Marshall 18watt or Bluesbreaker??

[wcrankshaw]

If you were to build one of these, which would it be. Overall volume is marginally important because I live in a house. Let's hear some pros and cons on both, aside from the obvious price difference. I won't be doing a kit, it's all homemade.

[isaac]

18Watt is great and really loud for only 18w. depending on the design you go with, there are 18w single channels, full size (normal) with tremolo, or full size with tmb, or single channel with tmb. whatever. if you go on 18watt.com there are SO many different variations on the 18w it will blow your mind. ef86 versions, 6v6s the works. The bluesbreaker is nice because if you change out the power tubes to 5881's (or 6l6's) you have almost exactly the tweed bassman, as the original bluesbreaker was copying the tweed bassman. you could really go crazy and make a WHOLE new amp with just the power section or whatever. obviously 45 watts is quite a bit more than 18, although sometimes 45w isn't as much louder than 18 or 20w as you might think. Whatever the case. My opinion is that you should at least have a single channel 18w in your amp arsenal at allt imes, and then the bluesbreaker will always be nice to crank out when you need something bigger. If you can't crank it up very much at your place, obviously the 18w will be better to get the cranked tones, but if you take in regard the actual db levels, or the fact you could build in a master volume on either, although everytime ive tried a MV on a 18w i must've done it wrong. but you could also use a good attenuator. THere is a guy in the detroit area and he builds the best attenuator there is. A little bit costly but its the best. Depending on whether you have done this before or not, the 18w is most likely a little easier to build, but that just depends on experience. The tremolo 18watt, can be a little bit sketch on the tremolo switching function as the circuit doesn't like ti that much, so you just have to make sure the footswitch (or just switch) is far from other wires, or it "can" cause motorboating. as long as you get everything else clean and nice, you have not much chance of that though. Hope my little warnings havent made you not like something as they are both great, and they werent made to scare. Both are GREAT builds. Fun and sound great when done right.

[Chuck H]

That amp is particularly suited to "power scaling" (circuits are around for free if you look) or it's fairly easy to attenuate the output. These are the best two options for reduced output since that amp derives much of it's clipped character from the PI and power tube clipping. Regular master volume and even post PI master volumes just won't do for the 18 watters IMHE. Downloads are problematic right now on the forum. But I can email you some good attenuator circuits if your interested.

[isaac]

As long as you are talking about 18watt.com, I heard they are going to be up really soon. And if you ask me, the 18watt derives much less clipping from the power tubes. You can hear it. at around 3 oclock on the volume the distortion just suddenly starts going much more and those are the power tubes. before that its the preamp and PI. I could be misunderstanding you, but that ='s how the 18watt behaves when I use it, and I've built several. Although the MV doesn't work well in this amp, I have never gotten it to work. And i also have not been successful in implementing NFG in an 18watt without changing the four resistors that all go together, to more of a fender style, which also brings gain down, so you gotta do it right I guess.

[Chuck H]

Another old thread. I've responded to responses without checking the original post. Mootness.

[bob p]

> As long as you are talking about 18watt.com, I heard they are going to be up really soon. A

I was a member of the 18 watt community back when it was an open Yahoo Group. IMO it went downhill as soon as the group administrator closed the Yahoo Group and moved it to his own commercial site. That rubbed me the wrong way. I thought it was wrong to take an open community and close it, compelling everyone to migrate to a privately owned commercial site. Commandeering the forum like that seemed to me as a legitimized form of theft.

Regardless of whether that decision was right or wrong, it seems that the 18watt site is never working. Something is always wrong with it. The first problem is that it's a CLOSED forum that you can't access without the administrator's approval. The second problem is that the administrator takes FOREVER to activate new accounts. The Third problem is that the site is poorly maintained and it is often down. Together these add up to the 18watt site being useless to me.

When the site is up, it's hit or miss as to whether you'll actually be able to use it -- my registration information has been lost several times, forcing me to re-register every time that I want to use the site. And then once I've re-registered, my account approval has taken as long as several weeks. If you need to use the site to do research, this effectively blocks you from having any access whatsoever until the sysop gets off of his lazy butt and makes things happen.

