212Mavguy Posted July 15, 2011 Posted July 15, 2011 After getting my first Dumble clone from Ceriatone made just for me the day after Christmas, (50w HRM with lift neg feedback mod) I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to get a D-clone to use at the church where I have recently joined the band. This brand new one popped up on the 'Bay with a BIN for a few hundred less than retail. It is made in USA with Ceriatone boards in it, Mercury PT and Heyboer OT, using a more traditional, 80's vintage circuit (OTS #124), had the LNFB mod installed as well as having the PI trimmer adjusted for a balanced PI tube, and traded that work for having the seller leave the tubes out of it before shipping. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120741558430&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT Checking the tracking this morning, I found that it's on the truck to be delivered today. I'm going to install tubes from my vintage old stock collection, tube coolers, and fire it up this evening after getting home from work. Will post a tone report...gonna have a hard time concentrating on tasks at hand while working, glad it's my Friday!
DetroitBlues Posted July 15, 2011 Posted July 15, 2011 Oh man, you're going to be blown away. KBP810's ODS is a killer amp. Post some clips if you can!
H Posted July 15, 2011 Posted July 15, 2011 In British Racing Green, no less! Maybe that will speed up the delivery
Steiner Posted July 15, 2011 Posted July 15, 2011 Yea NADs! Go NADs!!! Congrats 212MavGuy New amps are always fun!
koula901 Posted July 15, 2011 Posted July 15, 2011 Wow!!! I'd love to hear a clip of this! Congratulations! I'm just starting to get into the dumble tone myself.
DetroitBlues Posted July 15, 2011 Posted July 15, 2011 Wow!!! I'd love to hear a clip of this! Congratulations! I'm just starting to get into the dumble tone myself. I'm hoping to get a little more dumble tone later this afternoon! That's if KBP810 ever gets home!
big bob Posted July 15, 2011 Posted July 15, 2011 Marsh amps are made right here in Florida. I've heard great things about them..
DetroitBlues Posted July 15, 2011 Posted July 15, 2011 Marsh amps are made right here in Florida. I've heard great things about them.. They should be called Everglade amps then!
212Mavguy Posted July 15, 2011 Author Posted July 15, 2011 Not only are Marsh amps made in Florida, but they are now carried by Wolfe's guitars...as I've said, boutique amps for boutique guitars! D-tones for Heritages in the same shop! Now to get busy unpacking that box that I just carried in from the porch...in big black letters across the top it says "1 Blackface Super Reverb Kit" "1 of 7" Now this is gonna be iiiiiinteresting!
FredZepp Posted July 15, 2011 Posted July 15, 2011 You do know your amps ! That one looks quite promising.... Enjoy .
212Mavguy Posted July 16, 2011 Author Posted July 16, 2011 I need a plastic surgeon... muh face got tore off and pieces of it are all over the living room, I bet my neighbors want to kill me...Holy crapalooooooza, this thing is a fire breathing MONSTER! Just now stopped after some serious tube rolling, bias setting again and again, and checking out the tones. Compared to my HRM, the OD channel gets significantly more gain for the given knob settings for OD trim and OD level. Imagine the best Marshall you ever heard and you get the idea. Roaringly huge, fat bottom, bellowing mids, and flat out screaming and squealing top end, pinch harmonics are simply unreal. Throw away your distortion boxes, folks, you don't get tones from them like this, ever. Now this is in direct conflict with all the classic D-clone smooth jazzy clips posted on youtube, although this can easily get those too. You need to turn the OD trim and level knobs way down to get them. The clean channel is very similar to my HRM, but the OD is something else again. I think that since this amp has no tone stack in the OD channel that means more signal gets through to the phase inverter. As far as the lift negative feedback switch is concerned, it is not where I thought it would be, my best guess is that it is hooked up to the ground reversing switch, flipping that from one side to the other gives the same effect as flipping the lnfb switch on my HRM. This amp came with a full/half power switch, there is some small reduction in volume at the half power setting as well as slightly darker, more restrained tones, particularly on the dirty channel, the clean tones are not as affected. Half power puts the power tubes from pentode to triode mode. Sustain is, when compared to just about any other amp type, well, superior in the D-style amps, as is the harmonic feedback, which is abundant to say the least. That tends to get better, and tones tend to get slightly darker, smoother, and more musical with increased harmonic color after burn in. This amp is very fresh, so it needs a good 50 hours or so for burn in to happen, with time it will become smoother and sweeter! For tubes, after rolling a buttload of 12ax7's I ended up with a "real" Tung Sol longplate 12ax7 in V1, a very rare Miniwatt short silver plate from Barcelona, (a la Mazda short silver plate 12ax7) in V2, and a balanced Siemens ecc83 in the PI. For power tubes I initially stuck in some JAN Philips 7581a's, and then I remembered about some Sylvania 6bg6ga's and adapters I had. They have the same output as the 7581a's, similar guts, and they are dirt cheap by comparison. They ended up being about 3 mv apart on bias, so that was good, bias is 65-70% at 44.1 and 44.3mv. As good as this amp sounds right now, I am going to eventually hook up my Ceriatone made tube effects loop buffer, called the C-lator, it adds a couple of gain stages from the 12ax7 inside, and has input level, drive, and output level controls, as well as a couple of bright switches, one for the input, and one for the output, your pick if you want to use either or both of them. The C-lator is hooked up to the amp's effects loop send and return and your chosen effects effects send and return go in and out of the C-lator. The output level knob on the c-lator becomes the amp's master volume. The effect on the amp using the C-lator when no effects are used is to darken the tones slightly, smooth the OD, and add even more of the gooey, fluid, musical sustain thang. If desired, one can use the bright switches, but not using them allows a smoother OD tone. Well, it's nearly 10:30 PM and I have not had any supper, been messing with the new toys since I got home at 5, gotta eat something...and find someone to put my face back together!
