Advice/tips on a good 5E3 build

[CaseyJones]

Any devout student of the tweed Deluxe really must look at several similar amps.

Circa 1960 DeArmond built a tweed Deluxe rip R15T and a similar amp re- badged and sold by Martin. Yeah, a Martin "tweed Deluxe" built by the Nazareth Pennsylvania people who made legendary "folk" guitars. Same people who had an aversion to using the magnetic pickups we all know and love. The R15T is a "tweed Deluxe" lovingly massaged and tweaked by some long forgotten old timer back in the day. AFAIK Neil Young owns exactly zero vintage DeArmond / Martin amps and it's really too bad. The DeArmond / Martins are tighter, they have more usable clean volume, more sustain and a more gradual transition into overdrive compared to everyone's beloved whoopie cushion 5E3.

We're on a a Dumble / Trainwreck forum. The DeArmond's encapsulated circuit is a premonition of Dumble.

Unlike Gibson's GA18 or GA20 "Deluxe" style amps the DeArmond / Martins actually improve on the 5E3.

Speaking of Dumble, Dumble's Tweedle is another thoughtful take on the classic tweed Deluxe. One of my many pet peeves with the stock 5E3 is its seething distortion is an unfulfilled promise of sustain a stock 5E3 won't deliver. Is that a double negative? Seems like a 5E3 should sustain for a week. It doesn't. A savvy builder can coax a passable ODS impersonation out of a Tweedle. Trick is choosing parts that play nice with each other.


A popular rabbit hole is layering on the Website Wonder modifications. One of the more prominent WW mods is the "Prolux". On the face of it, how difficult can it be? Swap in 6L6 tubes, enjoy an instant power increase to 30 watts. Actually it requires a major transformer upgrade of power and output transformers. 6L6 tubes and variants won't achieve full performance without an adequate power supply. "30 watts" in a "5E3" is typically somewhere between wishful thinking and false advertising. 20 watts from a pair of cathode biased 6L6s in a 5E3 circuit is about right. Fixed bias will bump the output slightly while imposing increased demand on the power supply.

It's not difficult to engineer an adequate power supply. Unfortunately many builders aren't engineers.

[ChopSauce]

Please apologise me if I'm missing something important there, but the deArmond/Martin RT15 seems to be "almost just" a 5E3 with lower (350k?) pot and coupling cap values.

I think I understand how that makes for an amp cleaner - with a less gainy first stage - but where does the added sustain comes from?

Additionaly, I don't understand the concept of "encapsulated" circuit - and even less how that relates to Dumble amps?
(managing to apply as a devout student)

[martin manning]

Encapsulated = "Gooped" like this one: https://truevintageguitar.com/blogs/pre ... rmond-r15t

[ChopSauce]

Of course ... thanks!