The Amp Garage

maxkracht wrote: ↑Mon May 19, 2025 1:09 am.. I doubt it sounds very good ..

You guys tell me.

What happens: less power, more distortion (not the kind you want), more hum, greater risk of damaging your output transformer, potentially risk damaging other tubes with higher voltages. This is assuming the tubes on the same side are in parallel, you don't need to wire it in the normal fashion whe...

Asking based on two things I've experienced.. first was a guy who went by VHoholic on the old MetroAmp forum who used to run a Marshall 1959 circuit with only one 6CA7 output tube installed, and more recently Jim Gaustad has said he runs his custom-built EVH spec amp with V4 &V5 pulled. I've always ...

maxkracht wrote: ↑Mon Sep 11, 2023 3:18 pm That clip sounds like exactly what tubedude said. There is a load, just not a low z speaker or dummy load.

Agree.

In the video he uploaded this morning, he answered my previous questions, but additionally he said the signal he's tapping off the OT is being "padded down".

Of course it will not react or behave even remotedly like a real tube power amp but that has always seemed to be more inconsequental in practice than fancy catchwords like "custom wound transformers". I have more questions for him, but if I understand it correctly - the whole "custom wound transfor...

He's saying the amp has a full power section, 4 EL-34s, an OT a PT, But he's taking signal off the OT.

timestamp 13:00

wish I could! haven't spoken with him in over a year and "cagey" is quite an accurate adjective.... :roll: cheers, Yeah, don't get me wrong, I like what he's doing. It's got me intrigued.. He's doing his own thing there (whatever it is) and I completely understand not wanting to hand out schematics...

jabguit wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 11:00 am that's Ossie - right here in Raleigh. known him for years

Any chance you can shed some light on the design of his "Marshmellow" amp series ?

How's he running a 100w tube amp with "no load", as he states he's doing ?

It may well be that opening the feedback loop that most modern output stages use won't absolutely allow it to be non-destructive to run without a load impedance for ALL amps. But it is certain that for some amps, the path to death from no-load conditions is through oscillation. Connecting this with...

You can run power tubes like preamp tubes. Disconnect the O.T. primary and run the plates with high value resistors to the B+. Then couple to the balanced line level xfmr I mentioned earlier. He answers questions pretty reliably, if not in a "cagey" manner. I'm going to see if I can get him to be a...

R.G. IS an expert... Anything connected to the output of the power tubes is a load. So, if there is no load on the output of the amp, the power tubes aren't being used to produce that sound. He could still have an amp that reconnects the power tubes when it's not in the setting in question and oper...

R.G. wrote: ↑Wed Sep 06, 2023 1:46 pm Open the feedback loop, if there is one. The AC30, for instance, does not have output stage feedback.

Not an expert, but I'm pretty sure that won't allow you to run a tube amp with no load.

If there isn't any signal going to the power tubes, you can run them without a load without changing anything. Maybe he kept them in so he didn't need to change the power supply. Or, maybe he just renamed the Van Halen patch on his POD "stock Marshall preamp with custom transformer". He's selling t...

Using impulse responses for a custom reverb, or some kind of amp modeling? If I thought he was being honest, and it really is a stock Marshall preamp, and there is actually something special in the amp, I would suggest he might be doing something like running the Marshall preamp into some small sig...

Couldn't handle listening to that guy for more than a couple minutes, but I don't think your timestamp said he was using that power tube. He just said, "here's like a tube" and "the hotter the tube gets, the easier it is for all the coatings on the plates right, going through grids and cathodes, al...