koula901 Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 Wow!! Wish I was there to hear this face-ripping D-clone, with all of its gutsiness and harmonics!
kbp810 Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 Woohoo, happy NAD! How is the roof still on your house with not one but two D* Style amps??? I can only assume that at minimum your in need of a new set of windows I'm moving the OD trim to an external adjustment on the next one I'm building as well, so glad to see your comments on that. Great review!
212Mavguy Posted July 16, 2011 Author Posted July 16, 2011 Woohoo, happy NAD! How is the roof still on your house with not one but two D* Style amps??? I can only assume that at minimum your in need of a new set of windows I'm moving the OD trim to an external adjustment on the next one I'm building as well, so glad to see your comments on that. Great review! Thanks all of you! I did a typo on the bias thang, should be 44.1 and 41.3mv. Fired it up again this morning for more burn in time, picked up my guitar and dang, my finger tips are really sore! KBP, you're making me laugh! I think you have the amp bug worse than my tube collecting bug, sir! Building a whole new amp with the kind of parts count like an OTS when you could just yank a mini pot from one of the eyelet boards, drill a hole, replace the board pot with a couple wires going to a different style pot? I bet someone wants you to build someone an amp or you are doing up another of a different style! I plugged into the FET input today, it's hotter than the normal one. Plus I know that there's a trim adjustment for that inside the chassis too. Holy A/B/Y switch, anyone for 12 different operating modes in conjunction with a boutique ("no pot") design volume pedal? Woooeeee!
kbp810 Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 You're right about the amp bug, but I have a "few" tubes sitting around too This one is indeed for someone else, but when I get a chance (and boy might it ever be a while before I get a chance!) I do plan on moving it on my ODS as well. Speaking of the ODS, I better show it some love today; I've been so enamored with my TW Reverb Rocket as of late it's been hogging the 4x12
JeffB Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 Great review of your new amp. Enjoyed it. Sounds like a lot of fun tweaking and finding what it can do. Congrats.
212Mavguy Posted July 16, 2011 Author Posted July 16, 2011 You're right about the amp bug, but I have a "few" tubes sitting around too This one is indeed for someone else, but when I get a chance (and boy might it ever be a while before I get a chance!) I do plan on moving it on my ODS as well. Speaking of the ODS, I better show it some love today; I've been so enamored with my TW Reverb Rocket as of late it's been hogging the 4x12 Trainwrecks are "God" amps too...WOW! And it sounds like there's a line forming of your friends waiting and wanting to play your OTS! Can't blame them!
Halowords Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 I'm moving the OD trim to an external adjustment on the next one I'm building as well, so glad to see your comments on that. Great review! Sheesh! How many of these things are in the queue? Speaking of which, what's the turn-around time on these things (**hint** **hint** )?
koula901 Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 Woohoo, happy NAD! How is the roof still on your house with not one but two D* Style amps??? I can only assume that at minimum your in need of a new set of windows I'm moving the OD trim to an external adjustment on the next one I'm building as well, so glad to see your comments on that. Great review! kbp810 - you build D-style clones?
FredZepp Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 I love an amp that can do sweet cleans and has lots of gain on tap if you want it. There are some great sounding amps that need a bit of drive added to the front end, but it's great when it's all built in there. It's better to have more gain than you'll need available , than to have not enough is my thought.....
koula901 Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 Who me??? Seriously! I thought you only built fender clones. I'll have to PM ya.
DetroitBlues Posted July 17, 2011 Posted July 17, 2011 Seriously! I thought you only built fender clones. I'll have to PM ya. He's got one D style ODS that's really sweet. Built to the T, and it sounds absolutely killer.
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