Dana, your amp really looks beautiful! I love the trapezoid shape too.
My prototoype has just been sitting here, since before past May when I was talking on here before. We had a death in the family and I just haven't had a chance to do much with it. I finally got back to it this week. Originally I was going to use a pair of ecl86's for a "mini" Liverpool but one of my ecl86's was bad and I had trouble locating another. So I went ahead and used 6bm8's instead and I'm really happy with them. Slightly lower gain but better headroom and when you get towards the top of the volume range it doesn't matter anyway. I'm guessing this is giving me around 10 loud watts. I have it biased real hot (over spec I'm sure) but my dvm blew it's fuses so for the moment I can't measure. No redplating though and it sounds great. I'm pretty happy with the design and getting close to ordering the final parts to do the real build.
One thing I noticed is it is *very* sensitive to the guitar used. With my hamer (super distortion/paf) it rocks. And when you crank the volume past 2:00 it's almost too much. It is wild, sustains like crazy while being touch-sensitive. But with my squier strat (stock pups) it's pretty weak. Even when dimed it is not easy to get it to feed back and bloom into harmonics. Nice sound, but the gain structure is completely different. I'm planning on upgrading that guitar with a set of L280's before I worry about changing anything in the amp. I suppose I could add a switch or put a pot in place of the 68k to allow adjustment for different guitars but I'm going to wait until I get decent pups for comparison first. But I can see how different guitars and pups will make big differences in how this amp responds.
I'm getting excited about finishing this now and your photo is an inspiration!
Thanks for the kind words. Very sorry to hear about the loss to your family. So you still have this thing breadboarded and not in a chassis yet? It really sounds like a cool amp! I like taking the road less traveled too. That's what keeps things fun. If you have access to a Tele you got to try one. I was really floored to hear the sounds eminating from my amp with a Tele. Just couldn't believe what I was hearing and it was definatly not what I was expecting. Keep us posted on the progress. You always come up with some great clips. Can't wait to hear this amp.
I picked up a NOS Telefunken EF 804 made in Germany that I can't wait to try out. According to all the literature I have been able to find on this tube, a 9 pin pentode, it's a version not unlike the EF86 but with none of the microphonics and problems. They even moved the pins connections around on the inside of the tubes to eliminate cross talk and interlead coupling. Kind of a low noise EF86 if you will. Best part was it was free Worse part is that they are hard to find. I've seen them at $50 and up on ebay.
Yes I've still got it mounted to my cake pan, where I try out ideas.
One problem I'm having right now is with flubby bass. With my neck pup on either guitar the wound strings sound too spongy. In high gain it's almost like a fuzz box or something. I tried halving the load impedance. 6BM8 datasheet calls out 10k so I tried the 16ohm tap with my 8ohm speaker to reflect back 5k but still no luck. Currently I'm running B+ ~250v so I'm going to try raising that to ~300v and see if that helps.
Anyone else have this problem? With the neck pup turned down to 5 it sounds fine and the bridge pup sounds fantastic. Is that typical for a Liverpool? I'm running it with a closed-back 1x12 with a G12H30 btw. I tried the bright switch, presence control, turning up treble, etc. Nothing kills the flub, although turning the bass control down to 1/4 helps but that doesn't seem right to have to do that...
I know that this thread is pretty old but I just thought I would share this video. We took the old Liverpool out for the first time in years for a show we were doing at a local bar last Monday nite. The show was a memorial benefit for a Bass player friend that passed away on Dec 8th. It was a packed house of about 35 to 40 of the best musicians in the area taking the stage. ( I don't know how we got invited ) Everyone played their hearts out and it was truly a night to remember for a long time. We also raised quite a bit of cash for the family and one lucky lady went home with a Lil Devil I donated to be raffeled off.
Anyway, our lead player used the old Ginger clone as his goto amp was down. This amp was completed in the Fall of 2006 IIRC, but is still hanging tough. He is using a small 1x12 cab loaded with a EV12L. My apologies up front for the poor video but the audio didn't turn out too bad. I have heard mixed reports regarding the real Ginger's tone.
We usually have a 5 piece band but our singer couldn't make it and we ended up doing it 3 piece which we had never done before. Enough excuses it is what it is
I dig it, sounds great from what I can hear. Maybe a bit on the quiet side during the rhythm stuff but the leads sounded great. Sounded airy and full when he hits those high notes (kinda reminded me of EJ tone actually). I'd love to hear it up close and personal some time!
Cliff Schecht wrote:I dig it, sounds great from what I can hear. Maybe a bit on the quiet side during the rhythm stuff but the leads sounded great. Sounded airy and full when he hits those high notes (kinda reminded me of EJ tone actually). I'd love to hear it up close and personal some time!
Yea I agree. Like I say, not to make excuses but we normally
have a front man singing the lead parts and the guitarist can
pretty much concentrate on his guitar playing. That night he had to do both. I had to play on the 4 piece drum kit that was supplied and was also a bit
uneasy and tended to hold back on my playing to. I guess we were searching for our safe zone. Having said all that I thought the audio
portion let a little of what the amp really sounds like come through in a band
setting.
) Everyone played their hearts out and it was truly a night to remember for a long time. We also raised quite a bit of cash for the family and one lucky lady went home with a Lil Devil I donated to be raffeled off. 
