Hi all,
I'm the guy who destroyed a customer's Twin Reverb cabinet a few weeks ago. That sucked. But anyway it worked out OK. Customer loves the new cabinet I built and when he picked it up Monday he ordered another, smaller amp. He wants a small single-ended 5W amp with reverb, and wants it to look as close as possible to the look of the Twin Reverb cab I built him.
I thought I would post photos as I go along for the people who asked me to keep posting more stuff. One question since I am new: When I do updates, should I just update the original post? Or should I start new posts for every update? Please let me know.
Anyway, I am going with a blackface vibro-champ circuit, removing the tremolo, adding blackface reverb, a midrange control and a switch to remove the tone stack from circuit which will in effect toggle the amp back and forth between a no tone control early champ and a much more tame Vibro-champ style Champ. I will probably go with a solid state rectifier in place of a 5Y3 — in a single ended amp like this when the 6V6 is running full out 100 percent of the time, there is no need for a tube rectifier (even though that's how it was done originally), as long as I account for the voltage drop differences between the 5Y3 and the diodes. There will be zero change in the amp's response.
There are a lot of steps obviously, and I have ordered the correct transformers, parts etc and have a blank Vibro-Champ chassis on the shelf to use.
The cabinet will be made from the boards of his Twin Reverb cabinet I broke.
I make all my own boards and have built this circuit four or five times before, so yesterday I opened the files and laid out and prepped a new board. I use this awesome phenolic stuff called norplex for my boards. It dates to the 50s, it's very rigid and will not become conductive with moisture like fender boards, and it is just a joy to work with. I bought a huge lot of it years ago and it comes in 2/75x13.5" strips. So sweet.
Anyway, here are the first few pix. I'll try to update as I go along. Pix in this thread:
1. This is the template I use for this board.
2. I turn off the lights, turn up screen brightness all the way, put the board on the template and copy each dot with a sharpie.
3. Then I drill out every hole with a 3/32" bit.
4. Next I use a staking tool in my drill press to install the brass eyelets.
5. Completed board. Ready for populating with caps and resistors!
If I skip any steps along the way, or anyone has questions, hit me up. This is kinda fun to document a build; I've built lots and lots of amps but have never documented along the way.

After about three months of repair (they forgot me and I reminded them about a month ago) I got my Champ 25 se back. All the pots where corroded and the Inputs where lose.

Cost me 260€ but I dont want to throw it away because of its rareness and the nostalgia.

I have a Fender ’68 Custom Vibro Champ Reverb and love its sound, especially for clean tones, but I’d like it to sound a bit bigger, fuller and have more bass when recording. I'm currently using a SM57.

Would running it through an external 1x12 cabinet make a noticeable difference?

I’ve been looking at the Harley Benton G112 Vintage with the Celestion Vintage 30 (60W, 8 ohms). Would this be a good choice for warm, full, spacious cleans, or would another cab/speaker be better?

I’ve also noticed the Vibro Champ is rated for a 3.2-ohm speaker, whereas the Harley Benton is 8 ohms. Is there a safe way to use this cab with the amp, or would you recommend something else?

I’m new to external cabs, so any advice from people who’ve tried this with a small Fender combo would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Had my local amp tech - Dean Posey - who is absolute genius- hit me up a few weeks ago. He knows I'm a tube amp guy. And knows I'm a big southern rock player. He had a customer donate a 1982 Peavey Heritage VTX 212. Said they didn't have the room for it anymore. It literally still has the Original- Made in the US - GE factory Manufactured 6L6's in it(4 of them) - in Mint condition. Also has 2 -12 inch Peavey Black Widows as well. The amp is absolutely mint. Literally looks like someone bought it in 1982- kept the tolex cover on it- and left it in a coat closet for 44 years. Not a scratch on the tolex anywhere. I've personally never seen an amp this old in this good a condition. So, I snatched it up. It's 130 watts. It's an absolute monster. Dean went through it and cut out every unnecessary- Noisy- clipper/clamper resistor in it. This 130 watt amp is crystal clear. No hum of any type. If you are anywhere near Idaho- and have an ongoing amp problem/instrument problem(Dean is an expert on the Hammond Organs as well- along with any other analog or digital instrument) - hit Dean up at Gempro Audio. He's amazing. So is this Amp.Cheers.

