Welcome to Solid State Guitar Amp Forum | DIY Guitar Amplifiers. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 03:49:19 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Recent Posts

 

Vintage SS Guitar Amps

Started by cb951303, September 10, 2008, 01:42:28 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

cb951303

Hello everyone, I'm doing some research about vintage ss guitar amps. Eventually I'm going to pick one and use that as a base to my amp project. However there are many very nice sounding vintage ss amps out there. I need you to add to the this list the vintage ss amps that you had experience or that you heard good things about. Here's what I found so far. I heard nothing but good things about these amps

Trace Elliot Super Tramp
Gallien Kruger 250
Vox Venue
Fender Studio Lead
Fender Harvard Reverb II
Fender Showman
Rickenbacker TR-75

teemuk

#1
During the time I have gathered some list of those (all SS / hybrid with SS PA) guitar amps that tend to get mentioned in the "best SS" threads. This list does not include bass amps but features some amps geared towards pedal steel, acoustic and jazz-styled guitar playing. Naturally these amps are often quite different from "conventional" guitar amps. Just sort out the ones that do not qualify as "vintage" to you...  ;)


Acoustic Control Corporation 134
Acoustic Control Corporation 150
Acoustic Control Corporation 260
Acoustic Control Corporation 330

Acoustic Image Contra
Acoustic Image Corus
Acoustic Image Coda
Acoustic Image Clarus
Acoustic Image Focus

ADA TriTube and QuadTube 150M
ADA Snake Series: Viper and Cobra

Ampeg SS140 & SS150
Ampeg VH140 & VH150

Award Session Sessionette SG75

Baldwin Custom
Baldwin Deluxe
Baldwin Exterminator

Dean Markley K-20X (practice)
Dean Markley K-65 & K-75

Electro-Harmonix Mike Matthews Dirt Road Special 112
Electro-Harmonix Freedom

Evans Custom Amplifiers 500 LV112

Fender Deluxe 112
Fender Jazz King
Fender London & Montreaux
Fender M-80
Fender Steel King
Fender Roc-Pro 1000

Carvin SX200 & SX300

Crate CR212
Crate GX-130C
Crate Power Block

Gallien-Krueger 250ML
Gallien-Krueger 212SC
Gallien-Krueger 300GT
Gallien-Krueger GS300

GMT 200G & 200GT
GMT 260A

H||H IC100L
H||H ICS100

Hughes & Kettner Attax 100
Hughes & Kettner Vortex
Hughes & Kettner ZenTera

ISP Technologies Theta Vector

Kustom K150 & K200
Kustom KGA-16 (mic it)

Lab Gruppen Axe-Amp

Lab Series L5, L7, L9 and L11

Legend A30
Legend Rock-n-Roll 50

Marshall Lead 20

Pearce Amplifier Systems G2R

Peavey Bandit 112 ('89)
Peavey Bandit 112 (TransTube)
Peavey Nashville 400
Peavey Stereo Chorus 212
Peavey Vegas 400
Peavey Vypyr

Pignose 7-100

Polytone Mega Brute
Polytone Mini Brute

Pritchard Amps Black Dagger
Pritchard Amps Sword Of Satori

Randall Cyclone
Randall RG100ES
Randall RH100
Randall Titan
Randall Warhead
Randall Warhead X2

Rickenbacker Transonic

Road Electronics 220

Roland Blues Cube 60
Roland Cube 60 (not the old one)
Roland JC-120 (cleans)
Roland Microcube (practice)

Standel Studio

Sunn Alpha 115
Sunn Coliseum
Sunn Beta Lead

Tech21 Trademark 60

Trace Elliot Studio 80
Trace Elliot Road C80 & H80 and C160 & H160

TubeWorks MOSValve 1160

Vox DA5 (practice)
Vox Berkeley II
Vox Buckingham
Vox Super Beatle
Vox Valvetronix AD120/160
Vox Valvetonix AD50VT/100VT
Vox Westminster
Vox VR15 (practice)

Yamaha G100-212


So, it seems that the research material surely doesn't run out anytime soon.   ;D

cb951303

wow thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for :) Any specific unconventional design (topologically) that you liked?

teemuk

Well...

For instance, I like the tone control of the Peavey's steel guitar amps (e.g. Vegas and Nashville 400). It is very versatile: bass, mid-range and treble can be both boosted or cut – plus the mid-range frequency is sweepable throughout a quite large range. It's not your basic passive, "only-cutting", tone control similar to that found from 90% of guitar amps but it can do the very same things plus a whole lot more. The downside is the complexity but that circuit is likely the next best option in comparison to a full graphic equalizer. Schematics can be found from this forum.

