Tube Amp Archive

Don't agonize over impedance matching for this. The airbrake is a resistive load, speakers are inductive. What this means is that a speaker's impedance varies a lot depending on the frequency. Look at some speaker curves and you will see this. The actual impedance of an airbrake is sort of an averag...

A real simple quick&dirty way of doing wet-dry with a reverb or delay is to split your signal in two: send one to the Wreck and the other to a small clean satellite amp. Put the verb/delay on the input of the satellite amp. (Some pedals have a dry output jack for this purpose. In that case run the w...

Thanks to everyone who posted the airbrake layouts and schematics. :wink: I just built one and it sounds great. I had the jacks and knobs, got the switch from Mouser, and got everything else (resistors, rheostat, chassis) surplus. Overall cost for me was $35 ( :shock: ). I built the full-blown versi...

When I play acoustic I sometimes find myself spacing out while just letting the sound flow...and I'll catch myself resting my chin on the guitar feeling the vibrations go through my head.

I find myself doing that a lot with my electro-acoustic, ever since I installed the Fishman preamp.

Anything can be a handicap or a useful tool. It depends on how you use it. I don't know why on earth anyone would want to use a distortion pedal with a TW amp- kind of contradicts the whole point of the amp. But a dirt pedal can be useful in the right place, in the right context- if it's the right p...

Yeah I've had it with electric guitars and amps. I threw all that BS away and am totally acoustic now. And I've had it with this six-string nonsense too. I'm down to one string and it sounds fantastic- so pure... I can't believe I never did this before...

nickt wrote:Good idea, AX84 discussed this once or twice - haven't been there for a while so don't know if it went anywhere.

That was the "Tonebrewery"- Paul Ruby's baby IIRC. Modular pre, power, and power supply. Cool idea- don't think it went anywhere though.

Here's a 6bm8 amp I built:

http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main. ... attWonder/

One of the problems with DC heaters is you run a real risk of inducing more noise by sticking another rectifier in the chassis. There's no reason to even consider DC heating in a simple amp like a valve jr unless you have a really horrendously shitty layout.

The Valve Junior nutcases know every Band-Aid fix in the book to make the wrong voltages into the right voltages, they stick power resistors inline to drop the filament voltage into the correct range.

It's kind of ironic- I heard the Valve Juniors come stock with DC heaters now... (?!?!?)

Hi everyone, I just finished building my first Express clone and while it does sound amazing there's a pronounced rattling noise (very much like a loose screw/washer) that gets amplified and whose intensity peaks when certain notes and chords are being played...so resonance seems to play a role. Wo...

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No need for my post, then. Kudos to Allyn (and Stephen) for allowing cooler heads to prevail.

1/2 Watts will do.

There were lots of gigs where my little deluxe was a little too loud for the first set, but not quite enough for the third, it was a real aggravation. For me, the answer to that is small amp - big p.a. Haha! :mrgreen: What's funny is how Trainwrecks are sort of a product of their era, like most amp...

I agree no amp sounds good at bedroom levels ( whatever that is), but I also think a few db off the top, being able to do that, is essential for an amp you're going to gig with. Maybe for your hearing as well. all you toughguys that do the "all men play on 10" routine, just don't have tinnitus yet....