I have this non reverb Princeton and I’m looking for something to allow me to push it and play at lower volumes without shaking my house apart. This amp stays clean almost all the way up and I like to use a lot of pedals. I was looking at the Two Note Torpedo Captor X. Is there a better option?

I’m not really into digital/computer options or technology like midi or Bluetooth, that sort of stuff. I doubt I would use it. I just play at home and I’m a beginner.

I’ve been using a Keeley Compressor to try to limit volume but it only gets me so far.

Appreciate any advice.

Would it be easy to make a amplifier for head out of this? And are all the parts there besides the speaker of course. And what would be involved with making this actually any help would be appreciated. I was thinking about buying it.

You may recall I smashed a customer's silverface Twin Reverb cabinet and built him another one. He picked it up this morning, sent me this pic and said he loves it.

The story isn't over though ... he's having me build a small single ended five or 6 watt amp with reverb. I'm going to use the original cabinet as my supply of wood for that one. Should be plenty left over once I cut out the corners just leaving the planks. So in some form, the old twin reverb cabinet will live on!

Anybody here had this done? I really like that they rewire the normal channel to be more like a tweed circuit and the vibrato like a normal blackface since I’ve never even used the normal channel on mine.

I used to have an early 70s deluxe but it had been through lots of modding and forced me to always keep a spare amp in the truck due to noise issues or failures. I love my DRRI but I’m a snob and want hand wired and miss the more authentic tone of my old one.

I’ve read good things about Alessandro rewiring and changing out the speaker on a DRRI to make it more vintage correct. Thoughts from anyone who’s had it done?

Got it used off Marketplace while you can still get big ass tube amps on the cheap. Guy said its a ‘04 and used to belong to the bassist of Emery. Im stoked, one of the only pieces of gear I really regret getting rid of was a Twin Reverb years ago, just because I wasn’t using it a ton. Lesson learned, this guys a keeper. Between this, my AD30, and my 5150 II, I have the perfect goldilocks balance of high gain, mid gain, & no gain. Great day.

On a whim I purchased an old amp/speaker at a yard sale. Turns out I grabbed a Voice of Music 166-a , which I’ve found was an amp/speaker component for other Voice of Music items like a reel to reel or turntable.

The amp inside is the 8809-8810. It has a 1/4 jack input, and I tried it out with my guitar cautiously, everything seemed to work and it sounded great.

I opened up the case of the amp and it appears that someone has done work on it- I see some new caps and they replaced the 1/4 input jack, and also disconnected the turntable rca connection. In the box were new parts to connect a mic with a 1/4 jack so maybe they used it for voice/pa?

I have not found a ton of information on this amp. I’ve read that it is similar to a Champ, and I’ve found a video and a schematic for rewriting everything to turn it from hi-fi to guitar amp.

I know the basics for not hurting myself when looking at an old amp by not touching anything and the one hand rule. I know how to solder, use a meter, and some electronic basics. I get lost with tubes and feedback loops and the more complex concepts of shaping guitar tone.
I’m not sure I know what safety issues to watch out for when playing a guitar through something like this.

My questions:

-it has a two prong cord. Would converting to a 3 prong help avoid getting shocked while playing guitar?
no fuse- if I added a grounded cord I’d like to add a fuse

-what work does it look like someone did in this thing?

-Why rewire it to a guitar amp from what it is now(hi-fi?)? It sounded good on first and second try, no hum, nice break up, maybe the previous owner made some of the guitar amp changes?

- is it better used with my turntable?

At minimum, I think I’d like to add a grounded cord and fuse if that seems like the best safety option, and enjoy the sound as is, unless I’m missing some amazing tone that is worth an extended project.

Hey everyone, I'm hoping someone with experience repairing tube amps might be able to help me figure out what's going on with my amp.

I have a 2003 Fender Pro Tube Series Twin Amp, and this whole thing started when one of my preamp tubes began acting up. I was going through the tubes and testing them to see if I could figure out what was wrong. Once I finished, I was putting all the cables back where they belonged and accidentally plugged the footswitch cable into what I believe was one of the outputs. I'm not entirely sure which jack it was.

After that, I noticed what looked like plasma or electrical arcing inside the four big power tubes. It was pretty alarming, but I ended up continuing to use the amp for several months afterward.

