trinityamps.com

He may have come out of darkness but hasn't quite seen the light yet.

_________________
Les

http://www.soundclick.com/unimind

What kind of guitar and pickups do you play?

He may have come out of darkness but hasn't quite seen the light yet. [/quote]

Booooo!!!

Lately its been an early 90's American Standard Strat that I completely rebuilt. Daphne Blue, maple neck and fretboard, Callaham Trem, Suhr Fletcher/Landau standards in the neck and middle, and a WCR darkburst in the bridge. I have been going back and forth on the bridge however with the WCR and a Suhr SSV+ I also play a custom shop strat with Lindy Fralin blues specials, and a Tele with Fralin blues specials too.
My style is in the Robben Ford/Landau/Scott Henderson ish kinda realm. I use a Fulltone Fulldrive or a Xotic bb preamp. Not much gain at all. Certainly nowhere near where Uniminds amp is at. Now he makes that setup sound great, with me I immediately wanted to turn the gain down. Stephens Plexi values are just about perfect for my playing and tastes. I set the gain around 2 or 3 o'clock, dime the volume, and I dont need any pedals (still use my rc booster though).
I hear someone like Unimind or some of my friends here playing with all that drive, and I really love it and think I should try it. Then when I do......nuh uh. I did try though, gotta give me that at least.

Booooo!!!

Lately its been an early 90's American Standard Strat that I completely rebuilt. Daphne Blue, maple neck and fretboard, Callaham Trem, Suhr Fletcher/Landau standards in the neck and middle, and a WCR darkburst in the bridge. I have been going back and forth on the bridge however with the WCR and a Suhr SSV+ I also play a custom shop strat with Lindy Fralin blues specials, and a Tele with Fralin blues specials too.
My style is in the Robben Ford/Landau/Scott Henderson ish kinda realm. I use a Fulltone Fulldrive or a Xotic bb preamp. Not much gain at all. Certainly nowhere near where Uniminds amp is at. Now he makes that setup sound great, with me I immediately wanted to turn the gain down. Stephens Plexi values are just about perfect for my playing and tastes. I set the gain around 2 or 3 o'clock, dime the volume, and I dont need any pedals (still use my rc booster though).
I hear someone like Unimind or some of my friends here playing with all that drive, and I really love it and think I should try it. Then when I do......nuh uh. I did try though, gotta give me that at least.[/quote]

I'm with ya on this one. With my previous amps I used 3 or 4 different pedals just for drive/distortion. Since building my plexi 18 I only use a wah and the tuner....that's it!
Stew

There's no such thing as too much gain.

_________________
Great tones come in small glass jars!

I hope I did not offend you. I was just teasing.

I also love to play with the gain down as well. With my amp I can turn the boost off and run the normal/dark channel with the gain around 4 and the master around 6 and I get that really sweet tone where it just breaks up if you play really hard. Flip on the boost and then I have that Gilmore type tone. These amps are so versatile.

_________________
Les

http://www.soundclick.com/unimind

zaphod does like his regular dose of high gain!

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

Gain and distortion are the heart of rock guitar.

Anything else is for banjo players.

_________________
Great tones come in small glass jars!

Hahaha



I would really like to hear your playing/tone. Im sure I could learn something

I hope I did not offend you. I was just teasing.

I know you were, not offended at all.

Nothing like a little kidding around, eh.

_________________
Great tones come in small glass jars!

Yeah buddy... On a serious note, thanks for the help on my amp, I do appreciate it. I bought the 36 watt iron from Stephen, and it should arrive soon. In the mean time I have been messing around with a couple values, a SS rectifier (switchable) Fixed Bias (switchable). I'm having a lot of fun with it, trying to learn how this stuff works. With the SS rectifier, and 6v6's, it has a lot more headroom. Its kinda cold sounding though, makes me wanna go back and add some of that gain that I removed earlier lol

Using SS rectifiers gives higher voltage, so you may have around 400V hitting those 6V6s, giving more like 20W out. The preamp and PI voltages will also be higher than optimum, so you may need increase the values of the dropper resistors in the positive power rail to get those voltages back in line with what they should be. That will probably bring the sweetness back to the tone of our amp.

