What are y'all's dream amps?

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marqueemoon
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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by marqueemoon » Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:50 pm

marqueemoon wrote:
Mon Oct 26, 2020 4:54 pm
I’m happy with what I have currently, but I guess I’d say a Benson Monarch head and 1x12.

If I’m paying I’m not gonna shell out that kind of dough for an amp, but if we’re dreaming sure.
Ok, I would not turn this down.

https://youtu.be/xlyxbi06wlQ

A+ sound and aesthetics in my book.

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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by geoman » Tue Feb 23, 2021 6:33 pm

To get my one owner 1968 Vox Viscount back into working condition. Thomas era Vox with 2 x 12 just had an amazing voice. Several voices actually!!

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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by hexes » Tue Feb 23, 2021 11:38 pm

Dr Tony Balls wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:18 am
hexes wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:31 pm
ToneFerDayz!!1! wrote:
Fri Dec 18, 2020 4:15 am
Late to the party here, but a tweed Tremolux or a brownface Princeton are pretty much my ideal amps.

Sadly, the originals aren't at all obtainable in terms of pricing.
brown princeton clone was the first amp I built. it's VERY easy to clone, and very easy to make sound absolutely beautiful.

i've brought an original 62 back up to spec for a friend of a friend with some good caps and NOS glass and my clone sounds very good next to it.
I'm not familiar with everyone's skill level here but I wouldnt call anything with a bias modulating tremolo VERY easy to clone. At least not very easy to get it right....those things are tricky (and ticky!).

Related but I recently did a Brownface Deluxe as a head:

Image

I had no problems, but i've only done two bias vary clones and 1 harmonic vibrato clone (plus a tweed deluxe, tweed champ, a pair of reverb units, and currently building a rob robinette mini deluxe.) so I'm kinda new at amp building. what specifically about bias vary tremolo should be challenging?

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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by hexes » Tue Feb 23, 2021 11:46 pm

Larsongs wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 9:57 am
hexes wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:31 pm
ToneFerDayz!!1! wrote:
Fri Dec 18, 2020 4:15 am
Late to the party here, but a tweed Tremolux or a brownface Princeton are pretty much my ideal amps.

Sadly, the originals aren't at all obtainable in terms of pricing.
brown princeton clone was the first amp I built. it's VERY easy to clone, and very easy to make sound absolutely beautiful.

i've brought an original 62 back up to spec for a friend of a friend with some good caps and NOS glass and my clone sounds very good next to it.
I’m not disagreeing but I wonder why don’t we see & hear more Browns?
aside from fender reissuing the brown princeton with a 12", they were not made for very long. good quality 4meg reverse audio pots are very hard to find that they used in some circuits (my brown super clone has 3meg for now, with some value changes to slow the trem down) that plus the variances on the circuit designations from say 6g4 (1961-ish) to the 6g4-a around '63 on the fender super.

there aren't many chassis available if you want period correct, and the people who tend to want brownface clones want it to LOOK exactly like original. not my bag, so I'm happy retrofitting.

the surf guitar crowd are huge on the brown era amps. specifically reverb unit, showman, bandmaster, and bassman. there have been some great amp and reverb unit makers doing brown/blonde-esque circuits (nocturne reverb unit. gomez amps...)

originals are rare and expensive, and the blackface amps are much more ubiquitous. the brown/blonde were a middle ground between edgy mid-forward tweed, and the later pop-vocal focused blackface amps.
Last edited by hexes on Wed Feb 24, 2021 10:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by Larsongs » Wed Feb 24, 2021 7:04 am

Dr Tony Balls wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:19 am
Larsongs wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 9:57 am
hexes wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:31 pm


brown princeton clone was the first amp I built. it's VERY easy to clone, and very easy to make sound absolutely beautiful.

i've brought an original 62 back up to spec for a friend of a friend with some good caps and NOS glass and my clone sounds very good next to it.
I’m not disagreeing but I wonder why don’t we see & hear more Browns?
They just didnt make that many of them, I think.
I get that, but, why not?

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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by Dr Tony Balls » Wed Feb 24, 2021 7:24 am

hexes wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 11:38 pm
Dr Tony Balls wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:18 am
hexes wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:31 pm


brown princeton clone was the first amp I built. it's VERY easy to clone, and very easy to make sound absolutely beautiful.

i've brought an original 62 back up to spec for a friend of a friend with some good caps and NOS glass and my clone sounds very good next to it.
I'm not familiar with everyone's skill level here but I wouldnt call anything with a bias modulating tremolo VERY easy to clone. At least not very easy to get it right....those things are tricky (and ticky!).

Related but I recently did a Brownface Deluxe as a head:

Image

I had no problems, but i've only done two bias vary clones and 1 harmonic vibrato clone (plus a tweed deluxe, tweed champ, a pair of reverb units, and currently building a rob robinette mini deluxe.) so I'm kinda new at amp building. what specifically about bias vary tremolo should be challenging?
Bias modulating trems directly effect the amp signal and have a tendency to introduce noises such as ticking, or distortions as the bias voltage of a tube swings away from nominal. In most blackface amps they introduced optocouplers which isolate the tremolo noises and basically just turn the amp's volume up and down, never varying its bias or operation points. Its a bit easier to build easily and well.
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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by Dr Tony Balls » Wed Feb 24, 2021 7:25 am

Larsongs wrote:
Wed Feb 24, 2021 7:04 am
Dr Tony Balls wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:19 am
Larsongs wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 9:57 am


I’m not disagreeing but I wonder why don’t we see & hear more Browns?
They just didnt make that many of them, I think.
I get that, but, why not?
I think it's just a transitional thing. They were literally evolving guitar amp technology as they were making these things. Some things were relative blips because they just evolved quickly.
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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by hexes » Wed Feb 24, 2021 11:43 pm

Dr Tony Balls wrote:
Wed Feb 24, 2021 7:24 am
hexes wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 11:38 pm
Dr Tony Balls wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:18 am


I'm not familiar with everyone's skill level here but I wouldnt call anything with a bias modulating tremolo VERY easy to clone. At least not very easy to get it right....those things are tricky (and ticky!).

