayer tone. At least this was my impression last night. I still need to try to hear the amp without the local 22m+47n+22m feedback on V1b.

CONCLUSION:
Overtone is a fine kit with excellent component quality.

Give it time to be played (burned) in and

tweak it to your taste.

It really a bargain IMHO.

[Funkalicousgroove]

[bluesfendermanblues]

Well, I'm just enthuastic about this build. It my first attempt at a Dumble like amp.

And I've learned at lot of stuff from reading almost all the post in the forum.

I'm not tryin' to bang ceriatone's drum in particular, just want to share my findings, which could help others to get closer to RF toneland or tell me if I'm wrong.

I've gathered info on this fine site.... and I wish to share info.

[Funkalicousgroove]

did you Build the amp or did Nik?

[bluesfendermanblues]

I build the amp (the component boards comes soldered with wires, ready to mount, though)

In the past I've build amps - Fender, Mesa Boogie, Soldano and Vox from the bottom up. And been modifying amps for friends and music collgues. Starting with bending an alu chassis and soldering everything point to point.

Now I'm older (44) and don't have time to do that, so a nice kit like Nik's is a welcome and easier challange.

[Funkalicousgroove]

Then I take it back I thought you were talking about buying the thing pre-built-

[bluesfendermanblues]

No problem

[Funkalicousgroove]

what kind of iron did you put in your build?

[massygt6]

well, if it works for you, then you made a deal!
Funk, regardings trannies...what can I expect from a Hammond Guitar Series replacement for Marshall plexis 1959? it has a 1700ohm primary tap...it's a bad idea to put it in a dumble ods clone, NON-HRM?

[Funkalicousgroove]

with EL34's it'll sound great! with 6l6 I'd go a different route-

[ayan]

with EL34's it'll sound great! with 6l6 I'd go a different route-

For what it's worth, I have used EL34s is some amps, and 6L6s in others. I think both sound great, what can I say? Still believe that since a good deal of the tone is preamp derived in these amps, all you need is a power section that will ticken up and smooth out things a bit. I don't like the sound of these amps when the power sections is overdriving too much. Unlike say a Plexi type of amp, where that is when the magic begins to happen.

I have to exclude the BM amp, I haven't taken that one out to a gig yet. Tonight I will -- it'll be the third time I take that amp (different circuits every time, all HRM variations) to a gig, always as my second amp and I always choose to fall back on the Skyliner non HRM as the main guy -- I am curious to see how it's going to sound.

Gil

[bluesfendermanblues]

what kind of iron did you put in your build?

A mercury magnetics FTBO-MM
('59 Tweed, 2, 4, 8 & 16Ω taps / UL taps)

Which sound ok.

I originally had this Iron i my Bassman 59' RI, (but didn't notice much difference from the stock fender, by the way- even though I have upgraded the bassmann with NOS 6L6 GE, SOZO caps, etc)

So when I got into this Dumble project, I just swapped the old OT back in the Bassman, and used the FTBO in my Dumble Clone.

The Mercury is ok, but nothin spectacular. I tend to agree with Ayan, that the preamp is the feature and the thrill in this amp. I tried the pre-out into my bassman pwr amp and the dumble clone fully retained its nice dumble'ques character. IMHO

[massygt6]

with EL34's it'll sound great! with 6l6 I'd go a different route-

well, this what I think me too
the problem is that I am somewhat forced to put it in a 6L6 ODS, since the Twin replacement has only a 4ohm tap and it's not suited to my cab configuration...
I am looking for a well built twin type OT with multiple taps...but here in Italy are a bit difficult to find...

[Funkalicousgroove]

i have them

[bluesfendermanblues]

Funk, what's your opinion on the "mercury magnetics FTBO-MM" is it on par with the ones you supply??