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  • 3 weeks later...

I also just recently learned about Friedman amps.  omg.

I probably shouldn't ask, but...

I don't know about them, what about them?  
EDIT:  Lollers, I want a Pink Taco.  Ooh, EL84s...

I'm thinking of getting a Quilter.  Mostly as a practice amp.  I keep leaving my tube amps in standby mode for 9+ hours at a time.

Edited by Dusty Chalk
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Not sure on the price. We did the proto a while ago, and we have just started talking about picking up the project again. FWIW, I think it is a really neat circuit. The input stage is very Fender Champ-y. A couple of basic gain stages and a single tone control. The neat part is that it uses an emitter follower to drive an interstage transformer as a phase splitter. You used to see this on old Gibson amps (the transformer, not the BJT) but it has almost never been done since. This is coupled to a fixed bias EL84 output stage which is very Vox like. Oh, and it uses a Weber AlNiCo speaker for a big fat warm sound.

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PRS used to have something called a Studio amp that I've always lusted after (that looks like that), but personally I prefer that they breathe more than that (Dave Grissom's Custom PRS amp is practically see through and has two powered fans).  I'm sure it's not hermetically sealed, but I'd just like to see more ventilation.

Doug -- I'll prequalify this with, I have very weird tastes, in both guitars and guitar amps.  My favourite guitar is my Parker Fly Deluxe, which is wood wrapped in a carbon fiber/silicon/epoxy exoskeleton, and it has a delightfully clean and dare I say "hi fi" sound -- it's practically an electro-acoustic, and I don't mean that thin and reedy piezo sound, although it can do that too, but it practically sounds like an acoustic guitar through the pickups.  With lots of extension in the treble, and almost no diffusion or saturation.

So that said -- my ultimate amp reflects this (PRS MDT Custom).  It's not a neutral acoustic amp, it does have a tone profile, but it has neither that vintage mid-forward sound nor the modern ultra-low and ultra-high and scooped-mids sound (although I do tend to lean that way with the bass/mid/treble controls).

So..."really warm" not really my thing, but my curiosity in what sort of guitar amp head design you would use is undiminished.  Care to describe the tone stack?

Especially if it's not that hard on tubes.  Is it?  

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The speaker makes quite a bit of difference -- throw in something with a ceramic magnet and the sound is very different -- brighter, harder, crisper, etc. The AlNiCo breaks up sooner (necessary for a 5 watt amp that wants to overdrive the speaker) and is definitely how it was done a long time ago. The phase splitter is also in that camp. FWIW, I play a mid-70's Les Paul Custom and I like noisy sloppy warm midrangey guitar. This amp also has no feedback, so even with a different speaker it is not going to give that clean modern distortion sound.

Sadly, I don't remember what the tone stack is -- it has one knob and was copied off some vintage Princeton, but I can't remember for the life of me which one. I'd place the sound somewhere in the range of Motorhead to Mudhoney to Smashing Pumpkins. Grungy.

Tubes are a 12AX7, 2 EL84s, a rectifier ... I think (I really can't remember -- we built this thing a year and half ago) and maybe something else. I'll have to open it up to see for sure.

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Actually, I was talking about the clean tones -- in general, I don't want it to break up early.  (In general, mind you, I do like the occasional dirt/overdrive/distortion/fuzz, I just usually do that with pedals.)

That said, there's a ton of people that would want just that -- the ability to get a great "dirty" tone at sane volumes.  (Including me, occasionally -- would love to be able to record at sane volumes.)

 (Not that there's anything wrong with that -- I do understand I'm in the minority on that.  I do understand that most guitarists want to know what an amps tone is right around the point of breakup, either right over or right under.)

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Yeah, that's a pretty sweet clean tone.

Not to feed your GAS, but have you heard a Dr. Z Stang Ray?  I'm eventually getting one of these:

 

I'm thinking of getting a Quilter.  Mostly as a practice amp.  I keep leaving my tube amps in standby mode for 9+ hours at a time.

Yup, I've burned out the tubes on both the Archon and the MDT, I think, so next amp is going to be a solid state.  Roland Jazz Chorus or a Quilter or maybe just something cheap like a Bugera Veyron M.

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