Speaking of that... before you ask, the schematic section has my post containing links to various schematic sites. They are categorized by the manufacturer. Simply by following those links you can find the circuit diagrams to many of the amps I mention in this post - and plenty of others that I left unmentioned. And don't forget Schematic Heaven, Blue Guitar, free information society etc.

Gallien-Krueger 250ML: The way how these amps combine an IC dual FET and an opamp in order to create a soft clipping gain stage is ingenious. Some other G-K amps use another embodiment of the FETs + OpAmp idea. What's best, they utilize the soft clipping gain stages practically throughout the whole preamp, not just in a single overdrive stage. Old G-K amps have plenty of unconventional circuits, like the soft clipping power amplifier of 212SC and 300GT amps. Trace Elliot had few soft clipping power amp circuits as well but they were realized in a different manner.

Ampeg SS and VH series: Amps with an extremely brutal distortion and very nice clean tone. The distortion circuit topology of these amps is the same as the "FlexWave" of (at least older) Crate amplifiers (both were actually designed by the same company) and while there's technically nothing unconventional or unordinary in these amps they are a great example of what one can do with a very basic design that is "voiced" with an utmost care.

Randall amplifiers. Same thing as Ampeg but the distortion circuit is primarily based on JFETs.

ADA's: These amps were way ahead of their time and receive far less regognition than they ought to. They are packed with features and stuff that at least once was quite unconventional in comparison to most other guitar amps, both SS and tube. Also check out rest of the ADA stuff like the "Ampulator", MP-series and the hybrid power amps. For example, claiming that MP-1 is a "tube pre" is an understatement of the worst kind.

Lab Series: Check out the Channel #2 tone control circuit as well as the comb filter. Not your ordinary stuff. I also like the way these amps limit the preamp signal with a "fixed" distortion circuit in order to prevent power amp overdrive. Vintage Thomas Organ Vox amps did basically the same thing but with a different kind of circuit.

Roland Blues Cube: the "TubeLogic" emulation concept is pretty nice application of FETs and the "RectiFex" circuit (that simulates tube amp sag) is an extremely simple idea, yet effective. Blues and rock amps are not my thing but the used circuit topologies could lend themselves to very interesting applications.

Vox Valve Reactor (Valvetronix, ToneLab etc.):  So far the most ingenious hybrid circuits I've seen. IMO, the tubes actually seem a bit redundant but I've been playing around with the "virtual transformer" and "reflected impedance" ideas and these have a vast potential. Directing signal shaping of the power amp to lower current stages preceding the actual PA, is something I'm quite sure we will see more and more in the future. Another example of a very similar circuit is the T-Dynamics power amp of Peavey TransTube amps.

Acoustic Control Amps: Circuitry and tone-wise these are getting pretty old-fashioned but if you are looking for examples of discrete transistor design then these are definitely worth studying. There are plenty of neat tricks that can be learned from the power amplifier circuits of these things.

Finally... Trace Elliot "Reactor" power amp circuit (used in Studio and Road series) and GMT 200x amps: High-power amps that have output transformers and moderately softly clipping power amp. You don't see this often.

---

That's some stuff from some of those amps that I can think of from the top of my head. Anyway, I'm not so sure how "vintage" some of the mentioned things are but why limit yourself to using only old technology anyway? Yeah, and some of those almost 20 - 30-year old amps still look extremely modern in comparison to some new but cheap amps that some companies push to the markets. 8|

cb951303

#4
that's a lot of information thanks very much. I researched some of them and they are great for my project  ::)
BTW I don't have knowledge about audio circuits. My projects is just to choose a schematic and prepare a pcb for it. I'm not going to modify anything or build an amp from scratch. But you my friend, have a lot of knowledge on the issue and I really think you should start a community project like ax84 or 18watt.com. sorry if that has been talked before...


thanks again  :)

cb951303

Okay, I researched all of these + what I have found extra and concluded 5 finalists *purely* based on the comments of people that own these amps. Sound is the most important thing after all.
However before starting this project I need clarify my vision about his project but my knowledge is simply not enough for that. Here is what I think about the final amp that I should build.

* Schematic shouldn't be much complicated so that I can design a PCB for it (I'm very good at using eda software but unfortunately I don't understand about designing audio pcbs. any resource on that?)

* Over all the project should be cheap. Press the PCB, populate the board and thats it, nothing that will cost too much...

* The most important thing for me: Parts should be obtained easily. For example in my country (Turkey) there is absolutely no way of accessing tubes, tube sockets, output transformers etc... (that's also why I'm not building an AX84 :)) Transistors, ICs and other stuff is O.K.

* The sound of the amp: Although I'm not waiting any thing magical about this it would be great if it had its own trademark sound, something tubey maybe... Also in this project amp the clean channel is more important than the O/D channel because I think obtaining the drive sound with a pedal (tube screamer etc.)

