Pics and a sound clip of my Bassman project

[zhyla]

I built this amp last fall and have been tweaking on it since. It's a clone of a 5B6 Bassman with some slight tweaks. I finally got around to recording some clips of it (attached). I built it from an old organ amplifier from the 40's, entire cost was around $200. I'm calling it basically done so I figured I'd show how it turned out.

Deviations from the original circuit... biased the preamp tube a little hotter, exchanged the treble rolloff for a bass rolloff, and of course a three-wire power cord.

If there's a weak spot on this amp it's the tone control. The bass can be really overpowering on say a tele neck pickup. This may me be due in part to the enormous OT (I imagine organ amplifiers need some bottom end). A mid cut may be nice as well. I went with a single pot for the tone on the chassis and that kind of limited me down the road.

Pics:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3002/...13e8f797_b.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3270/...70593aa4_b.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3022/...60276a21_b.jpg

Sound clip:

SoundClick artist: Zhyla's Imaginary Band - page with MP3 music downloads

This is just a regular Telecaster straight into the amp. The cab is an open back 1x12 w/ Eminence Swamp Thang speaker and is mic'd with an SM57 clone about 1 foot from the cab. There's some clicks in there that are a problem with my recording interface, not the amp. The amp is also not responsible for my amateur playing .

Thanks a ton to everyone who answered my dumb questions for this. I won't remember everyone but I know Enzo and MWJB were both extremely helpful.

[GibsonLover]

I like the chassis graphics. How did you do that?

[zhyla]

Laser printer decal paper. You print anything you want onto it, cut it out, and do the waterslide decal thing like for model airplanes when you were a kid. It worked out well but I didn't do a good job aligning the labels vertically with each other.

[tubeswell]

Very tidy looking amp. Nice. I love that gritty bluesman tone.

Is that an aluminium chassis (or steel?)

How well do you find that the decal's stay put?

[zhyla]

It's a steel chassis - I don't think they made aluminum chassis back then . It's heavy as hell, though the ~12 lbs of iron are mostly to blame for that.

The decals adhere pretty well but then you seal the whole thing with a sealer. I used some glossy acrylic spray for that. At that point they're pretty much permanent unless you go scraping at the finish with a knife. I think it's a great way to do labels cheaply if you can live with the slight edge around the decal.