Cinderella of the amp stable gets her chance and wows 'em

[212Mavguy]

Was screwin' around in the living room dialing in a Marsh Overlord 50watter through a 2/12 running some unusual guitar recones of 50's vintage JBL D123's getting ready for a gig when I decided on a whim to pull out an amp I rarely use and never gig out with because it is heavier than all but one of my other amps, around 65 pounds in a long head cabinet. It's an early Ceriatone clone of a Dumble Steel String Singer, build #29, named...Hannah Gag-Ya-la Diva. 100 watts of clean sustain with a FET boost for the dirty channel instead of additional cascading tube gain stages. There are a ton of bells, whistles and switches to master on this amp, Takes more than a while to get the hang of all the possibilities, but worth the time spent.

 

When I heard what was coming out of the speaker cab, I knew I had to use this amp at the gig. Things went spectacularly well, and I am kinda surprised with myself about my not using Hannah more. The band members were pretty enthusiastic, (they said that was the best sounding of all the amps I had used with them, including three other D-clones and a Harry Joyce, all super top end amps)... as was the audience. I was the most surprised of all, in a good way. At the gig I used a Leslie G27 speaker cabinet for that amp, the combo of that amp, spinning speaker horn and woofer rotors, and a bigsby equipped trans orange H-516 was flat out magical.

 

The big deal is that I had missed something in plain sight up to now, that is, the SSS amp platform is really, really tough to beat for playing country music, from classic through modern. The master volume on this amp is great, sounds great clear down to living room volumes, as quiet as the gig needs, no need to crank up to earbleed, although it can get there very, very quickly. That flexibility in volume without using the half power (triode) switch it has is more than unusual for a 100 watt amp, also you can barely hear it run when operating, incredibly quiet, this is a hand wired fiberglass eyelet board amp with super top end parts throughout, kinda like owning and driving a Ferrari or Lambo. But this is a very heavy, long amp chassis, goes all the way across the top of most 2/12 cabinets it sits on and tips the scale at 65 pounds. When I loaded in I used a Milwaukee dolly with big inflatable tires, put the Leslie, the amp, and a filled up SKB pedalboard all on the dolly and it balanced well enough to pull and control with two fingers...a good dolly is a backsaver worth the space it takes up.

[Blunote]

Sound a bit like my Guytron GT-100. Great tone, scalable to any volume with a second dirty channel to take it into metal territory. But long chassis, and HEAVY. If I were gigging, it would be great, but a tad too heavy to be hauling around on a regular basis; more-so if I were also setting up a Leslie speaker. But as long as it's your back.....

 

You know, a couple of clips of that amp/speaker combination would be nice.

[212Mavguy]

Am trying to get someone to operate my vid cam at the shows...will be a while. The speaker's tone can't be easily chased, despite its 100 watt rating one of my 50w D-clones fried the VC of the WGS woofer in it at a master volume setting of 4... So I stuck in a vintage JBL G125, that tipped the tones to something more loud and girthy than before. I lift that Leslie very carefully, with the JBL in it, it's right around 100 pounds.

 

I wasn't intending to do the SRV "Cold shot" kind of sound, but wow, it was there in spades with this setup. Ceriatone's SSS is not the same as SRV's Dumble AKA "King Tone Consoul" but it is a very close cousin. Dumble clones or Dumble inspired circuits are my fave amps. The high and low filters found in the SSS are the key to getting that particular Texas twang.

[Gitfiddler]

Sounds like you are having way too much fun with your powerful rigs!

 

Plus I always learn something from your amp tech posts.

 

What guitars are you slinging during these gigs?

[DetroitBlues]

That's a lot of amp, more then I can use. Always love the idea of using a 100 watt amp on a 4x12 platform, but there is no room for an amp like that to breathe on any stage I've been on. You're a lucky fellow to be able to use an amp like that at home and on stage.

[212Mavguy]

Thank you, sir, If the master volume is a good design, then powerful amps are easy to have fun with gigging. A necessary feature for me to consider buying a guitar amp is having a serial effects loop. Besides providing a good place in the circuit for time based effects, I can put a tube buffer in the loop and use that for controlling the global master volume while keeping the amp's master volume cranked up in the sweet zone. But this amp runs fine without a loop buffer such as a Klein-u-lator, C-lator, or other Dumble derived effects loop buffer.

 

Loop buffers placed in the amp's serial effects loop work better than power soak or speaker motor attenuators as far as not coloring the tone while taming beastly amp volumes, no contest.

 

This last gig I used a Heritage H-516/trans orange/bigsby, a Joe Till TG-250, #175, and a Joe Till TG-250 Baritone. The Till guitars are a product of a one man shop, simply stunning in sound, then you start looking at the wood mix and construction details...check 'em out on Youtube and Facebook... There are pics of 175 and the Baritone on FB, after quite a bit of scrolling down to find them. If you already have several Heritages, you owe yourself to get a Till, they are that good.

 

The Leslie was and is a pain in the butt to gig with, it's too heavy. But the sound is worth it, the real deal all killer no filler. I modded the rotor control footswitch to having a stereo jack instead of hardwired. The factory hardwired setup failed on the eighth gig. One of the conductors broke inside the wimpy factory cable. Now i just connect a stereo instrument cable from the footswitch to the cab. End of problem.

 

Ceriatone is a great company to do business with, especially those customers who have a good handle on what the different "amp families" tend to sound and act like and have a basic handle on amp circuits... Their Marshall clones, in particular, are far higher in build quality than the originals they are cloning, and the top quality parts and stout circuit boards make for great reliability as well as great tones. Parts that should be mounted on the chassis are, and parts that should be on the tube sockets are, and parts that should be on the circuit boards are, no mass production shortcuts in layout with these hand wired, hand soldered amps, ever. Hard to find a better company to deal with for those who like to mess with the guts of an amp while smelling the solder fumes. Their kits have a huge variety in options and are a good deal for the quality.

 

With that said, a C-tone SSS will set you back around 2800 new. But other iterations of SSS circuits from other builders start around 5 grand...the circuit is quite complicated. One thing about this particular amp, it's ready to play on stage after only a short warmup time, it's not nearly as finicky about needing a long warmup as other amps I have. I also think that it would make a great jazz amp as long as the roady came with it, or also a great small room bass amp.

[Gitfiddler]

Thanks for the tip about Joe Till Guitars.

 

http://joetillguitars.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2&Itemid=9

 

http://www.tillguitars.com/

[212Mavguy]

You're welcome. The 28 1/4" scale baritone was so good that I wanted another one of his instruments. So I got a 25.5" scale guitar of the same model that had been completed. All but one of my Heritage guitars have 24 3/4" scale. #175 had been needing a home for the five years it sat unplayed after it was finished. Such is the way with the smallest builders. In this case the luthier had been gigging since high school and started designing and building his own guitars for playing out.