trinityamps.com

Hi
I'm new here, and I'm just getting into the amp building game
While doing the woodwork on my "soon to be ordered" trinity 18 watt plexi i've been doing some thinking.
Since i own both a guitar and a bass guitar, and own a 4x10" marshall bass cab i would like to bild a bass amp as soon as the 18watt guitar combo is done.

I'm thinking a small bass amp that can give me some overdrive.
Lemmy from Motörhead has his "Murder One" (marshall lem1992 now), which is a mix of a super lead and a super bass.
So, I'm thinking, would it be possible to incorperate that sound into a 18 watt design (who needs 100 watts of power anyways, other than Lemmy)?

Any thoughts or ideas, is this just a stupid idea?

I'm curious too.
I've got a SF Dual Showman Reverb (100W!) that is horrible for bass, even at practice levels.
I'm saving my nickels and dimes to build something DC30~ish.
I'm wondering how it would sound at low volumes for bass, and what I could do to make it sound better.

I have no idea, but I wonder if the normal transformers for an 18 watter would be able to keep up with those low notes. Takes a lot of juice to get those speaker cones moving for those low bass strings.

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Exactly there's so much power in those bassnotes that I doubt 18 watts at low distortion would be very loud at all. Maybe just bedroom levels. I'd think you'd have to change the coupling caps to 0.1s ect. and maybe tweek the tone stack too.

Thank you for your replies. Well, like i wrote, it is just a idea i have. But i will probably do abit more research before i give up on the idea. The main reason i thought that this could be possible is that i've had a look at the marshall 2061 schematics. Kind of hard to explain what i'm thinking (since it's just a very early idea), i was thinking 2 channels: 1:orignal 18watt and channel 2 bass amp marshall lem1992 style.

When it comes to output i'm just looking for a practise/bedroom amp

Actually the 18W transformers should be able to handle bass pretty well. They were originally designed for hi-fi amps. A few different people have played bass at low volume levels through 18W amps, and have reported that the sound was pretty good. The main problem is that the Marshall 18W distorts very early, so you can't turn it up much at all. But you should be fine for bedroom level playing.


The Trinity sIII version of the 18W is probably the best suited for playing bass through, as it has the most clean range. You would probably only need to change some the component values in the tone stack to be similar to Lemmi's amp. It already has an 18W Normal channel.

It's also been known for people to build the same design with bigger transformers and power tubes (such as 6L6s or EL34s) to use as bass amps. Also SS rectification and big filter caps. This apparently works real well.


There's a pretty strong chance actually, that would make the amp fart out on low notes. For a serious bass amp you would keep the coupling cap values fairly low, but up the filter caps and uses SS rectification.

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Great tones come in small glass jars!

Thank you zaphod, that was really helpful, and encouraging!

I will do some more research and i will probably post my progress once i've started the build. Oh, and it has to get a name, since Lemmy's 100watter is called Murder One maybe this one should be called Assault and Battery?

I guess if you changed to 6L6 or EL84 power tubes, you could be on your way to a British, baby version of the Fender BF Bassman. That was a simple 50 watt, two channel head.

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