Cejay, I don't intend the following to sound critical or like I'm doubting your ears...I am asking out of curiosity, and what I want to know applies to both this thread and the one about the JC120.

I'm curious about the point at which you decide to open the amp up and modify it, including what direction you want to modify it in. In your first post on this thread, you say that the main problem with these amps is the caps in them, which might mean more to someone with more electronics experience than me. But I'd like to know what you objected to that you couldn't address with different knob positions, or a pedal or two.

I do kind of like some of those non-DSP Fender SS combos (in particular, I like how they seem to stay pretty clean and bright, but be housed in kind of cheap-ass cabinetry, with speakers that seem to give it up early...so you can get a sort of amp-meltdown-chaos effect from them without using a lot of fizzy preamp gain. One of my favorite lap steel tones ever achieved came from a borrowed cranked Princeton Chorus, on a friend's recording). Anyway, in my case, I always felt able to tame overall brightness sufficiently by just adjusting the EQ differently than I would on my own amp. So I wonder what you experience upon plugging into the thing and deciding "I can't get it to do what I want without opening it up and replacing some __________________." Can't get rid of enough highs? Mid control not adjusting a center frequency you like? Something about the character of the hot channels dirt tone you thought you could improve on with circuit mods? That kind of thing is what I'd be interested to know, both here and in the JC thread.

Thanks

I would love to hear this amp in action. Do you have facilities to record some .mp3s or .wavs of it? Have you tried it with a compression pedal yet? That might do some interesting things with its clean tone. Interesting thread.

I think I remember reading that he did not use the compressor...don't recall what he did/did not do with the multifilter.

I played through one of the larger lab heads once (L7? L9? L11? can't remember) but I recall that it did have a unique way of breaking up that seemed at once dynamically responsive and not really sounding like Marshally rock tube amp distortion at all. I liked it but it was priced out of my range at the time. I can see how that line of amps would attract a following.

By all means, please record some clips of it doing its thing. I liked the last ones you posted.

I saw a Lab Series L3 1x 12 combo for sale at a store yesterday but did not get to try it out. I will try to get by there soon and see what it's about.

Don't take offense if you've already tried this, but have you fully explored the interaction between the mid EQ knob and the hi EQ knob? I have been getting more of an appreciation for this recently as I've switched guitars and drifted into cleaner and cleaner tones. I'm finding that lower hi EQ settings combined with raised mid EQ settings often give me enough "bright" to have detail, without being too shrill. It helps when I run the bass EQ knob a little lower than I otherwise would, too...don't really need it, it eats headroom and with it reduced a bit, you can dial out some of the shrill without turning the tone into detail-less mud.

Or you could try what I read about in a Jeff Beck interview once...set it up LOUD and BRIGHT, so that it will pretty much take you off at the neck if  you open up the guitar's volume and tone knob...but then play with those two controls rolled back somewhat. Some guitars sound better than others doing this, but it's fun to have tonal and dynamic control right at your fingertips like that, and while JB was doing it with a strat and a Marshall, it works on loud clean amps too. If the amp set to "borderline unuseably bright" with the guitar tone pot full out, there is probably going to be a reduced setting on the guitar that sounds good and not too dull.

I have been playing guitar enthusiastically for more than 30 years and I can still find things to discover in a simple 3-band passive EQ...maybe you can too, without having to mod anything.

'Course maybe modding it is the attraction in the first place...

Hope to hear how this project works out, and what aspects of an L5 appealed to you to make you decide to emulate one in pedal form. Interesting idea.

Phatt, another place to hear a Lab L5, doing a different kind of thing, is on the first four albums by King's X. Ty Tabor used an active Fender Strat Elite and a L5, and via its line out drove a PA-type power amp and multiple 4 x 12 cabinets, as heard here: 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p9sO3bcWdpM

He used the higher-gain channel and got a distortion sound that some people, including me, really like. I think he used some outboard graphic EQs, FX processors for chorusy/delay/reverb stuff...but the dirt and basic tone was L5. He has said in interviews that he used to house the L5 guts in custom rack chassis to disguise what they were, in fact. The video manages to convey the distortion character pretty well...and it was similar on the band's recordings and when I saw them live in '92. All I could see onstage of the rig was four Yamaha 4 x 12 cabs, but the L5 crunch was unmistakeable. I was kind of bummed when he switched to Mesa stuff later on, and got more hyped and spitty sounding.

There's a Youtube guy who nails the tone with the same basic rig...an active Strat Elite and a L5 combo, showing how to play some King's X stuff. His Youtube name is The Scunion...check it out.

I have a BB King video here where he mentions having used the L5 and liking it. But yeah...his whole approach is something loud and clean, cranked hard enough to punish the speakers, and throttled with the guitar controls and picking dynamics.

It's possible the OP is specifically into building something himself regardless of cost, but as others have suggested, if the attraction here is mainly to get some cheap watts and get independent of the PA, used stuff is going to be a cheaper/quicker way to get there.

I gigged for awhile with a Tubeworks rackmount preamp ($100, classified want ads) and a 150-watt mono QSC rackmount power amp ($50, pawnshop) and a Fender  4 x 12 cabinet ($100? $125? somewhere in there...classified ads). Loud, cheap, and reliable. I think my rack case cost as much or more than any one component, though.