As an example, I was recently looking for information. I found that my account info was lost, so I re-registered. I never got the confirmation email. So I re-registered three times. Still nothing. I gave up and looked elsewhere to find the information. Weeks later, I got emails from the site that contained links to activate my account. By the time they arrived I had been done with my research and moved on. The registrations arrived too late to be useful.

IMO the 18watt community was something really good when it was hosted at Yahoo Groups, and it turned into a smoking turd when someone made the decision to monetize it for his own benefit.

[olddawg]

Another old thread. I've responded to responses without checking the original post. Mootness.

I do this all of the time Chuck. I see a post on my iPhone, but my old(er) eyes don't catch the date, lol. Thus a necropost.

[big_teee]

If your answering a new question about a old post, then it's IMO fine.
We do that all the time on the Pickup Makers Forum.
Someone will search and be making something of old and have a new question.
Happens all the time there.
T

[Chuck H]

IMO the 18watt community was something really good when it was hosted at Yahoo Groups, and it turned into a smoking turd when someone made the decision to monetize it for his own benefit.

One teeny issue may have been the need for income to maintain the site! Can't do that as a Yahoo group. So if the site was growing, and it was, an answer had to be found if the site was to remain effective and valid. Whomever started the group, no doubt with good intentions, probably never figured it would end up with so many members that his/her time (of course it's a "his") would become the ultimate altruism. Just one possibility.

[Chuck H]

Thus a necropost.

Hey, we both created new words on this one. "Necropost" is great (and my wife asked what I was laughing at). And I had "mootness" earlier. I like that one also. Mootness, mootness... Fun to say too.

[bob p]

One teeny issue may have been the need for income to maintain the site! Can't do that as a Yahoo group.

I can understand why someone like Graydon may have WANTED to extract money out of the Yahoo Group, but I don't think that raising money was NEEDED to maintain the Yahoo group.

My understanding is that Yahoo groups are provided free of charge by Yahoo. There's no cost associated with having a Yahoo group. It's free. It comes with a mailing list and storage space for files. Zero cost. There's no limit to how many members can join. The infrastructure is totally free. It's not as if there was an infrastructure problem handling the number of members.

There is a restriction, though, that because Yahoo provides the group for free, you are not allowed to monetize it with private ads or to use the group to promote a private business (like GDS amplification). So the good side of the yahoo group is that it provides free infrastructure. The "bad" side is that you can't use it to sell your wares.

In contrast, the 18watt portal is a privately owned enterprise that's registered to someone who owns a business related to 18-watt amps.

What really stinks is that the content of the Yahoo 18watt group was developed as a collaborative effort by everyone who participated. Then someone took the files, moved them all to a privately owned site, and destroyed the free version that was created by other people. He destroyed the free version of what many people had created, with the result that everyone had no option other than to move to his privately owned 18watt portal. You can't even view the Yahoo Group any more. Just try the link below.

Yahoo 18watt Group:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/18watt/

Whois for 18watt.com:
18Watt.com - 18 Watt Community Center | An 18 Watt in every home.

GDS Amplification:
http://gdsamps.com/

[Chuck H]

Didn't know the specifics. I was just guessing. But the moderator of such a site would still need to invest time for free! And with a hugely growing membership that could mean a lot of time! Hard to say for certain (at least for me). But it could still have been a strictly monetary issue. Time is money. If someone moderates a group for ten buds, it's all good. When the same guy finds he needs to moderate for a hundred strangers, all bets are off.

[bob p]

I understand that there can be a lot of work involved in running a site. What I don't understand is why he destroyed the information at the yahoo site and locked it up so that people can't read the content. IMO that was a deliberate effort to destroy the yahoo site and force people to his privately owned site.

I'd have no problems with someone providing a site that's for profit. It's the destruction of the free site that bothers me. Destroying something that was built through the efforts of many people wasn't necessary.

[Chuck H]

I agree. I remember being surprised during the tweener period and then wondering why I couldn't even search at the new site without joining? I took it the same way one might when a perfectly friendly neighborhood puts a big wall up with an electronic gate and a guard and becomes a "homeowner community". That is, "Stay out. We don't need your kind around here."

[TNblueshawk]

I for one am grateful for the born again post since I am sourcing for my second amp build, an 18w Marshall. I always wondered what the deal was with that 18w site and now I know. Very informative I must say. Thanks.