The Amp Garage

I've been playing mine quite often through an open back 2x10 loaded with an Eminence Lil Buddy and a Legend. I've been knocking a few db off with a Dr. Z break lite as well. Fantastic tones, more than enough volume for practice/smaller events, takes pedals like a dream, and super light! I lent it to...

Oh yeah, also wanted to say...finding good deals on broken amps to fix....almost impossible now. With everyone scouring ebay, craigslist and occasionally pawn shops, everyone is getting top dollar for broken items. It seems to me that no one budgets anything for their time on any of these projects. ...

It really is an interesting time for amp techs. It seems that everyone that comes into the local guitar shop here is an "amp tech." Some of them really know their trade and some of them can barely color by numbers. I think it's most shop's reaction now to just say no thanks without a second thought....

Yeah, my friends have been posting this all over...they are all sooo proud of it....I think they should have worded it "Imported to Detroit" not from. I appreciate that they might be trying to make Detroit's image a little better to the rest of the world...but it'd be much nicer if they would come b...

for a long time I used my old marshall 50w half stack for dirty, and a twin reverb for cleans. I also built a looper that would turn on both and add a custom distortion pedal for the twin that I could use for solos. It was a sweet setup, but my back didn't like it one bit.... not to mention the nerv...

As far as adding sustain without changing your tone....One thing I tried recently is the Resonari sustain block. I've upgraded my strats to bigger steel blocks before, but this brass block rings out like crazy. I found that I have much more sustain and a little bit more clarity and note definition.....

I'd also like to put in my 2 cents for Wolfetone pickups. I'm partial to his Legend set, but his Dr. vintage set is really great as well (I've got the Dr V's in a 335 that I love) To me the Legends are it in most of my guitars. They just hit the spot for me. Of the few holy grail guitars that I've b...

Hey RJ, thanks for the offer to send out another tube. No need though, it was a simple problem. The hum was just from a bad solder joint on one side of the filament grounding. She's perfectly quiet now! This is a really great amp. I find myself using this more and more! Thanks to everyone for the tr...

First, a big thanks to RJ for putting together such a great project! I finally finished my mini rocket a couple of days ago. There is a bit of background noise around 5kHz that I have to work out though. Instead of removing that little ammount of noise, I've impatiently moved on to tweaking. I tried...

FWIW.... what I use really depends on the amp. I built two side-by-side tweed deluxes to experiment, one with all jensen/angela paper in oil caps + "audiopile" resistors and the other with standard carbon comps and orange drops.....I really like both amps, but the plain's the only one that really ha...

I'm still waiting on the extra cash to start my express build, but with my current setup I love Budz Pickups for single coils. I've used his strat, tele, and p-90's and they all seem to just do it for me. I've been through alot of pickups before, but for singles I really dig his. Most of my humbucke...

Thanks guys.... I'll see what I can dig up.

Hello all... I was just wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction of a replacement OT for a Mesa Nomad 45. I recently had one short out on me.... I know Mercury has a replacement available, but I was wondering if there was anything else out there that would give good performance and ...

I'd like to help prototype this project as well if you don't mind.

I may be incorrect, and sorry if I am, but I recall reading that Ken used a 4x12 with heavy magnet greenback celestions (I think they're the 30w versions) in it when tweaking express amps. If that is true it would really change the way that he would have tweaked the circuit. I have a 4x12 with those...