Kittyhawk M1

[mojotom]

Hi everybody !!

I've been collecting infos about Dumble style amps for a while but I've not built one yet, mainly Trainwreck and Marshall based ones. By the time I tought about building one, maybe a D'lite, a friend of mine talked to me about his 90's (maybe even 80's) Kittyhawk multi channel amp. After searching the web I found that this company used to be Dumble german dealer back then so it seems logical to be Dumble based and it is.

After a quick peak inside it's definetly based on the ODS loaded with (useless) features :

- 100w EL34 output stage
- Clean, Lead and Lead 2 channels (4 pre tubes)
- Tube buffered FX loop
- Small 1x12 Combo

The preamp features seperate vol.bass mid treble master (one for the cleans and one for the 2 leads channels) and a common presence control.

I'm just starting to figure everything out but it sure need some tweaking
because it sounds average in clean mode and very fizzy in OD mode.

I will post pix as soon as I lay my hands on a good cam. The guys at Kittyhawk surely borrowed a lot from the ODS (same tonestack, 100k/1.5K/100µ everywhere, same output stage, same feedback/presence network etc).

My friend use strat and tele mostly so I wonder what I could do with it.

When I planned to build my Dumble, I thought about 100k 70's ODS because it's more like a fender on steroids than the smooth lead tone of the 90's but lots of people find the OD fizzy and higher plates are often advise for the strat player...

I have at least three choices :

- Conversion to a 124 because it should sound brown and fat
- Conversion to a ceriatone alike because of the feedback it should sound great
- Using every pre tubes (4) to build a clean side along the lines of a 70's with boost and a PAB HRM lead channel, kind of a mix of what is known to work great.

I'm a little skeptical about the third because it looks like a hard challenge to tweak everything right but if I look at this project it seems a perfect fit, I've read a lot here and many of you seem to prefer a clean 100k and an HRM OD.

The player is more a clean/crunch rythme kind of player with lots of attack, that's why I thought about the 124.


I want to thank you all for all the data and tweaks I've read here and for any help you could give me to make a good choices.

Tom