amp

On Saturday, June 2 and Sunday, June 3, 2007, Egnater is offering a two day DIY Amp Build Seminar. The classes are held at Egnater World Headquarters in Berkley, Michigan located just north of Detroit (Rock City).

This is an cool opportunity for anyone interested in learning about how amps work.

When you sign up for the class, you are also purchasing a custom amplifier kit. The finished amp (that you build) is a hand-wired, Marshall JCM800 (2204) “style” head. The circuits Egnater has designed for you are highly modified to create much more gain; fatter, smoother tone; and more depth and fullness than a stock JCM.

Each participant has his/her own workstation for the two days. On day one, Bruce Egnater and his staff will walk you through the process of building your amp kit, one step at a time. Failure isn’t an option, as you will be guided by professionals each step of the way. You are guaranteed to walk out at the end of the day with a great sounding amp that you built with your own hands. Day two is reserved for learning about how tube amps work and how you can do your own modifications.

The last day to sign up is May 1, 2007.

TheAirtightGarage has introduced the Nora, a newly designed combo amplifier (available in head format) featuring a single twelve inch driver and thirty watts of power.

The Nora was designed to have very flexible tone and breakup with a minimal amount of controls. It is a lightweight unit, all tube, with reverb. Top panel controls/jacks from left to right are power, idle/run, indicator light (a real blacklight), reverb, dwell, tone, volume, input jack.

Tubes used are one 5AR4, two 6L6GC’s, two 12AX7’s and one 12AY7. The reverb is footswitchable via any standard (or our) reverb footswitch. Options on the Nora are a 2×12 setup, a 1×15 setup, and it is available as a standalone head unit.

The Nora has an MSRP of $1400.

More information is available at TheAirtightGarage.

Retro-King has introduced the Plexi 50, a replica of the 1960’s 50 watt plexi with a solid state rectifier.

It uses two EL-34 output tubes and a heyboer 50 watt plexi output transformer. The filtering consists of a double 50mf cap and a double 32mf cap. Unlike the 45, which uses a shared cathode, the 50 watt uses a separate cathode arrangement on the first tube, which adds pre-amp gain. A .68 bypass cap on the second stage 33k slope resistor and 500pf cap gives that classic British midrange crunch of the original. The output tranny has the correct 3.4k primary plate load. Read more…

Vox has expanded its line of Valvetronix amps with the addition of the 100 Watt AD100VTH head.

The AD100VTH is equipped with a silver metal grille that provides a modern twist to traditional VOX design. Chicken head, pointer knobs pay homage to VOX’s rich heritage. Its features include:

• 11 amp styles.
• 11 preset programs.
• Two user-editable channels (programs) for saving amp and effect combination settings.
• 11 effects (plus noise reduction), complemented by a Tap button (for quickly setting delay time or modulation speed).
• FX bypass button to easily turn on or off effects in any mode.
• Presence control.
• User selectable output power (from 1-100 Watts) so the Valve Reactor can be saturated at any sound level to deliver authentic, tube power amp sound and feel.
• Simple control layouts for ease of use; quick access to deeper editing from the top panel.
• Built-in line/headphone jack for direct recording or practice; effect-loop jack for connecting external effect processors.
• Two external speaker output jacks.

The new V412BK speaker cabinet complements the AD100VTH. This 4×12 cab features authentic VOX speakers with an aggressive, modern sound, road-worthy construction and black grille cloth to match any rig, all at an affordable price. An optional VFS2 dual footswitch is also available. The first footswitch toggles between user programs (CH1, CH2) and the second switch is an effects bypass. Alternatively, the second footswitch can activate Manual mode for hands-free switching between three sounds (two user + manual setting) during live performance.

The VOX AD100VTH Head and V412BK cabinet will be available in December 2005 with respective U.S. MSRPs of $549 and $499.

More information is available at the Vox site.

Retro-King has introduced the Plexi 45, a replica of the mid 60’s JTM 45 amplifier. This amp is hand-wired point-to-point on a vintage style turret board and is built to the exact specs of the original (Retro-King adds a 100 pico cap across the normal volume for added clarity).

The output tranny is built for Retro-King by heyboer with the 6.6k primary plate load which is optimal for the kt-66 power tubes. As in the originals, the filtering in the first cap is a double 32mf cap and the second is a double 16mf cap. This amp uses the early “plexi” tone control values along with the standard preamp values. You can also order this amp with the optional negative feedback control adjustable from the stock 27k to 47k. This will give an increase in gain. The Plexi 45 is also available in a 2×12 combo.

Read more…