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I've been poking around this site for a couple weeks, and I think I've come to some conclusions with regard to which kit to purchase, but I want to be certain.

I'm really intrigued by the Triwatt, since I love Gilmour's tones and I've built a pile of pedals that would play great with it. I'm also pretty interested in the TC-15, since my favorite personal amp in a quarter century may have been my old Vox-inspired Trace Elliot Velocette. That said, I think I want some form of low wattage Marshall-inspired amp. That means one of the Trinity 18 amps. I think such an amp would be a nice counter to my Allen Old Flame head (BF Fender-ish circuit).

The question comes down to which of the three versions. I'm 99% certain that it comes down to the sIII or the Plexi. I don't have any illusions that any of the Trinity 18s would be EXACTLY like any classic "big" Marshall (e.g. JTM 45, Plexi, 2203), since they are all, after all, EL84 powered 18 watt amps. I just want to have an idea which gets the closest to the tones I seek.

Some of my all time favorite guitar sounds are the various levels of clean to dirty that Jimmy Page had on the Song Remains the Same movie soundtrack album. I think we're talking about a couple/three Les Pauls and what amounts to 6 and 12 string SGs (the doubleneck). I like how the six string neck of the EDS-1275 goes from pretty to mean during "The Rain Song" just based on the guitar's volume knob and the pick attack. The same goes for all those Les Paul flavors during that long middle section of Whole Lotta Love".

Although I'm pretty sure Jimmy Page used a Marshall Plexi Superlead, those guys always had various mods on their amps, so I don't want to simply assume the Trinity Plexi is the closest match just based on the name alone. For all I know, Jimmy's Plexi may not have been perfectly indicative of other Plexis. So, for those that know, which of the two gets closest.

As I understand it, the sIII gives you
- Normal Channel: 18 watt tremolo channel with a single tone control
- TMB Channel: low gain somewhat like a traditional JTM 45 - boost to dirty it up more

As I understand it, the Plexi gives you
- Normal Channel: Plexi lead channel (guessing it gets dirty with little headroom)
- TMB Channel: more gain than the sIII - clean boost

On paper, I would guess that the Plexi (Duh!) does the Marshall Plexi thing better than the sIII. I just don't know if Jimmy Page's tones were pure Plexi in the first place. And just to muddy up the waters, I always liked the Strat tones that Blackmore got (Aiwa tape deck and all). As I understand it, he played a KT88 powered Marshall Major, and not a Plexi.

Using an A-B box, I would gather that people would probably use the sIII Normal for their clean-ish tones and the TMB for their dirtier tones. I would think that you'd do the opposite with the Plexi. Is that a reasonable guess?

Whick of these two fine offerings would do what I've attempted to describe above?


FWIW, at the moment, I plan on playing whatever head I build into my Avatar 2x12 with Celestion Golds.

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Go Buckeyes!

I can't help you with the TMB (plexi) but I have an sIII that is exceptional . I play through 2x12 ext cabs; the first has a pair of bbq (wber) 1225's (the bbq green back), the other has a pair of bbq 30 watt blue dog alnicos. My current favorite is the 1225's. I play a lot of single coil (strat & tele) and don't limit myself to the normal channel as you suggest - the TMB channel has plenty to offer.

My I suggest you get a Trinity sIII, and IF you don't like it, mod it to the slightly more gain TMB. I'm certain Cocoa would sell you the very few parts at a reasonable price. But I believe you find the sIII a very versatile amp.

The idea is that the sIII's TMB channel has more cleans, giving it more of a JTM45 or early Plexi vibe. You have to push it harder to get it to break up. So it would be perfectly suited to Hendrix style playing. The Plexi 18 is more in the vein of the Plexi Superlead amps you mentioned.

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Great tones come in small glass jars!

There are just minor differences between the two circuits, like TuTone said, I'd ask Stephen to add the extra parts to the kit and try them both

Additional thoughts, adding the "boost" switch option to the sIII may give you what you are looking for also. And for added versitility I like my SIIIv6, the 6V6's give a different flavor to things.

With my LP's with the volumes rolled back to around 6 or 7 I can set the sIII to be fairly clean, i.e. Marshall clean, then when I roll the volumes up the amp gets that Marshall drive/grind going without the use of a pedal.

Hope this helps

Thanks for replying.

As I read it, the Plexi was the "slightly more gain" and the TMB was the "much more gain" offering. From how it reads, I'm guessing that you can probably mod between sIII and TMB, but the Plexi is an entirely different animal altogether. The ability to mod to TMB doesn't really fit the sIII vs. Plexi dilemma.

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Go Buckeyes!

I should have mentioned it, but I figured on ordering the v6 option whether I went with Plexi or sIII. It's just the basic 18 flavor that I want to get ironed out.

One factor that plays into my decision is that I want to avoid redundancy if at all possible. I figure I'll probably never, ever have need to build an actual 50 or 100 watt Plexi clone, but there's a small chance I could someday build a JTM45 clone (maybe...). The sIII seems to step on the JTM tones a bit (based on the literature).

I guess...


I suppose I'll have to listen to those clips again!

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Go Buckeyes!

Both the sIII and the Plexi have the boost switch option. I tend to run them boosted all the time, but that's just me.


Actually they're all based on the generic 18W TMB design from 18watt.com So any one of them can be pretty much modded into any other version, with not much more than a few resistor and cap value changes.


It is JTM-45 like, in that it has more clean range than the other members of Trinity's 18W family. However they don't sound the same. There's a lot of significant differences between those two amps in terms of the power tubes (KT66 vs EL84/6V6), bias method (fixed vs cathode) and negative feedback (present or not).

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Great tones come in small glass jars!

As for the JTM45 sound, we did some test to see how close we could get to a JTM and it got pretty close! I think we posted the resuults. It's the closest anyway FWIW.

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

Which one gets closest to this (particularly from the 2 to 3 minute mark):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpLe-qUUGIE

and this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na_7O9J0tHY

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Go Buckeyes!

IMO, the sIII or the Plexi can do that. I'd go for the plexi.

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