SSS with 6V6s

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HowardMoon
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Jul 06, 2025 4:00 pm

SSS with 6V6s

Post by HowardMoon »

After a couple years of tinkering with ODS designs, I'm finally leaning into messing with an SSS and am trying to soak up all of the wonderful experience and resources available here. Like most of my Dumble-inspired projects I'm likely going for lower power than the originals (either just two 6V6s or a parallel quad--would be a first for me), and a simplified design that eliminates the FET input and reverb section. I'm probably starting with Colgan's generously shared #002 schematic, attached here for reference. I've done some searching here for keywords around SSS and 6V6, 22 watt, etc. and have been surprised to see the topic hasn't been covered much as far as I can see, though I did find this post on using a PI driver with 6V6s, which ultimately proved inconclusive: https://ampgarage.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 5&start=45

So I'm curious, if you were building a two- or four- 6V6 SSS based on the attached schem, what would you change? I've done lower powered versions of many 6L6 amps before, so I have a handle on the basics...the main items on my mind are:

-Reverb mixer - accommodating for the missing reverb channel. I'm assuming I would want to keep the mixing voltage divider and run the reverb side to ground, but would you just run a 220k R85 to ground, or add R85 and 100k R88? I'm assuming that the "3" pathway in that part of the circuit is LNFB for the reverb and the reverb section is a bit complex and different from the Fender versions I'm used to, so I'm struggling somewhat to understand the interrelationships of multiple dividers.

-NFB tail - I would be using an 8Ω secondary and am planning to keep the tail resistor at 270 and up the NFB resistor to 3.9k to compensate.

-Power tube grid stoppers - I'd probably keep 470k for 4x6V6 and drop to 220k for 2

-The PI driver - would you change anything for a 6V6 amp? The previous post I shared and other info I've read elsewhere included some thoughts that the driver's effects could certainly apply to 6V6 power sections but I've never messed with this design in any amp so I'm starting at square 1.

I know this amp won't sound like a "true" SSS but I'm interested to see what happens when the principles are applied to a lower-power design.
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