_________________
Great tones come in small glass jars!

When the 36 watt set gets here i will do that. Im gonna get serious about voicing this thing at that point (hahaha!!) I think Im gonna leave this stuff switchable, but I need to find some middle ground, so it doesn't sound like crap with the switch in one position or the other...ya know?? For sure loses a bunch of its 18 watt appeal with SS rect, and fixed bias. The way I have it voiced now at least. Still sounds nice, but much different.

I messed around with my 5e3 until it was no longer a 5e3, great little amp, but not a 5e3. I think I want to leave most of the "18 wattness" with this one. Or at least make it so you can switch to that original sound.

This really isnt the right thread for all this..... Sorry Unimind, but there will be some brown mods before its over I'm pretty sure .......

I've been following this thread with great interest, and though I am a complete rookie, I took the initiative to try most of these mods on a Ceri@tone TMB kit that I had kicking around (I'll post some clips soon once I finish tinkering). Was looking to see if I can get the same dimed tmb channel EVH sort of sound as in some Unimind's clips. Mine sounded great as it was, and after the mods it sounds slightly different but still kind of stock Marshally vs his dimed out clips

I basically went through the whole "brown" layout and changed components to match save the couple I mention below. When dimed I'd now call it a fairly gainy Marshall sound with a bit of that sort of Bluesbreaker bassy compression - hoping to get it sounding more similar to his amp I have a few questions for the knowledgeable folks out there ..

I am plugging directly into the tmb high input - when dimed it blows my head off through my Marshall 4x12 cab (ha ha- who ever said 18 watts is not loud is NUTS), but its not quite as EVH sounding as Uniminds. My amp is not cascaded, nor did I necessarily want to - most of the Unimind clips I really liked were the tmb channel dimed with no cascade so if figured the cascade mod was not necessary. I am assuming that the cascading mod itself would not affect the tone when it is off - correct? Or is there still some subtle interaction with everything interconnected? I believe he has the channels jumpered etc but just dialed down the normal channel to zero and had the cascade switched off. In my case I am not jumpering the channels, just plugging into the tmb high input -

My amp has no boost switch and I am not sure I really want to install one as I would probably just run it on boost all the time - currently the V2a Cathode resistor is still 820 as it was stock so in theory I already have more boost than the plexi version does with boost activated - correct? (Bulatovic's comment in another thread "the higher the value of the cathode resistor, the lower the gain in that stage" ).

Tone wise would you say that 1.35k/22uf (or the "Brown" value 1.35k/.68uf) "sounds" much different than 820r? Or does it more or less affect gain? I assume the caps boost some frequencies somewhat though to what extent I am not sure

Another rookie electronics question - my amp has a 500k volume pot and the Plexi layout specifies 1meg - any difference in tone or gain with different pot values? I thought that change might be unnecessary..

My Ceri@tone has .022uf cap on the treble and .01uf cap on the mid tone controls - In the Plexi layout this is reversed - what is the difference? I switched values to match but wonder why they would be reversed

r20 on my amp is 125 ohm 12 watt and its 150ohm 5 watt on the layout - what is the difference between these values, or is it so close its not going to affect anything, sound wise?

Other than these things all the other mods and different component values on my Ceri@tone were changed to the "Brown" values from the Trinity Brown layout, and though it sounds pretty damned good I am not quite there vs Unimind's amp - hence this post. Maybe his just has some magic mojo? or perhaps a few tweaks will get me closer??

In any event I am having a blast learning and tweaking

I suppose I could have just done these last few mods but figured I would ask a few questions and get some input since I did not have the parts yet anyway

thanks for any input!

Lindsay

Oh yeah, I thought I should mention that I am not totally freeloading here - I have ordered an amp kit from Trinity

I have a feeling I am going to end up building all sorts of amps now - ha ha.