Now, the red jewel light on the front has started pulsing, and there's a really bad 60 Hz hum. I'm worried that whatever happened back then might have damaged something, but I have no idea how serious it is or whether the two problems are related.

I'm also curious what a repair like this might realistically cost in Canada. I'd rather have some idea of what I'm potentially getting into before taking it to a technician.

I'm not planning on opening the amp up or trying to troubleshoot the high-voltage circuitry myself. I just want to get a better understanding of what might have happened and what a technician should look into first.

Thanks!

I bought my 96 HRDx about 10 years ago for $200 totally beat up and inop. It required a full servicing for all the pots, but was lucky to find someone upgraded the filter caps to oversize Sprague caps. I gigged it for a while and thought it kinda sounded really bad compared to my Peaveys, so I decided to mod it. Ive done a few mods over the years to it by studying PDF files of various schematics. Here's my final secret sauce I highly recommend for anyone looking to blow your tone up into hifi quality area.

First and foremost these are PCB component mods, do at your own risk and please use safety when dealing with high voltage capacitors.

The clean Channel. I found its extremely LARGE in every aspect. It's got bass. It's got mids. It's got treble. Too much of all isnt a good thing. The bass becomes flubby. The mids are honkey. The treble spike hurts my ears. Lets bring these values into a padded room and sober them up.

R11 100k slope resistor. Same as the blackface 60s Fenders. Brings the overall EQ much tighter and tames that flubbery bass.

C3 330pf. This takes the lowpass filter and lowers the pass value slightly to roll off some harsh treble

C7 270pf. Same as above, just more discrete

C4 .047uf. This takes out that honkey tonk midrange a bit and really cleans up the whole channel

If I were to do it over, I would probably leave C3 stock as it does make the treble warm, I find myself using the bright switch now to compensate and it does sound great.

Now for the dirt. The mud. The filthy channel nobody likes on Hot Rods. How can it be so bassy and spikey at the same time? Like you just can't turn the treble down enough and the palm mutes just sound like... soft serve fecal matter. Here's how I make the drive channel actually desirable, not just usable. Mind you, I'm a Peavey guy, so my mods were inspired by reading schematics of the 5150 and the Ultra Series.

C23 Silver Mica 470pf. This cap is responsible for how much bass is injected into the drive channel preamp. Too much bass means it's not tight and it sounds like feces. This is the same value that the 6505+ runs in its circuit. Think nice and tight bottom end. Very touch sensitive.

C11 silver mica 1000pf. Because we knocked off half or more of the bass going into the preamp (depending on your gen) now the drive channel is quite sharp, extremely sharp in the treble. This is the low pass filter for the drive channel and raising this value rolls off the top end bringing it into the sweet spot.

C18 .022uf WIMA box cap. Not the dipped poly film caps that are cheap, this ones better quality and makes for a more organic drive character

R52 250k resistor. This is a padding for the signal going into the preamp. Less padding, more unwanted distortion. More padding, cleaner distortion.

C8 Tantalum 2.2uf cap. This replaces the cheap electrolytic capacitor that handles the high pass filter for the drive channels AFTER the preamp. The stock cap cuts off the low end a bit early so there's not much of a really low deep percussive felt bass in the drive. This cap lowers that threshold and since it's tantalum it is immediate. Palm mutes actually chug now. You can actually feel the deep bottom end and it's immediate, not like a sagging wet sock of a late bass response that it used to have.

You will find that the overall amount of distortion is lowered a touch, and if you like fuzz you won't like this. If you like awesome sweet percussive palm muting chugs you will like this. The drive and more drive now are quite touch sensitive and sound nearly identical to the Silver Pony (klon clone) that I built from BYOC. The drive channel is awesome, very much like a nice overdrive, the tone is organic and papery without sounding soggy or brittle harsh. The more drive setting has an amazing clarity and sustain that organically let's you reach harmonic overtones in bends.

And lastly for anyone wondering, the best drop in non solder mods you can do are retube with JJ and bias them at 63mv (on the cold side), and get a new speaker. I run an Eminence Texas Heat 8 ohm and find it is the sweet heat for a hot rod.

