NDCD

[bobmeyrick]

So there I was, idly surfing eBay, when I came across a Ceriatone OTS for sale just 10 miles away. The starting bid was £749, there were no bids and a few days left on the auction. I contacted the seller and went round to try it out with the H150 VSB. The guy actually had two - he'd bought the one he was currently selling as a spare while his primary amp was being worked on, with the intention of selling the spare when the work was complete. It didn't take long for me to realise that a Ceriatone would be a useful addition to the toolbox and I could just about afford it if there weren't any other bidders. The seller was a nice guy and like me owned a Paulman strat (the excellent Paulman guitars were made by Paul McNab and Phil Boot - Paul sadly died last year and Phil it seems became disillusioned with the business and gave up about a decade ago).

 

A day or two later I bumped into an old acquaintance and fellow Paulman owner, who it turned out was interested in Japanese Les Pauls. I mentioned that I had an Edwards LP98 and a Yamaha Lord Player that weren't being used and he agreed to take them off my hands for £750. I think it may have been the aforementioned Phil Boot who once said that we never truly own guitars, we just look after them for a while.

 

Back to the Ceriatone. I was the only bidder (Yay!) and picked up the amp a couple of days ago. You can get a great sound right away, but I think it will take a little time and experimentation to properly get to grips with its potential. I was wondering what to do about the lack of reverb and the unbuffered effects loop, when I remembered I had a Rocktron Intellifex sitting unused in the attic. It works very well, as does (perhaps surprisingly) an Alesis Microverb 2. The cab I'm using at the moment is a 1x12 with the speaker I pulled from my Blues Junior when I replaced it with a Jensen, so the next thing will be to find a speaker that complements the Ceriatone. A trip to Hot Rox is on the cards...

[tulk1]

That's a cool amp His original Dumble clone, isn't it? Excellent score. Looks cool sitting on the fx box, too.

[Steiner]

I've read many good reviews about Ceriatone. If you're going to buy a Wreck of D*mble, Nick is the man.

 

Congrats on your festive NAD!

[kbp810]

The OTS is an excellent amp, with a ton of potential tone variatiions. You have done very well!

[212Mavguy]

Niiiiice! Great score! I have two 50 watt D-style clones, an HRM and an OTS.

 

Does your amp have an OD trim adjustment knob on the back panel? That is pretty nice to have, early OTS models didn't have that feature. OD trim is on a circuit board in earlier editions. It's best to adjust the OD trim first, then adjust the OD knob on front.if you have one of those trims on the back panel. For the classic smooth D-tones found in a lot of youtube clips, a setting near 9:00 works best on OTS models. For a more Marshall-y grind,l set that trim at10:00 or higher. Higher OD trim settings also yield more compression.

 

With my OTS, a Marsh built with Ceriatone boards, I run the clean channel volume between 9 and 10:00, that allows a less agressive ratio knob setting, and you can still get a bit of distortion on the clean while digging in on the pick attack if you have a hot set of PU's in your guitar. Single coils will like a setting like you have in your pic, closer to noon unless they have high output, as well as the deep switch engaged.

 

Speakers? Well the herd of D-style owners favor either the Celestion g12-65 (in the majority,) or the EVM 12l. I don't use either of those...What works best IMHO with a d-clone is a speaker/cab setup that is not hugely bright on top, also having substantial bottom and mids. Hard to find, but a JBL g125 mounted in a 1 or 2/12 with a semi closed back is hard to beat. Have also gotten great results in 15's with Jensen Vibranto 15 or JBL g135, again in a semi closed or D-style back cab There are some NOS JBL MI-15's on ebay that will also fill the bill very well. These speakers are no longer made, If you want instant gratification, look for a d-style 1/12 or 2/12 cab on eBay, and mount your choice of speakers in it. High bass knob settings are the enemy of long note harmonic bloom in non boosted clean and particularly non boosted OD settings. Boosted settings bypass the tone stack. So if you can do up a cab that has a lot of bottom end you will be doing your tone a favor.

 

Hope this helps. Peace.

[DetroitBlues]

You could make a cabinet to put all that in if you really wanted to.

[bobmeyrick]

Niiiiice! Great score! I have two 50 watt D-style clones, an HRM and an OTS.

 

Does your amp have an OD trim adjustment knob on the back panel?

 

Yes it does - thanks for the advice on the settings. I suspect my search has just begun...

[Genericmusic]

Very nice!

[bobmeyrick]

I finally got to use the Ceriatone on a gig. For the speaker cab I got a Blackstar HTV-112 and replaced the Celestion 70/80 with a Jensen P12N. Instead of using my pedal board I dug out my old Rocktron Intellifex and put that into the loop, with a Midimate to change the patches. You don't need a distortion pedal with the Ceriatone! The only pedal I used was the Dunlop Crybaby. I mostly used the H150 VSB, with my Schecter Strat for a few numbers. To say I'm happy with my sound is something of an understatement...

[tulk1]

That took a while. Glad you finally got to ring it out.

[JeffB]

I finally got to use the Ceriatone on a gig. For the speaker cab I got a Blackstar HTV-112 and replaced the Celestion 70/80 with a Jensen P12N. Instead of using my pedal board I dug out my old Rocktron Intellifex and put that into the loop, with a Midimate to change the patches. You don't need a distortion pedal with the Ceriatone! The only pedal I used was the Dunlop Crybaby. I mostly used the H150 VSB, with my Schecter Strat for a few numbers. To say I'm happy with my sound is something of an understatement...

Good feeling to have. Congrats.