trinityamps.com

Just like with my first Trinity kit build (a TC-15) which I built as part of my recovery process after a serious illness six years ago that nearly claimed my life (and I am also still dealing with residual effects) this build comes via a significant milestone in my life. My father passed-away suddenly and unexpectedly in November and caring for my mother since then was a big job, especially with the health issues that I deal with myself. Since his passing, her health was in steady decline and last month she passed away as well. I received a small inheritance and decided that I would honor both of their memories and the legacy of music they infused into my life with two "dream purchases" - a beautiful Ibanez Artstar AS153 and a Dumble-inspired amp build - the Trinity OSD kit.

The actual build went very smoothly. I did have one small issue on power-up that had me really scratching my head for about an hour but once I finally identified the problem I got it fully operational quickly. This was probably the second most-complicated build I have done (out of a dozen or so) so I was very happy with that. (Love the relay boards... gonna have to see if Stephen will sell me a couple of those on the side.) Probably the only thing I will change is eventually I would like to put a 5-pin DIN jack on the footswitch jack itself so I can just use a standard MIDI cable for the connection. That will make it easier to permanently mount the footswitch box on my pedalboard.

Sonically, this amp does NOT disappoint! This thing is a tone beast. The cleans, even with 6V6's, have more than enough headroom for my live needs. I will eventually try 5881's and 6L6's though to see how a slightly stiffer output tube performs. So far, I have tried it extensively with my Godin Session (my HSS "practice guitar".) This strat variant sounds very nice with the ODS, especially in the clean channel. The guitar that really sounds amazing though is the Ibanez Artstar. As an ES-335-inspired guitar, sounds absolutely fantastic with the ODS both in clean and in OD modes. Lots of bloom and when pushed it gives you that satisfying growl and touch sensitivity that the Dumbles are so famous for. I have not given it a workout with my pedalboard yet because I want to see what I can coax out of the amp without it first... this amp may end up shrinking my gigging pedalboard! So far I can't see the need for all four OD pedal currently on there with this amp.

I did a little recording with it in my studio using my Suhr Reactive Load and Torpedo Wall of Sound IV for cabinet/mic impulse responses for silent mic-free recording. I had been using Scuffman Amps S-Gear for recording quite extensively lately because you can get some really good sounds out of this amp-sim plugin. One song in particular that I did extensively used the "Duke" amp sim which is modelled after Robben Ford's #102 Dumble amp. It did a really good job of capturing that sound with my G&L Tele and I had it sounding pretty darn good, or so I thought. I re-tracked one of the lead tracks with my Ibanez and the ODS/reactive load combination and WOW! I threw a little reverb on it with Abbey Road Plates plugin and the track came out AMAZING! Soooo much better than the S-Gear attempt, which like I said, actually sounds really good as well, but the real amp "feel" is just "there" with the actual ODS in the mix. I'll try and retrack the whole song with this setup this week and post a link to the final all-ODS version. My favorite cab impulse response is a 2x12 loaded with WGS ET-65's, which is also the speaker in my live rig.

I probably won't post pics of the guts. My wiring looks good but my eyelet board building is not the neatest in the world. It's only a matter of personal preference but I much prefer turrets. I just get much neater looking and (for me) more serviceable builds with them, but I know there are those who feel exactly the opposite so don't interpret that as a criticism at all.

Once I get my custom head cab from Stephen, I will post pics of that. I have a feeling it will be very nice indeed! Then I will have to decide if I want to build my own speaker cab to match or just have Stephen build me one.

Thanks for the review. Great to hear your thoughts and we'd love to hear your clips and recordings.
If you are inclined to copy this post on anoter public forum that features Dumble Style Amp builds, that would spread the word.
We have been swamped but will get your head cab out to youas soon as possible.

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

Thanks Stephen. I found a temporary home for it to use for tonight's debut show... an old Fender Champ 25 combo cabinet. It's a little ugly but it will sound fantastic going through my Avatar cab with an ET65 in it! That head cab will be the icing on the cake when it comes. I am going to have to build a road case for it to keep it pretty for sure.

I tried it with my PRS pre-lawsuit Singlecut with Pearly Gates pickups for the first time this morning Wow what a pair!

I'm also running it with Tung Sol reissue 5881's at about 65% bias right now. Great middle-ground tube between the 6V6 and the 6L6 in this amp! My favorite of the three so far, but I need to try a new pair of 6L6's before I really make up my mind. My current pair is getting noisy.

And yeah, I'll get over to that "dumble build website" soon and post my review for sure - I'm a member there. I'll have more to add after putting it through its paces tonight. Tonight's soundcheck will be the first time I even plug my pedalboard into it! I built a Boss FA-1 FET Preamp pedal clone (from Aion Electronics) and I am curious to see how that sounds in front of it, seeing as how the OSD does not have the FET input channel.

Also on the fence... I might build a pedalboard-sized D'Lator for it too. I have the perfect power transformer laying around here somewhere for it.

I did see on the OSD "preliminary" layout a seperate ground wire for the send & return jacks and different wiering on the trim pot.