brewdude wrote: I was thinking that if you wanted to reduce the signal to the 1st stage you would run the bass and mid at low settings and then add just enough treble to balance it out.
Yes, that indeed lowers the signal level. For clean tones I keep the mids low (i.e. less than 12 h) and set the bass to taste. Treble is mostly at 12 h as well. The brilliance control is at 3 h. I use pedals for OD sounds and the amp takes them well.
For OD sounds from the amp I turn the mids up, the bass down, the volume up to about 3 h and set the master to taste.
Had one in my mates store for a couple years, simply too expensive for the punters down under at 10K... but i had played it a few times in that time, great amp. Really chimey, very loud, super cool with some delay.
I took a bunch of pics as i was hot to do one at the time, never eventuated.
Hahaha, pics of a matchless internals dont do ya any good anyways!!
fwiw..I own the original chieftain prototype made by Mark before it went to production. I could open it up and see whats up if youd like. I havent had a peek in there in ages. Let me know what you want verified and Ill do my best to answer it for you....
azatplayer wrote:Had one in my mates store for a couple years, simply too expensive for the punters down under at 10K... but i had played it a few times in that time, great amp. Really chimey, very loud, super cool with some delay.
I took a bunch of pics as i was hot to do one at the time, never eventuated.
Hahaha, pics of a matchless internals dont do ya any good anyways!!
guitarsnguns04 wrote:fwiw..I own the original chieftain prototype made by Mark before it went to production. I could open it up and see whats up if youd like. I havent had a peek in there in ages. Let me know what you want verified and Ill do my best to answer it for you....
Thanks guitarsnguns04. I would love a couple good gut shots. Can you verify that it is the same schematic as the one I linked to in the original post of this thread.
I guess what I really want to know is your impression of the amp. What does it excel at? What are its limitations? How does the tone stack behave?
brewdude wrote:I was recently checking out the Chieftain schematic and noticed the unusual preamp and tone stack arrangement. It uses a parallel dual triode feeding a bass and a middle into another dual triode feeding the treble and volume.
I listened to a couple of you tube demos and it seems to be a strictly clean amp.
Do any of you have any experience with the Chieftain? Who is a known player of a Chieftain amp? What kind of music is the Chieftain best suited for? What is the advantage, if any, of the Chieftain's preamp and tone stack?
Hello brewdude,
I have a Matchless Chieftain Reverb head that I bought and use strictly for clean playing/recording. Here are my thoughts after using it for 15 or 20 years (I made my living as a professional guitar player and have vast experience
since the '60's with the world's best gear).
The master volume is a negative since there is no usable overdrive with this amp and it sounds much better with the MV disabled (very simple).
The Brilliance control is also a negative IMO; it doesn't add anything good.
Lastly in the negatives is the reverb design; in my amp you can't turn the reverb up too high or you lose volume - bad design. Haven't fixed that yet.
I have not determined for myself if parallel triodes is good or bad or make any real difference.
I think my amp after these simple reversible mods can sound very good and I also have heard stock amps sound very good for clean, that's why I bought one. I'll post a link to a youtube demo video soon.
I would use this amp as a clean country, pop, blues. or jazz amp and rely on pedals for any overdrive. For this use it can be excellent.
- garlin (Airbloom Amplifiers)
garlin, thanks for the response. I appreciate the sharing of your experience. I have gone a different direction in the amp I was working on when I started this thread. Coincidentally, I have ditched the MV and the Brilliance, and I don't have reverb or any effects loop. I still have a parallel input stage and a pentode. I am pretty happy with it, but it is still in the experimental phase. It is a mostly clean amp but does overdrive beautifully.
However, I was recently thinking of whether to try another tone section that kind of resembles the Clubman's (I currently have a tweed style tone control)
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Skeezbo, that was a good read, thanks for that. I didn't know Ronnie had ever used one. Here in my town, there's a blues cat who plays one, Peter Dammin (I might be spelling the last name wrong, sorry Peter!). He also uses a Matchless tube preamp, a foot pedal, that he uses with it. I agree with the thought that they are biased very hot. In town here also is a J/J tube distributor, Eurotubes, and they supply Peter with basically the coldest pair they come up with from their sorting process. Yeah, a fat sound,, thicker than a BFSR for sure with those Celestion 12s, and that was the V30/G12M combo with some acetone applied to the surround to remove some doping.
Most people stall out when fixing a mistake that they've made. Why?