Related but I recently did a Brownface Deluxe as a head

I had no problems, but i've only done two bias vary clones and 1 harmonic vibrato clone (plus a tweed deluxe, tweed champ, a pair of reverb units, and currently building a rob robinette mini deluxe.) so I'm kinda new at amp building. what specifically about bias vary tremolo should be challenging?
Bias modulating trems directly effect the amp signal and have a tendency to introduce noises such as ticking, or distortions as the bias voltage of a tube swings away from nominal. In most blackface amps they introduced optocouplers which isolate the tremolo noises and basically just turn the amp's volume up and down, never varying its bias or operation points. Its a bit easier to build easily and well.
i've had a LOT of ticking out of a couple hundred opto-trem amps over the past 12 or so years. would love to work on some more bias-vary. the rarity of the brownface amps with bias trem tends to afford me pristine examples when I do run into them.

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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by Maggieo » Thu Feb 25, 2021 9:08 am

A wall of AC30s.

Actually, I'd love to have a proper 60s Marshall Stack, or a Live At Leeds Hiwatt rig.

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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by Veitchy » Thu Feb 25, 2021 1:40 pm

Dr Tony Balls wrote:
Wed Feb 24, 2021 7:24 am
Bias modulating trems directly effect the amp signal and have a tendency to introduce noises such as ticking, or distortions as the bias voltage of a tube swings away from nominal. In most blackface amps they introduced optocouplers which isolate the tremolo noises and basically just turn the amp's volume up and down, never varying its bias or operation points. Its a bit easier to build easily and well.
Are the noises more problematic in higher-voltage amps? I've been lead to believe bias-vary mostly went away because it didn't work in black panel Deluxes and larger. I ask because the bias trem in my Princeton sounds great. Realistically, bias vary is probably my favorite trem type. It has a lovely warmth, and pitch shift and photocell are great, but they can run into becoming a bit of a 'special effect' if you crank them up.
Maggieo wrote:
Thu Feb 25, 2021 9:08 am
Actually, I'd love to have a proper 60s Marshall Stack, or a Live At Leeds Hiwatt rig.
Run a Plexi and a Hiwatt at the same time. I'd love to do that - in my mind it's simply a scaled-up version of Mike Campbell's tweed Deluxe/black panel Princeton rig.

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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by Dr Tony Balls » Fri Feb 26, 2021 6:43 am

Veitchy wrote:
Thu Feb 25, 2021 1:40 pm
Dr Tony Balls wrote:
Wed Feb 24, 2021 7:24 am
Bias modulating trems directly effect the amp signal and have a tendency to introduce noises such as ticking, or distortions as the bias voltage of a tube swings away from nominal. In most blackface amps they introduced optocouplers which isolate the tremolo noises and basically just turn the amp's volume up and down, never varying its bias or operation points. Its a bit easier to build easily and well.
Are the noises more problematic in higher-voltage amps?
In my experience, yes.
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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by ToneFerDayz!!1! » Fri Mar 12, 2021 3:15 am

Dr Tony Balls wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:19 am
Larsongs wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 9:57 am
hexes wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:31 pm


brown princeton clone was the first amp I built. it's VERY easy to clone, and very easy to make sound absolutely beautiful.

i've brought an original 62 back up to spec for a friend of a friend with some good caps and NOS glass and my clone sounds very good next to it.
I’m not disagreeing but I wonder why don’t we see & hear more Browns?
They just didnt make that many of them, I think.
Yeah, I think they were shortlived and not as "iconic" as the other amps that get cloned. There's a bazillion 5E3 clones but very few tweed Harvards, for example.

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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by BarnyardCoral » Thu Aug 05, 2021 5:28 pm

A 5F4, a Savage Macht 12x, and a handwired version of my Supro Saturn MKII.
And I will be the one to hold Larry Csonka down, kiss him so hard, I'll take Larry Csonka's breath away...
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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by hulakatt » Tue Jan 25, 2022 7:43 am

Almost every time I go into a music store and try out a guitar, I inevitably plug into an AC30 but I have yet to own one. All I want is one of the fawn AC30HW and I'm good. I even like the Greenbacks in there and, at worst, I can swap them out for some Scumino's...

I also wouldn't argue with a Fender Vibro-King, preferably in Blonde.

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Re: What are y'all's dream amps?

Post by Sauerkraut » Tue Jan 25, 2022 9:07 am

hulakatt wrote:
Tue Jan 25, 2022 7:43 am
I also wouldn't argue with a Fender Vibro-King, preferably in Blonde.
Yes! I didn't know about these. They look brilliant!
I'd like that as a head with a GZ34 tube rectifier (no compromises on dream amps, however small) and maybe a bit less power (let's shave 20-30 watts off of that 60) and I'd run it through a 2x12 or a 4x10.

What I really want is a Tremolux/Bandmaster head with reverb.

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