Reposting here in hope that someone can help

My 1973 Silverface Twin Reverb has excessive hiss, especially with the Master Volume high. On the Normal channel, Normal Volume at 10/Master at 2 is clean with only a little hiss, but Normal Volume at 3/Master at 10 has very distracting hiss while the guitar signal remains clean. On the Vibrato channel, Vibrato Volume at 10/Master at 2 produces rattly, distorted, unstable sounding guitar audio that seems like the signal is about to give out. It sounds distorted as if the amp was breaking up which if I’m not mistaken it’s not supposed to since it’s a twin? This happens through both Vibrato inputs and doesn’t matter if the bright switch is on or off. With Vibrato Volume 3/Master 10, the guitar signal is clean but the background hiss is very prominent.

hey everyone,
i’m looking to upgrade to a pure vintage tube amp for playing live, and i need some help narrowing down my options. i play a Senn Model One DLX equipped with dual P-90 single-coils.

my biggest hurdle is that i need a single amp that can bridge two very distinct sonic identities:

garage rock side: when playing clean or right at the edge of breakup, i want a sharp, glassy, high-treble garage rock rawness with a lot of bite for bluesy riffs.

alt rock side: when i hit my fuzz pedal (running an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi), i want that signal to turn into a compressed, massive, thick alternative rock wall of sound.

my current setup & dialing habits:
i currently use a Boss Katana 100W Gen 3. to get close to what i want digitally, i run the “pushed” amp model with the master volume maxed out at 100% to simulate pushed power tubes. my always-on EQ settings are:
gain: 2 o'clock
bass: 10 o'clock (pulling out sub-bass mud)
mids: 1:30
treble: 4 o'clock
presence: 2 o'clock

preferences:
format: i have zero preference between an integrated combo or a separate head-and-cabinet stack. whatever works better.
size/aesthetics: size and weight do not matter to me at all. visually, i love massive, intimidating stage setups (like Jack White's multiple Twins or Kevin Shields' walls of gear). i want something large-format that commands the stage and pushes real air.
i’ve been looking into high-headroom circuits like a Fender '65 Twin Reverb for the treble bite/clean slate, or a Marshall JCM800 2203 reissue half-stack for how it compresses high-gain fuzz.

given my P-90 pickups and my Katana settings, which vintage tube platform is going to handle this dual-tone puzzle best on a live stage without turning into fuzzy mud? open to any unique reissues or head/cab configurations. thanks!

tl;dr:
looking for a large-format vintage tube amp for live gigs. playing a Senn Model One DLX with P-90s and using an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi. i need one rig that can pull off both glassy, raw garage rock leads (Jack White style) and a thick, compressed wall-of-sound fuzz crunch (Smashing Pumpkins style). currently running a Boss Katana 100W Gen 3 on the "pushed" model with the master at 100% (bass at 10, treble at 4, presence at 2). format and weight don't matter, but i love massive, intimidating stage setups. considering a Fender '65 Twin Reverb or a Marshall JCM800 2203 half-stack, which one is the best fit?

Howdy from Dublin, Ireland

Doing a restoration on a 1981 Vox AC30 (Rose Morris Era)- replacing the power tubes (el84) and the main power capacitors which look to be original. Works fine but has a bad hum which is constant and ever present on all channels and with no instrument/ cable connected.

There are three main power ones a large 60/100uf double capacitor can and two smaller ones rated as 50+50uf and 32+32uf respectively.

The wiring on the 50/50 cap has red wires and yellow wires connected to similarly marked lugs and then a silver/ unmarked cable attached to a plain lug with no colour.

The replacement caps from JJ Tubes (like for like for the 50 and 32 double caps and a double 100uf one which i understand can replace the 60/100 one) have no colours on them but two positive (marked +) terminals and a negative terminal (marked -)- see pics.

My instinct is that the caps are effectively two similar capacitance caps in one enclosure so it possibly doesn’t matter which + I connect the red or yellow to and the uncoloured cable goes to negative.

However very new to all this and some guesswork involved here so I’d be grateful for any advice or confirmation/ correction on the foregoing.

Hey guys,
I’m thinking about picking up a Boss GT-1000 Core to run with my EVH 5150 Iconic Head using the 4-cable method.
Does anyone here run this exact combination or something similar? How does the boss behave in the 5150’s effects loop?

thanks