recommendations for a "twin" in a small package ?

[RJ Guitars]

...I want to build a baby twin. that is, a small amp that can be 15 watts or whatever...

"The Holy Grail" of amps is the small one that sounds like a big one - IMHO.

I've been after that same rascal for a very long time but while it is easier and cheaper to build a small amp than a big one, I've found making it sound big is actually really hard.

Part of the issue is our ears. This is in part the reason they came up with the "loud" function on small stereos. It has something to do with not being able to hear the high and low frequencies very well at low volumes so you just hit the "Loud" switch and it seems more balanced to our ears. But when you turn the amp up loud, then you don't need the "Loud" function any more. Somehow that says that a scaled down copy of a frequency spectrum doesn't sound equivalent in tone quality to our ears. I've found that clean tone and lots of watts always seem to hang out together. That's at least part of the equation IMHO.

Having said all that - keep the volts high and the gain down and you should be able to get some great clean sounds out of 15 watts. The HiFi guys can get some incredibly low distortion levels out of those big triodes and they only put out only a few watts... maybe something to be learned there?

good luck, keep us posted.

rj

[iknowjohnny]

I'm not so interested in as clean as can be...more interested in the twin's feel and dynamics. But i'll settle for whatever i get as long as it's got that fender thing happening to some degree.

[wawa]

I've been down this road and I modified a fender champ for big clean sound with a 6l6GC for bed room level. Altough is not a reverb a pedal could fix that.

Here's what I did

on a silverface champ I swapped out the original speaker and put a 8" weber a 10" would be even better. The original was fartty
I converted the rectifier to solid state this bumped up the voltage on the power tube more suitable for a 6l6GC which gave it a lot more head room.
re-biased put a GE nos tubes and what a great clean practice amp really reminded me of a lil twin. it's clean all the way up to 10 and a hint of speaker break up with the 8" speaker has that SRV sound on the neck position on a strat just awsome and cheap!

[jaysg]

Look at the Allen Accomplice for some ideas. He did a good job with that.