Ceria Tone Trainwreck-style amps?

[Thorny]

I have been reading up on Ken F. since his passing and it has given me an itch for a trainwreck amp. He certainly seemed like an excellent man.

I will NEVER be able to afford one of his amps (nor can I afford to buy a Komet, although I hear they are excellent). Since there are so few I likely will never even see one. Anyhow, I am looking at the Ceriatone's take on the liverpool and express designs.

Has anyone built one of these?

If so, which one? How does it sound?

Where did the designs come from? Did someone actually draw a schematic from one of these? Or are they simply pure speculation?

What US trannies do I use with these? Does heyboer make a set of trannies for the liverpool or the express? Or are these just speculation (such as AC30 trannies, or such)?

Thanks in advance.

Thorny

[dai h.]

hi, check out

http://ampgarage.com

lots of info there re: wrecks

[Thorny]

Thanks for the information! I will use it!

[Thorny]

I completed a liverpool and an express based design and they both sound great. I didn't know what to expect, so I was a little taken back about how these amps can rip your head off! They REALLY can distort! I have not heard anything quite like that in a non-master volume amp. I will have to resort to a 12AY7 or 12AU7 in order to get a little more headroom with a humbucker equiped guitar. This must be pretty common from what I have found out from the forum.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

[dai h.]

sure no prob. You might want to study this post from the Gear Page. I thought it seemed quite important and made sense in re: to the amps:

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/sho...07#post2916107

Since Kens untimely passing, I have been trusted by several Wreck owners to service their amps. A couple are on this board.
Every single one I have played has sounded great, but every one was a little different. The basic schem. pretty much remained the same, but a few differences could easily be seen. He obviously built and tweaked each one differently, with an obvious tone target in mind.
The circuit by design is borderline unstable (hence the large number of overly-bright and noisy clones I have heard). In order to bring this circuit inside the point of stability, there are a number of subtle changes and differences that can be seen.
Lead dress and preamp tube selection are the most common two 'tweaks' and yes they are absolutely tweaks. No design I have worked on is more sensitive to lead dress....the Dumble designs are a pretty close second.
Inaudible oscillations have to be found and removed or else the amp will sound constipated or shrill and won't bloom. This is a time-consuming labourious process and sometimes even 2mm of movement on a cable can be the difference between an average and a great amp.
I have seen cases of amps with grid resistors on the second stage, no sheilded cable uses, sheiled cable on the first stage and sheilded cable on both first and second stage. All these are 'tweaks' in order to acheive some tonal or noise reduction goal.
As for tubes, I've seen both West German Siemens and Mullard EL34's. Valvo, Bugle Boy and Mullard preamp tubes seem like the most common. I have only seen one Telefunken and that was in the PI. I can't imagine with this design Ken would use one of those anywhere else but the PI.
So for all those guys who have built a clone of an Express, you should be able to put the bright switch on the max setting, crank the treble and prescence up pretty high, run the volume around 7 and not have a noisy ice-pick sounding amp. If you do, something is wrong and you are not experiencing what a real Express sounds or feels like.
Also with the volume on 0, there should be little to no hiss if the amp is tuned corrrectly, despite what you may have heard on some message boards.

Please don't read this as me being a smart ass, it's just my own experiences based on actually working on a few.

Alan.
__________________
Regards,
Alan Phillips MSc(EE)
Carol-Ann Custom Amplifiers LLC
www.carolannamps.com

[M Fowler]

I frequent ampgarage daily and own a ceriatone Express and building my own Liverpool. I also own a Dr. Z Stangray which has remained my main go to amp on my gigs at this time. I also run my Egnator Rebel for a two amp set up sometimes.

For the money you cannot beat Ceriatones amps. Building your own a whole lot more fun and since ampgarage guys have taken out all the headaches by providing layouts, schematics and BOM for sourcing the parts. You can also have many amp builders build one your you as well.

Have fun and start soldering.

Mark