Experiment - Combine a UL Pro Reverb and a Super Texan Circuit to make great AMP!

[Enzo]

Hi killivolt, welcome to the forum.

MAy I suggest starting a new thread for your amp. it can get confusing talking about two guy's amps in the same thread, especially for old fuddies like me. We can talk about posting photos and drawings there.

I don't know the amp either, but to me they all work about the same. When you have pre and post controls (or Gain and Master) I usually dial up the gain for the amount of overdrive I want, and the master for how loud. Tone controls I set by ear.

[Chuck H]

As a prior customer of Dan's I can honestly say that whether people choose to nit pick the technical aspects of his work or not, his amps usually sound better than average if not pretty damned good. I was Dan's customer back when he ran his amp biz out of his home, before he ever had a store front, but after he sold his repair shop in Saratoga (though I shopped in that store with the new owner many times). Dan was a forerunner in the amp mod game and the Super Texan was developed shortly after I went rouge and started building my own circuits. But I have no doubt about it's nature. He was great at getting preamps to generate the desireable tones that people were familiar with from whole overdrive amp systems. That is, with a Torres amp it wasn't usually necessary to overdrive the power tubes to get a tone. So mating a clean-ish ULpower amp to a Torres preamp seems like a very reasonable thing to do IMHO. Though Dan was also somewhat particular about power amp distortion NOT being objectionable with his own product, it's not a necessary component. I haven't listened to any clips of the amp in question yet. I don't doubt the preamp overdrive sounds great. I wonder how it sounds clipping the UL power amp. Dan was big on exploiting some PI distortion as an aspect of the overall tone when possible. He used a lot of post PI master designs. I wonder if that is part of THIS design.?.

[bob p]

there goes that UL misnomer again...

[Chuck H]

there goes that UL misnomer again...

C'mon Bob Big deal. Distributed load, so, DL instead of UL? Anyway... It's just the common moniker we use today for "screen grid tapped into the primary wind". Many engineers didn't like the name when it was developed either from what I've heard. But no one is grumping about the name Big Mac for a burger siting that it's made of meat and not Mac.

[Enzo]

Next we will start enforcing "Kleenex" and "Xerox" and "Q-tip".

But you are correct, we should be more precise.

[Chuck H]

Channellock, Vise Grip, Crescent, Krazy Glue, White Out, Jet Ski, Jacuzzi, Crock Pot, etc...

[Leo_Gnardo]

Channellock, Vise Grip, Crescent, Krazy Glue, White Out, Jet Ski, Jacuzzi, Crock Pot, etc...

Don't forget my fave, Dumpster.

[Enzo]

Hoover is a verb in our house.


I guess we no longer need concern ourselves over Ditto Machine instead of spirit duplicator. (Ask grandma)

[pdf64]

Between ourselves, I think we all know the score with the output stage arrangement / conditions of those late 70s Fenders (ie it's DL, basically regular pentode, rather than UL).
But the main problem with the 'ultra linear' terminology is that regular players think that those amps somehow won't overdrive, or that there is something fundamentally different between those Fenders and the rest.

[Chuck H]

Between ourselves, I think we all know the score with the output stage arrangement / conditions of those late 70s Fenders (ie it's DL, basically regular pentode, rather than UL).
But the main problem with the 'ultra linear' terminology is that regular players think that those amps somehow won't overdrive, or that there is something fundamentally different between those Fenders and the rest.

Or they think that the design inherently produces more power and that these amps will be louder (or "harder/harsher" sounding) than their non DL/UL cousins. Also not true. At least not because of the screen circuit in particular.

[Justin Thomas]

But the main problem with the 'ultra linear' terminology is that regular players think that those amps somehow won't overdrive, or that there is something fundamentally different between those Fenders and the rest.

Oh, they will. They SO will. Ask anybody who's wound a Super Twin up to 10, without the "Distortion" circuit.
IE, ME.

Come to think of it, I've wound up my Bassman 100 to 10, too. And that's basically a Twin Reverb Normal channel. And by golly, it WILL do the "Working Man" tone.

Justin

[Chuck H]

I've wound up my Bassman 100 to 10... And by golly, it WILL do the "Working Man" tone.

Great tone. And loud is the only way there

[bob p]

It's unfortunate that the UL moniker is like a Scarlet Letter to those amps. They're pentode mode amps, just like the rest. They're not ultralinear HiFi amps, and dumb people avoid them for invalid reasons ... just like they avoid amps that have a master volume, presuming that the MV is evil in some way. They just can't seem to understand that by turning it up to 10 it goes away...

I'm with Justin -- there's a lot to be said for sitting a plain-Jane Bassman on top of a Marshall 4x12 and turning it loose. I spent a lot of time gigging a stock Bassman on a 1960. Fabulous. LOUD! But Fabulous!

[Justin Thomas]

Great tone. And loud is the only way there

Damn right. And I don't compromise. I have this fight every so often when I get asked to play at church. They've all moved on to "profiling" "amps." I refuse. An ability to program every possible parameter is too safe for me. And I would rather not play than sell myself out.

Justin

[Justin Thomas]

I'm with Justin -- there's a lot to be said for sitting a plain-Jane Bassman on top of a Marshall 4x12 and turning it loose. I spent a lot of time gigging a stock Bassman on a 1960. Fabulous. LOUD! But Fabulous!

Fabulous, and WORTH it.
As for the "UL" Fenders, the Super Twin was not MY thing, but I never felt any desire to turn it into something else. I did notice how well it took pedals up front, and it DID cut through a mix, which was what was needed when it was made. It's an incredibly valuable and flexible tool to keyboardists or pedal steelers, and even metalheads, which is where it went - to a young guy who knew enough to know he needed LOTS of watts and who got all of his distortion from pedals, and used a lot of processing. And so it went to a great home, without having to be hacked or mongrelized. The only "mods" I did were to put a 5W wirewound resistor in place the low-frequency inductor because I didn't know where to find an inductor, and to put a 25uF cap on the first gain stage cuz I didn't have a 750. The resistor actually worked okay, after checking the other four's resistance and using some "best guess..."

Justin