Right now I own a Peavey M-3000 mono PA power amp (130 watts/8 ohms, or 210 watts/4 ohms, or 300 watts/2 ohms) that I found on Craigslist...part of a church sound system that was getting updated to newer, smaller stuff. I got the M-3000 for $40, thrown in with the CS-400 a friend of mine wanted. Well worth the drive...and I've gotten a pretty cool Fendery clean out of that M-3000 feeding it with the line-out signal from a little Dean Markley practice amp, which was free.

If having separate components is not a big deal to you and you'd settle for a combo amp, just watch Craigslist for a used Peavey solid-state combo. Bandits, for example, are cheap and durable and have a clean channel with lots of headroom, which can get into Fender territory. I traded a pedal I didn't use for a Peavey Special 150 last week...like a Bandit with twice the output power. Initial tests suggest that it is more than capable at delivering loud clean tones at any kind of church levels I can imagine, and beyond. I think it could deliver loud clean tones into outer space.  Loud, cheap, simple and sounds good! 

So if having it be homebuilt is not the ultimate goal, keep your eyes open for used stuff.

Where are  you located? I'm  in the St. Louis, MO area and I have a pair of 10" 8-ohm 50-watt Crate speakers you can have for the cost of shipping. Barely used. Given to me a few years ago by an ex-Crate employee and I didn't end up keeping the cabinet I intended to put them in. That would be a cheap way to get one of the boxes up and running and see how it sounds...

I used to play in a band with a guy who had an old Sunn Beta Lead 200 head and cabinet, and the cabinet was a 6 x 10" affair with each stack of three 10s on an angled baffle board like that. Unfortunately all six 10s were blown so I never got to try it. But that's no reason you shouldn't.

Those boxes you found would look pretty wild once they were decked out with handles, feet and some imaginative grille cloth or grillework. But I think you could go a lot farther on this junkyard found-object thing you seem to be on and still end up with something giggable. Look on Craigslist for used musical instrument and pro audio speakers. I see take-out Peavey Sheffields for cheap all the time, and occasionally some 10" Peavey Scorpions. Recently saw a pair of Celestion G10S-50s but they didn't stick around long.

Also, I'd  be looking at used solid-state heads on Craigslist, pawnshops, etc. Something I've seen on CL recently that caught my eye was a Peavey Deltabass head (physically pretty compact, lots of watts and EQ for guitar purposes and presumably lots of headroom) for under $100. I've seen solid-state Peavey, Crate and Marshall Valvestate heads for cheap too. Saw a $150 Randall RG head in a pawnshop a year or two ago...that might be cool if you like that kind of distortion.

Anyway, I'm always in favor of finding interesting combinations of stuff used and cheap (with an eye towards reliable operation) and seeing what it sounds like...before dumping cash on new stuff. Many many interesting combinations of unwanted used things out there for cheap!

I have thought, more than once after reading stuff Roly had written on this board, that it would have been really great to know him or someone like him when I was still playing in bands in my younger years. If that man was half as accomodating to others and willing to share his knowledge in person as he was online, he would enrichen any music scene.

As others have said, condolences to those who knew him and may their memories of him be long-lasting.

Roly, if you're reading this, I want to say that I really appreciate the time you've taken and the knowledge you've shared in answering my questions (and others' questions I've followed)  in the relatively short time I've been reading and posting here. Your insight, perspective and wit have been most enjoyable and despite my limited electronics comprehension, you have inspired me to learn more and experiment with electronics and acoustics as they apply to musical instrument amplification. Wish I'd have had a chance to meet you somewhere in person but in any case your online generosity has benefited me and made me smile and chuckle on more than one occasion.

Wishing you the best...the world needs more people like you.
Mexicanyella

I've never played through a honeytone before, but I have to wonder how it'd sound as a line-level ouput device, driving a larger power amp and some big speakers...I had some fun doing before with some small practice amps, a rack power amp and Marshall 4 x 12 cabs. Might be something fun to try...rebuilding it as a line-out preamp kind of device.

Awesome photos, Roly...a 2m wingspan on that owl must be a real sight when you flush it out of a nearby tree: "WHAT THE F--?!?!"

I'm in east central Missouri, just north enough to be in the southern reaches of the glaciation-formed prairie terrain. Go about 15-20 miles south of me and the terrain gives way to the Ozark hills, with larger trees, denser woods, more rocks and less horizon. It's a pretty dramatic terrain change in a fairly short distance.

What's the terrain like in your neck of the woods, JM?

(Should we have a forum category for this?)

I live in rural Missouri and none of the "paddocks" in my neighborhood look like any of those. I wish they did, though. Shapes, colors...

Great thread and great info, guys...thank you for taking the time to write it.

I e-mailed BBE once with a repair question regarding one of their active DI boxes and got a prompt reply; good luck.

I thought your recorded example sounded good, and I like that you mentioned the unit's interaction with other things in the signal path and which order of items worked best...that's important and overlooked in enough equipment reviews as to make them pretty much meaningless.

The clean-to-"hair around the notes dirty" transition is nice, and the hair around the notes tone has a nice texture while retaining some clarity. Cool!