Hi everyone, as the title implies, I'm looking to design a couple amplifiers for a wet/dry rig I want to build. Right now, my plan is to design and build two amps, with each driving one side of a 2x12 stereo speaker cabinet I have. The first amp, I want to be essentially a decent pedal platform with a good clean tone and as much headroom as I can muster. The idea being to have a channel to put all my time-based effects without having too much distortion after them in the chain. The second, I want to have a good crunchy overdrive tone, and have a decent variety of overdrive tones.
Since they're both going to be feeding identical speakers, my plan was to build both with 6v6, push/pull output stages. Right now, my plan was to have the dirty amp something similar to a 6v6 plexi, but with cathode-biased output stage, and for the clean amp, build something with minimal preamp gain using 12at7's.
So does any one have any thoughts? What would you do differently? Is this concept even worth pursuing? Any general advice?
Thanks!
Since they're both going to be feeding identical speakers, my plan was to build both with 6v6, push/pull output stages. Right now, my plan was to have the dirty amp something similar to a 6v6 plexi, but with cathode-biased output stage, and for the clean amp, build something with minimal preamp gain using 12at7's.
So does any one have any thoughts? What would you do differently? Is this concept even worth pursuing? Any general advice?
Thanks!
Moved to Instruments and Amps.Make them identical, easier to build 2 identical amps. This also gives you the most flexibility. You could even go the 2 guitar outputs route where one pickup goes thru one amp (and effects) and the other pickup thru the second amp. But yould have to mod your guitar.
I'm not opposed to that idea, but my intention is to have one amp be very clean so I don't get that muddy sound that comes from putting time-based effects through an overdriving tube while the other amp can have a more over driven tone. Do you have an example of an amp that can fill both of these roles?
You probably want both amps to be either clean or distorted, which most amps will do. This gives you the most options. And if your building them yourself its almost twice the work building two different amps. I would build the same amp twice. Any good amp design should work. Look around this website.
Could you explain why I want them both clean or both dirty? I was purposefully looking for two different sounding amps, but I'd be interested to hear your reasoning (aside from the amount of work) for why I wouldn't want that.
just sharing some of my oblique thinking...you can drive people out of a room with 15 watts of distorted guitar tone but it will likely take a few hundred watts of clean headroom to reproduce clean sounds accurately and it becomes an exercise in perception as to how many watts of each are going to create your expected result. i would use tubes for the dirty channel and solid state for clean.
and the difference in drivers suited to distorted vs clean tone is quite different so there's a lot to consider....
but as you have the 2x12 cab your driver choice is limited.
and the difference in drivers suited to distorted vs clean tone is quite different so there's a lot to consider....
but as you have the 2x12 cab your driver choice is limited.
The basic idea is sound (and I'm pretty sure I've seen a schematic from "back in the day" which did exactly that).
Then you "just" add a high gain preamp to the pre-effects channel.
As turk 182 points out, if you clip the output stage of the "dirty" channel,that'll drive most people out of the room. (This is why a Marshall JCM800 has a master volume)
If you don't clip the output of the dirty channel, you're basically emulating Yamaha's Jazz Chorus range, which applies the time-modulation to one channel only after distrotion the preamp. (But hopefully with better distortion 🙂 )
If you do want that clipped output stage sound you have two other options:
1/ Add VVR (voltage variable regulator) for the gain channel output stage, so you can turn it down to 1W (or there abouts)
2/ build a low volume high gain channel and amplify that (basically DI + front-of-house in a box). An example of that is Fred Nachbaur Dogzilla which includes a "small amp emulator"
(ok it's a bass amp). Replace the 12ohm load with your second speaker and you're done.
Then you "just" add a high gain preamp to the pre-effects channel.
As turk 182 points out, if you clip the output stage of the "dirty" channel,that'll drive most people out of the room. (This is why a Marshall JCM800 has a master volume)
If you don't clip the output of the dirty channel, you're basically emulating Yamaha's Jazz Chorus range, which applies the time-modulation to one channel only after distrotion the preamp. (But hopefully with better distortion 🙂 )
If you do want that clipped output stage sound you have two other options:
1/ Add VVR (voltage variable regulator) for the gain channel output stage, so you can turn it down to 1W (or there abouts)
2/ build a low volume high gain channel and amplify that (basically DI + front-of-house in a box). An example of that is Fred Nachbaur Dogzilla which includes a "small amp emulator"
(ok it's a bass amp). Replace the 12ohm load with your second speaker and you're done.
Heck, you could just run a RobRob microamp or low wattage SE amp (6V6 has a 2W set of curves) into a 6" speaker, with a suitably low wattage rating (so you're thumping it), then pull the signal off the speaker (and a voltage sense vs currrent sense blend knob would be neat) and use a 200W class-D thingamabob to drive the post effects 12"
Save a pile of weight and heat.
Save a pile of weight and heat.
Rob Robinette's Amp Pages are a must read for any tube amp DIYer. He's constantly adding stuff so a revisit every once in a while is warranted even once you've read everything
That'll depend mostly on your speakers: the micro is a JCM800 (think AC/DC period rock) with a lower power output stage. To get the full sound you'd need to add a Marshall quad box but even that can be emulated to some degree (see Runoff Groove's Condor cab sim), depending on your speaker's capability.
E.g. my current 12" sealed cab has such a distinctive set of curves that the cabsim I have is pretty ineffective - but works OK with headphones.
In terms of sound, I'll leave you to the black hole of amplifier comparisons on YouTube.