Express-ish amp clips

[tkdrew]

Here is a short little clip I made of my Express type amp, try to overlook the playing(I already know I'm a hack!! ). Clip was recorded dry with the amp ran on an airbrake cranked all the way down (so as to not piss of the wife). When building the amp I basically just used a lot of parts I had from my stash, I wanted to try and incorporate some of the elements of the Liverpool in the amp too. The PI tail is switchable from 47k, 24k, and 10k. I also made the treble cap selectable between 250 or 470pf, I originally had it switchable between 470 and 50, but didn't care for the 50. The 250 smooths the amp out nicely but still leaves the high end in tact. There is also a switch to select wheather to parallel the first triode or just use the one. The ouput section is a little different also, uses 6v6's and el84's together or just the 6v6's. The 6v6's run fixed bias just like the express. The el84's are cathode biased like the liverpool. I think it turned out ok, the clip is lower gain tone, but it does the higher gain stuff well also. I hope the design changes are taken as heresy, I love the original just wanted a little more flexibility in mine.

[skyboltone]

Well you obviously don't know nothin' about hacks........ I like it. Doesn't sound much like my take on the TW design but it sounds pretty good! I've not run mine into an attenuator. I'd say you got a winner.

Dan H

[Lonely Raven]

Sounds good to me. I wish I could get my ceriatone to sound that good. I just don't have the option to crank it (apartment living).

[tkdrew]

Thanks for listening guys. I couldn't play mine at home without the airbrake either. I usually put a 50 watt/10 ohm dummy load on one of the speaker outs then plug the airbrake/speaker in the other. Makes it much easier to get good tones at lower volume.

I may try to record a higher gain clip this weekend, just to compare the tones.

[RJ Guitars]

Great tone and playing.... you are too modest, you play very good.

Can we have a few more particulars of the differences between your amp and the TW specs??

Thanks

RJ

[gregarious]

I usually put a 50 watt/10 ohm dummy load on one of the speaker outs then plug the airbrake/speaker in the other. Makes it much easier to get good tones at lower volume.

Oh you got tone all right - it's working well for you!

You've got it going on in that groove...

Great tone and playing.... you are too modest, you play very good.

Can we have a few more particulars of the differences between your amp and the TW specs??

Thanks RJ

Distinguishing characteristics?

[tkdrew]

I tried to mark up the changes I made on the Kelly schematic. Hope it turns out ok, I haven't tried this before. Let me know if I can clear anything up. I left out the parallel first stage switching, basically the plates and grids are connected all the time. The one cathode is connected just like the Kelly schematic, the second cathode goes to a switch to connect it to a 820ohm 2.2uf cathode r/c combo. In parallel it doesn't really add a lot of gain but makes it a lot thicker and more compressed, with a little more sustain.


***I knew I'd screw up the drawing, the grid and screen positions need to be swapped inside the el84's. The circuitry connected is correct just need to swap positions inside the pentode.

[Buschman]

Where do these great backup tracks come from?

What was the problem with the 50pf treble cap? I have seen that on the Liverpool schem & have intended to try it.

[tkdrew]

The backings came from Normster's site, think I found a link over on Brownote's forum.

http://bad-domain/backings/


To my ears the 50pf cap lacked a lot of the mids, might work ok with the bright cap on, but I didn't install the bright cap on mine so I can't say for sure.

[tkdrew]

Another short little clip to show the gainier type tones available. settings--gain about 1:00, treble 1:30, mids 10:00, bass 9:30, presence 12:00, PI tail set to 47k position, treble cap 250pf position, parallel switch set to single triode. Ran trough an airbrake cranked all the way down. A little verb added after recording.