Ceriatone Chupacabra

[Jana]

Weatherby,

With all your experience and knowledge of Marshalls and the EVH tone, why don't you just buy a Chupacabra and mod it yourself?

[Colossal]

The Chupacabra is three cascaded gain stages, all with 820R/0.68uF on the cathodes. Standard Plexi voltages and dropping string. It also has diode clipping in a post-cathode follower arrangement which is purported as the (or a) 'Jose' mod. I have heard opposing views on the validity of that as a Jose Arredondo mod but seems to fit the hand-drawn schematic of a modded Plexi...supposedly Jose. John Suhr can probably speak to the truth or lack of it in this regard (and hopefully he will because the internet pseudo-lore on the matter is tiresome). I built this amp for a fellow and it came out sounding very good. I used an OT with a slightly higher impedance than the typical Plexi. The diode clipping section is 12V, 16V, and 20V opposing germanium diodes and is labeled "Era", giving the sonic qualities of the 70's, 80's, and 90's iconic rock. 12V give the most compression and has a significant reduction in volume (not a bad thing for a 100W amp). Some might find it too fuzzy/buzzty but it does have a more modern sound. The Chupacabra also has switchable bright/mid-boost caps (over the first and second stages) which add a nice depth to the tone. It was a good sounding amp. I made the first gain stage switchable and with just two stages in series it sounded very much like a good 'ol early Plexi. Switching in the third stage in front of the other two (I used 330k plate load instead of 430k as shown in the schematic), it gets a little hairier. Switching off the extra gain stage and rolling back on the guitar volume knob and the amp produced a remarkable clean tone and with the bright caps in and split humbuckers, a very chimey almost Eric Johnsony clean. The amp as built was a swiss army knife. Lots of functionality and tones.

I think to get the Van Halen tone though, it doesn't need to be complex or overdone. High quality transformers and choke, softer filtering, a few value tweaks here and there. Then do like Pete Thorn did: take the blade of your hand and roll all knobs up to 10. Oh, and it helps to be Pete Thorn too with the chops! I have in my notes that when Van Halen's amp was benched and the component values measured, there was some drift. I have that the 820R resistor on the third stage measured 1k1. Perhaps more internet lore, who knows. As Reeltarded mentioned, not every Marshall is a winner as I'm sure not every Fender or Vox is either. I suspect that some of this had to do with part tolerances and that all three manufacturers changed parts due to price and availability. Some amps drift towards a magical tone while many more probably moved away.

[weatherby]

Ive been at this alongtime also and just to believe or agree with something and its not there tone wise is just being a follower.The Chupacabra sounds interesting.I believe and have said this before that van halen's plexi was modded due to the old van halen II studio photo showing the back of Eds plexi which a pot-knob is showing(master volume),stock plexi's didnt have a extra knob in back. As for chops im not worried about my chops......