The Ninja-Deluxe

[vg3000]

Looks great!

Too bad TAD didn't do a 5E3 cabinet in black ninja tweed. :P

You could just lacquer it in black.

[Steve Conner]

An update on this project:

The Fane PA speaker I had in there developed a voice coil rub and had to be trashed. I ended up replacing it with an odd speaker with a seamed cone, that I picked up used. The labels are all missing from it, but my best guess is that it's an Eminence clone of the kind of Jensen speaker that might have been in a 5E3 anyway.

The new speaker improved the tone, it got rid of the fuzziness in the distortion and tightened up the bass. I'm now more than happy with the results

My only worry is that it might be a bit bassy. I usually end up running with the bass pots below 8 o'clock, although this might partly be because I ended up using linear instead of log pots. I used full size coupling caps throughout, whereas the original T'n'B 50 had full size in the bass channel, and a single 330pF (or 1nF, I forget) at the end of the "treble" channel. Lots of bass might be OK, after all the original 5E3 was somewhat dark too, but I guess I'm only really worried about blowing out the speaker with too much bass.

I also got a custom nameplate from Weber

[tubeswell]

Very Cool. The 'modular' chassis is neat. Where do you get those long tagboards? I know where I can get short ones from a guy here in NZ, but he won't stock those long ones. I love the 'verb. Is that 3 triodes or two?

[Steve Conner]

Some more sound clips of this amp.
http://scopeboy.com/scopeblog/wp-con...eluxe-demo.mp3

http://scopeboy.com/scopeblog/wp-con...full-power.mp3

These were recorded in a studio where I could crank it as loud as I liked. The first one is "pretty loud" and the second is with the volume and gain controls completely dimed.

The guitar I used was an American Standard Strat with the stock pickups and the stock .09 string gauge. (Must get around to setting it up with 10s.)

The speaker is now a Celestion Gold.

scopeblog Ninja Deluxe

[Gibsonman63]

Nice work. I like how the amp opens up when you have it cranked. (a concept my refuses to embrace!)

What are the two switches between your power tubes? ... or did I read too fast and miss it?

[Steve Conner]

Thanks!

One of those things is the bias pot, the other one is a switch to select an extra screen resistor for EL34s. There's a 470 ohm for each tube, plus a shared 1k that gets shorted by the switch in the 6L6 position.

[Chuck H]

Looks and sounds great. I actually like the clean-ish tone on the first clip the best. But I wonder how it will hold up with such flimsy construction

... Gotcha

I heard Traynor sometimes tested their amps for durability by tossing them from the roof and plugging them in. Were you expecting thier QC guy to drop by?

Chuck