• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

Tiny tube amp

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RenegadeAmps

RenegadeAmps

Member
Joined 2006
3dogdare.com
I've actaully played through one. There's a Zvex dealer i town. It's pretty nifty. Zachary did a cool thing with the switching power supply in it. I mean it sounds cool and it's pretty trick having a stomp box sized tube head. I can think of better ways to spend $500 though.

If you like to build amps. Check out the Firefly over at ax84.com it's a small <1 watt amp using a 12at7 as a power tube in a self splitting push pull fashion. It sounds great too. If you've never done it before it's a good cheap and simple amp to build as a first build too.
 
aletheian

aletheian

Member
Joined 2004
alexkenis.wordpress.com
Honestly, as efficient as guitar speakers are (usually 97dB - 104dB sensitivity) even 1 watt can be pretty darned loud! Especially through a 4x12". Simplest solution is to use an attenuator after the power section. It changes the tone a bit, but no more than a pre phase inverter master volume control.

You could also go to a more "wasteful" topology like single ended (Fender Champ) with a small power tube.... although i don't know what sound you want, so if you are looking for roaring Marshall tone in a SE formet... good luck. I have personally experimented with parafeed SE and parafeed PP output sections for guitar amps. Closest I got to bedroom-level marshall-esque tone was a pp RC loaded parafeed output section with an attenuator at the output.

Hope that helps. You may want to check out ax84.com, that site/forum was started for this purpose.
 
aletheian

aletheian

Member
Joined 2004
alexkenis.wordpress.com
blacklight said:
Oh yah, I have to agree with aletheian. I had to use a simple resistive attenuator to be able to crank it at home without causing heart attacks and killing small animals. .5W can be loud. Believe me.
Click to expand...


Yes, also building a little cabinet with a less efficient speaker helps too. A Celestion 'tube 10' or 'super 8' have a 93dB rating... so they should be much quieter.
 
P

Puggie

Member
Joined 2004
aletheian said:


You could also go to a more "wasteful" topology like single ended (Fender Champ) with a small power tube.... although i don't know what sound you want, so if you are looking for roaring Marshall tone in a SE formet... good luck. I have personally experimented with parafeed SE and parafeed PP output sections for guitar amps. Closest I got to bedroom-level marshall-esque tone was a pp RC loaded parafeed output section with an attenuator at the output.

Hope that helps. You may want to check out ax84.com, that site/forum was started for this purpose.
Click to expand...


I'm not really looking for a cranked marshall type tone any more, I'm looking for something a bit more cutting and more importantly different. My first intention was to build an early champ clone and fit a L-Pad inline with the speaker to act as a passive master volume while keeping the impedance constant for the amp.

I'm liking the look for the firefly, tiny combo with a 6" low efficiency speaker, like those suggested by aletheian sounds like the sort of thing I'm looking for, practice level valve tone that can really be cranked up without resulting in crazy volume levels, I'm quite aware how loud a watt can be, I set my upper limit to 5Watts when I started looking for something, significantly less is not a problem.
 
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