The Amp Garage

Thanks for checking. I'm back on now.

I'm really glad to see that the old site database has been restored. :D I'm an old Ampage guy, and I was registered as the 7th member of the old MEF site. My email address has changed several times since then, so I'm trapped in a password recovery loop that gets me nowhere -- for some reason my acc...

I'm really glad to see that the old site database has been restored. :D I'm an old Ampage guy, and I was registered as the 7th member of the old MEF site. My email address has changed several times since then, so I'm trapped in a password recovery loop that gets me nowhere -- for some reason my acco...

pjd3 -- the oak dowels sound interesting. got pics?

On a related note, I was talking to Friedman the other day and he mentioned that the reason behind his little 1x12 cabinets sounding so huge is that they designed them using T-S parameters for the Celestion 65W ceramic Cream speaker. I've never been one to place a lot of faith in Celestion's T-S num...

I have 50 years of experience with the EV-designed cabs. I was a beta tester for the factory in 1976 when they were designing the TL Series cabs, when they were still in Buchanan MI. I've gigged them since the mid-70s and I still use EV drivers in TL Series cabs for guitar and bass. Here are a few c...

With proper construction methods 1/2" Baltic Birch void-free plywood is very robust. It can certainly handle the weight of a pair of V30. And properly constructed it can handle the acoustic stress of 100W being put into it. What 1/2" BB plywood might not be able to handle though, its rough handling ...

My recommendation for the quick and dirty way to adapt the amp for using a pair vs a quad of 6L6 would be to install a switch that allows you to bypass one speaker with a resulting 8R load on the OT. This may not be immediately obvious, but the amount of SPL reduction that you get by pulling two out...

I apologize, but this will be a little long-winded. It's impressive what a big difference there is in the physical size between the iron for a 50W Bassman and the iron for the 35-40W guitar amps -- the 35-40W amps have iron that is impressively smaller than the 50W amps. I have one of those 40W guit...

Interesting. Thank you Mark for the heads-up.

Do you have any experience with them?

Regarding those PCBs that people are selling -- how do they do the switching? Are they still selling the old PCB designs that use Vactrols, or have they updated the boards to use parts that are commonly available? I corresponded with a couple of of board makers about this a couple of years ago. They...

I have never looked at the MT kit , but I have two 1484s and I can certainly tell you this other detail about the what makes the 1484 tic when it’s up loud. One of my 1484s needed a OT and I was able to stuff in a Hammond replacement for a blackface Bassman. In doing that I can tell you that the or...

This is a very late response, but I was linked here from another forum and had to comment. The Mojotone 1484 kit was the first amp I ever made, circa 2011. I'd had lots of practice modding an old 70s Twin Reverb, but when it came time to make my own amp, I was smitten with the "Jack White tone" and...

^ Nice post. Pulling two tubes to decrease output power is a commonly recommended solution for decreasing power on Twins. But cutting power isn't as simple as pulling two tubes and changing the speaker hookup. Nonetheless, that's the way that a lot of people do it -- it's a quick and dirty method th...

Wow, that a LOT of wires soldered to the rectifier tube! It's interesting that the kit designer opted to tie-off all of the unused primary-side wires on a terminal strip, but chose to tie-off all of the unused secondary-side wires on the tube socket. Not that there's anything wrong with that approac...