From my own experience with both cascaded and regular 18W amps, I can assure you that it absolutely has to be cascaded to get the EVH style saturated distortion and sustain. IIRC it turned out that Unimind was using a pedal in the clips you're referring to.


When it's off, it goes back to being a regular 18W TMB amp.


Bear in mind this is *only* true when there's no bypass cap on the cathode resistor.


Because of the cathode bypass cap it will have more gain. 22uF will also be very bassy/boomy IMO. So 0.68uF is preferred, to keep the low end tight.


1M will give slightly more gain.


If it does, then there's something wrong with your amp. The Treble cap should be between 220 and 500pF. The Mid cap should be 0.01uF and the Bass cap 0.022uF. It's also common to have a 0.022uF Mid cap in Marshall amps, but that skews the control range more into the Bass guitar region - so IMO 0.01uF is better.


125 ohms a value used in many vintage Marshall 18W amps, from the days when AC voltages were lower than they are today. So your EL84s will be running above their maximum dissipation limits, and your power tubes will wear out vs 150 ohms, although the sound will be pretty much the same.

_________________
Great tones come in small glass jars!

Thanks for the reply - I don't know how to reply like you did with the "Zaphod wrote" comments so bear with me

I did not notice any mention of a pedal in this thread .... hmmmmmm I was getting pretty excited that I might coax a similar sound out of my amp w/o pedals

Oh well, I think my amp sounds pretty decent so far and I am really enjoying learning and tweaking - clip below. Forgive the sloppy playing, but it should give an idea of how the amp sounds.

It was so fu&*^iing loud and was pretty much out of control, instant squealing feedback the second I turned up the volume on my guitar - I did not get a chance to really record much of anything except the noodling below before my neighbor was banging on my wall - ha ha (I live in condo). Been a while since I was cranking it that loud that's for sure

anyway - If I understand your reply to my v2 cathode resistor question, the 1.35k/.68uf will be higher gain than 820r, and the higher value .68uF cap will only boost high/mid frequencies vs the .22uF stock plexi value?

regarding the treble cap on my amp.. the Ceri@tone had a .022uF cap on the right pin of the treble pot, and a .01uF on the middle pin of the Mid pot - reversed from what is on the Trinity layout. I changed them on my amp to match the Trinity layout. There was also a 500pF cap on the left pin of the treble pot which I switched to 250pF to match the Trinity layout. I was referring to the other cap connected to the right pin of the treble pot as the treble cap - I was just curious if there might have been a mistake on either the Ceri@tone layout or the Trinity layout as these values were simply reversed.

OK - this is Ceri@tone 18 watt, MM trannies - TBM channel, bass 10, mid 7, treble 7, both TMB and master volumes dimed. Strat HSS w/stock Fender humbucker in the bridge. '82 Marshall 4x12 cab (not sure what speakers are in that era cab), sm 58 mic on cone edge, straight into pro tools, no eq

Hope this link works its from my business website

http://snowboardmaterials.com/Plexi%20m ... %20tmb.mp3

Just to be clear, I only used the OD pedal in the 7-string clip. All other clips were the guitar plugged straight into the high input of the amp. Here is one of the clips without the cascade and without any pedals.

_________________
Les

http://www.soundclick.com/unimind

Just click the 'Quote' button on the lower right of the message you want to quote.
Please see my previous reply.
I think that is correct. Ed's amp had the 820r/.68uf which was stock for that circuit IIRC but the 820r when measured sometime in the 80's was measuring 1.2k so maybe slightly less gain but I do not think you would be able to notice a difference.
In another thread of mine I post info about the attenuator I made. You may want to build youself one as well. viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2464
I think that sounds pretty good. Maybe need to tighten up the bass a little. I think your Marshall cab gives it more of that classic plexi sound. A little different than my cab. Also I put the mic dead center of the speaker about 5 inches back from the grill. That's how Ed's were mic'ed. Oh, and go ahead and dime the mid and treble as well.

_________________
Les

http://www.soundclick.com/unimind