Ceriatone Express Upgrades?

[Allynmey]

Matt, I have the Mallory PVC's Use them. There is a big difference between them and sozo's in this circuit. I like the sozo's in Marshall circuits...a lot!

[Mark]

Dear Warren

You have a couple of options with Nik. In my experience Nik is very accommodating, you can tell Nik which transformers you'd like to use, he will drill the chassis for the required transformer footprint.

You can now either get Moose to send the transformers over to Nik and get him to build the entire amp. The other option is get Nik to build the amp up minus the transformers and get someone to wire the transformers in in the States.

I think the best bet would be to send the transformer over to Nik, that way you get a fully working amp sent to you, and you don't have to worry about lead dress and workmanship.

[dspblues]

Thanks Mark,
By "Moose", do you mean the ToneSlut transformers?

[paulster]

Moose and Toneslut are one and the same.

[dspblues]

Should I take all this to mean that the Ceriatone chassis will require a mod to use the ToneSlut transformers?

[dspblues]

Should I take all this to mean that the Ceriatone chassis will require a mod to use the ToneSlut transformers?

[philmanatee]

I used a ceriatone chassis for my express and moose's iron bolted right in. I have been using amperex el-34's for over a year and the amp sounds better everytime I play it. When I first built it I used some jj el-34's and they sounded like crap, nos 6v6's sounded much better. I scored the amperex el-34's slightly used for $80 and I would be willing to bet they will outlive many modern production tubes. Every tube in my express was used when I put it in, and I didn't spend a lot on them. I tried new production tubes and they just didn't cut it for me in this circuit. It took me a few weeks to find the exact combo of preamp tubes that really shined and weren't microphonic in the express. I just wanted to share that with you guys. I've been gigging with mine for over a year now, and am quite happy with it. Phil

[Mark]

Dear Warren

Work out what it is that you want.

If you do want the Toneslut/Moose transformers, get him to send them to Nik, (or better still find out if Nik has them in stock) then it's simply a matter of Nik building your amp and sending it back to you.

You don't end up paying for two sets of transformers, and someone to install the second set of transformers. The postage may be expensive, but it will end up being the cheaper option.

I hope that helps.

[dspblues]

It's hard to know what I want if I haven't played Nik's amp. It should already be on the way here. So, I'll have to just wait and see. If I get the toneslut trannys I'll just sell the ones I got from Nik here or on TGP.

[castor]

I took all parts from Nik and assembly by myself.
New trans are good ones, so don't worry about them. If you want you can upgrade with Tonesluts ones.
I tweaked in various modes, thanks to some ideas from Mr. Abbot, but at the end I decided to keep the express base sound and then de-soldered everything followed the original Francesca scheme replcing caps (thanks to Mr. Allyn) and testing many tubes.
Nik's amp sound very good as he ships, but consider that the bigger part of the sound can be changed/obtained replacing:
- tubes
- caps.


Stefano

[dspblues]

Yep yep, that makes sense. Per my other post on this, Nik did some testing and changed the caps to improve the tone for me. I was looking into some tubes, but I'm going to wait until I get the amp before changing them and buying tubes.