The Amp Challenge Thread

[Hemisaurus]

4 moves or less, can you do it?

sure sure but not my amp to butcher up

OK, we'll believe you.

Remember the Mantra anyway, simple first. As there's no bright caps, and it sounds best with the OD all the way down, lets skip the extra gain stage DR added for that 80's sound.

[dunwichamps]

4 moves or less, can you do it?

sure sure but not my amp to butcher up

OK, we'll believe you.

Remember the Mantra anyway, simple first. As there's no bright caps, and it sounds best with the OD all the way down, lets skip the extra gain stage DR added for that 80's sound.

You could do that, preferably dont let V2b go to waste run a // stage, better S/N and would sound nice.

[Hemisaurus]

Remember the Mantra anyway, simple first.

Original Hi-Watts left half of V2 unused.



Let's try and keep it Hi-Watt

[dunwichamps]

conformist! we gotta stick it to the man

j/k

this is a serious mod, be careful if either you or the drummer attempt it

[Hemisaurus]

Which mod, mine or yours? Mine is pretty easy

I'm just confused, you snip a couple of caps on a Peavey and call it done, but give you a Hi-Watt and you want to butcher it, shome mishtake shurely? Those things are so pretty.

[dunwichamps]

its not a 70s model or even an early 80s. Plus he is asking something different than just, its too bright.

Its serious because it involves high DC potential lines, and risk of shock where as snipping a bright cap on a resistive divider is okay, assuming you dont go trolling around with your snips

Just cuz she's pretty dont mean u cant cut her

[justinhedrick]

Just cuz she's pretty dont mean u cant cut her

[Ayek]

She's an L100 from '86. I had the s/n when drummer was looking at it to verify it's (un)desirability, to which I ended up telling him "If it sounds good, it sounds good. But it'll only be a Hiwatt in name alone". It's not Hylight or even Biacrown, nor is it a Sterling. I cant' actually remember who built this one, I think it started with a 'T'. It's all pcb mount this and that, based on internet photos. Haven't opened it up yet. I could see it's got 12ax7a preamap valves in 'er and I think it's EL34s in the power amp.
Apparently to model was kinda meant to compete against the JCM900 and has diode clipping on the lead/od channel. Both channels have their own tone controls which leads me to believe it's not just an extra gain stage.
Also, the Jansen he uses run pretty clean, comparable to how he runs the Hiwatt, as he's running a big ol' pedalboard and only wants it to get dirty when he tells it to. He uses a Crowther Double Hot Cake which sounds fizzy on the Hiwatt, too.

[Hemisaurus]

Ooh, I don't know that one, that is the schematic for the earlier L100 (I haven't seen a later one) where it just had a brilliant and a regular input and then everything else is the same.

If it's to go up against the JCM900 does it have the god-awful active tone stack???

I'll see if I can find a schematic, but in lieu of that we'd have to have it on the bench in front of us.

Got schematic, need to find one with component values. I swear there was a 4 page PDF somewhere.

[Ayek]

It should oughta be something like the picture you got there, I think, but without the reverb. When I was searching around online last night I saw a comment about the schematic without the component values having inaccuracies, though I didn't see any schematics myself.

[Hemisaurus]

Well in lieu of a dcent schematic, I'd resort to tube swapping, get a 12AU7 or possibly better a 12DW7, or really any 12XX7 tube type, all are lower gain than the AX, the reason I said DW it's half an AU and half an AX in the same tube, so it only gains down one stage. Try swapping out V1 which should be the clran channel, you can also try it in V2.

If either sounds improved, we're moving in the right direction.

[Ayek]

We'll give that a crack, I reckon. If it were mine, it'd be here for me to open and try and trace it out. Trying to save the guy from resorting to fork over an undisclosed sum to a local tech who may, or may not improve things. The tragedy is, when he bought the amp there was a twin brother of his Jansen for sale at a cheaper price, though it would've required servicing.

[BrianDamage]

Another VTM question...

Since I don't use hardly any preamp gain the "bright cap" is working in my amp. Since I already clipped the other two caps to make it less bright what effect would taking out the bright cap have on the tone? Would it make it ridiculously dark or just awesomely dark?

[dunwichamps]

Another VTM question...

Since I don't use hardly any preamp gain the "bright cap" is working in my amp. Since I already clipped the other two caps to make it less bright what effect would taking out the bright cap have on the tone? Would it make it ridiculously dark or just awesomely dark?

Thats all a matter of taste u can clip off the cap but leave enough leads to add in another cap maybe something smaller, say 100pF for just a touc of high end

[Ayek]

Well in lieu of a dcent schematic, I'd resort to tube swapping, get a 12AU7 or possibly better a 12DW7, or really any 12XX7 tube type, all are lower gain than the AX, the reason I said DW it's half an AU and half an AX in the same tube, so it only gains down one stage. Try swapping out V1 which should be the clran channel, you can also try it in V2.

If either sounds improved, we're moving in the right direction.

I swapped out the 12AX7-A on V1 for a 12AU7 tonight. It has indeed made an improvement. I'll see how my drummer gets on with it after his 'other band' has their next practice.