* So far all the mainstream SS amps I've tried sucks at accepting pedals in the signal path. This project amp should get along nice with overdrive and distortion pedals etc...

These are some main lines I came up with. So according to these and schematics that I added here, which one you think I should build. Maybe none of them?

- Fender - Harvard Reverb II (Paul Rivera Design)(&)
- Gallien Krueger - 250 ML(+)
- Lab Series - L5(+)
- Rickenbacker - TR75(&)
- Trace Elliot - Super Tramp(&)

(+) Schematics look scary, not easy to create a PCB I think?
(&) These look pretty simple (especially Rickenbacker TR75) but they all have a reverb tank and as I said earlier it wouldn't be easy to build it in my country. Also I'm thinking using pedals for all kinds of effects - reverb too. So is it possible to remove reverb parts form the schematics. Can someone help me about that?


Thanks very much.

teemuk

Quote...you should start a community project...

Naah, I'm not interested on doing something like that at the moment. There are various reasons why this is so - one of the biggest ones is the lack of my spare time that limits the amount of how much I can work with electronics stuff nowadays. Many people have day jobs you know, and designing, building, documenting and "tech-supporting" an amp project that would start from the scratch is something that will take a lot of time. Time, which I rather use in other ways as the amp design I would likely release would be quite complex and the number of people interested on such projects is very marginal. It just wouldn't make sense. The effort I put on the amp book has been quite big already and I was kind of hoping that it would teach and inspire people to design amps of their own. Ones that truly suit their individual tastes and needs.

Want an easy and simple guitar amp project? There already are plenty of projects like that, and if you haven't seen them then you haven't searched hard enough. Also, there definitely isn't shortage on amp schematics, even SS ones so why is that any different than some schematic published at ax84 site? As a final note, there was some discussion about creating a ssguitar.com forum project amp few years ago but it never got past the planning stage. Likely due to very similar reasons. If you take the initiative and start one out, who knows, maybe there are plenty of people who are anxious to jump in to that project and help out finishing it.

Jack1962

LOL -not much I can add to that , but I would add the Peavey Musician 400 Series B ( about the best tone stack I have ever seen (very complicated but vary good)).

Puretone

Quote from: cb951303 on September 10, 2008, 01:42:28 PM
Hello everyone, I'm doing some research about vintage ss guitar amps. Eventually I'm going to pick one and use that as a base to my amp project. However there are many very nice sounding vintage ss amps out there. I need you to add to the this list the vintage ss amps that you had experience or that you heard good things about. Here's what I found so far. I heard nothing but good things about these amps

Trace Elliot Super Tramp
Gallien Kruger 250
Vox Venue
Fender Studio Lead
Fender Harvard Reverb II
Fender Showman
Rickenbacker TR-75


The best ever solid state amp is the Blue Tone PRO 30M.

have a listen to it on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgGA6qx2NzQ





cb951303

yeah I know about that but did you know it's also the most complicated guitar amp I've ever seen  ;D I think they use some sort of direct tube replacement circuits. Interesting stuff

Puretone

Quote from: cb951303 on September 14, 2008, 06:44:08 PM
yeah I know about that but did you know it's also the most complicated guitar amp I've ever seen  ;D I think they use some sort of direct tube replacement circuits. Interesting stuff

Complicated?  It's the most simple amp you could wish to have!  You mean the guts of the amp?  Don't think so, it's FETs based circuitry taking the place of valves, yes, but the tone is fantastic!

teemuk

Quoteit's FETs based circuitry taking the place of valves
And that's supposed to tell something? It's pretty much like saying "transistor-based circuit taking place of valves". You got me interested, though. Anyone have schemas?

cb951303

what I meant was this: http://members.aol.com/bluetoneamps/gallery/7.htm
they call it vvt simulator. as you can see it's a secret :D

I don't think that anyone has the scheme, but I agree that it's the best sounding SS amp I've ever heard.
But it's nothing related to this thread since I'm looking for a project amp.

Puretone

Quote from: teemuk on September 15, 2008, 08:08:56 AM
Quoteit's FETs based circuitry taking the place of valves
And that's supposed to tell something? It's pretty much like saying "transistor-based circuit taking place of valves". You got me interested, though. Anyone have schemas?

Well, sorry, no! Speaking as the guy who used to market and sell the amp at Blue Tone, I can't divulge any secrets! I've no idea how the thing worked, as I didn't design it.

Sorry!

slideman82

What about Gibson SS amps? I've tried the G20, with an awesome Ultrasonic 10" speaker I shoked! It waves so much air your pants move! Also I tried with a TS, and sounded excellent. I can't imagine how G30 12" could sound...