trinityamps.com

Hi There Folks,
Having built lots and lots of Marshall clones mainly the JTM45's and 18 watt
Tremelo's I thought maybe I should throw together a Lightning 15 clone
prototype/test bed just to see if there was really anything going for it.
After all, quasi class A push pull, output tubes biased so hot you can make the imported ones melt, speaker to output transformer with a 100% mismatch.
What will make a design engineer do such no no's ?
And all the proding from Steve had nothing to do with it..................
Well I at least had lots of spare parts in the bins so why not. Used Steve's
layout for the eyelet board and one of his faceplates.
I guess I should have built it upside down for combo use aka Fender's but I'm so used to those Marshall heads.
Well here's the result. I know I should never admit this as Steve will never
let me live it down but it ended up being one of the best sounding guitar amps I have ever made. Now I at least know what they mean by the "chimey" sound. One of the things that really struck me was the huge range of the controls, way more that Marshall and the very clean sound.
Alas I am no guitar player so maybe Ibet will try it someday.
The plywood box was thown together from scrap 3/4" ply just to protect it for now. May someday I should work a deal with Steve for a head cab.
We'll see. Anyway with all her humble origin's here she is. Be gentle.

This just goes to show you. You can reverse a layout , flip this upside down, put the inputs beside the transformers, and still have successful build with this design. Congrats on the build brucethorn.

_________________
Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

just out of curiousity, how much dirt can you get out of it when you crank it?

I know it's not meant to be a "dirty" amp but from the sound clips it does seem to have a nice "edge" to it..


and also, how does it handle having a distortion or boost pedal put in front of it?

I'm very much looking forward to having a nice sexy clean amp, but I happen to have a secret hidden soft spot for the occasional bout of SHREDDING, and if this amp can also do that, with help from a pedal or two, well, you won't hear me complaining..

so... let me know!

BT is right about the huge range of controls. You can run both treble and bass full off for a nice midrange growl. And is that a JJ GZ34 I see in there?

As for distortion and pedals, I like to keep the bass fairly low for distorted tones. And the Volume around 3 o'clock. Any more than that with decent output pickups and the bottom end starts to get loose. It loves my overdrive pedals too.