5E5 or 5E5-A?

[MarkXXX]

Is there a difference in tone between the 5E5 and 5E5-A? I realize this is an opinion question but I am interested in what you have to say.I built the 5E5 and was told by a Kendrick Amps person that the 5E5 was the better circuit.I should have asked a few follow up questions.I put a 15" Weber alnico 15A150-0 30 watt and like it just fine.Kendrick suggested that I beef up the power supply filtering, but I decided to build it stock according to schematic to get as close to orginal tone.

[Enzo]

The 5E5 and 5E5A are quite different amps. When Kendrick tells you one is a "better" amp than the other, I don't know what that means. Is a pork chop better than a haircut? They are just different amps, you prefer one or the other. it all depends on what you want from the amp and what you use it for.

The 5E5A has extra stages, and it has fixed bias and NFB in the power amp. The plain old 5E5 is cathode biased, and no NFB. The 5E5 has a tone control, the 5E5A has bass, treble, and presence controls. There is nothing better about one or the other - in my opinion - each is what it is, and you like the one you like... or both.

[cminor9]

Is a pork chop better than a haircut?

hahahahaha, very absurd comparison, nice!

[MaBerY]

I was intrigued by the differences in cathode and fixed bias so I have build such a beast a few months agoo.



I used a big wirewound adjustable cathode resistor
to get the final touch in bias adjustment and a adjustable negative bias
Also I made the choke switchable into pre/post output transformer B+

The differences are subtile soundwise, but it gives more sag and different harmonic content. I must say I like the 5E5-A a little better
I use a Gretsch 6119 with TV-jones classics.

I took some pictures available on
http://s289.photobucket.com/albums/l...%20Pro%205E5A/

[GibsonLover]

Sweet Build

That looks like a pretty thorough kit. I like your 'beam blocker' speaker baffle. I usually think about that after the fact, so I'm still dying to try that out. Have you ever noticed that center piece resonates? That's the biggest gripe I have of my original '56 Deluxe. It sounds great, but when I turn it up things start to resonate. Just wondering if the beam blocker aggrivates that at all. Does anyone know any fixes to quiet a combo cabinet down? I'm surprised to see tweed copies still copy what appears to be a flimsy baffle mount. I wouldn't mind replacing the baffle in my original amp maybe with something thicker and include the beam blocker.

[MaBerY]

It's dead silent, no odd vibrations noticed so far. I noticed the 15" jensen was very beamy the first time I took it to a gig. I had a piece of wood just fine for this purpose and it was cheaper than buying a weber. It adds some stiffness to the baffle too.
Sort of a baffle board "trestle bracing" like my gretsch :-)

The "flimsy" baffle and the lightweight resonant cabinet gives it a different character than the heavy JBL-ed twin reverb particle board SF I also have. It's also much lighter :-) (auch)

[Bruce / Mission Amps]

It's dead silent, no odd vibrations noticed so far. I noticed the 15" jensen was very beamy the first time I took it to a gig. I had a piece of wood just fine for this purpose and it was cheaper than buying a weber. It adds some stiffness to the baffle too.
Sort of a baffle board "trestle bracing" like my gretsch :-)

The "flimsy" baffle and the lightweight resonant cabinet gives it a different character than the heavy JBL-ed twin reverb particle board SF I also have. It's also much lighter :-) (auch)

Many old amps are built this way... many large vintage VOX 50 and 100 watt cabinets are built with a baffle board having built in beam blocking. Real old school and very effective.

[luthierwnc]

I realize I am getting in quite late on this but one of my favorite amps is a 1966 Bassman chassis redone (several times) to be a 5E5-A. It isn't completely stock, though. The input goes to both sides of the first 12AY7 so it is automatically "jumpered" if needs be. It's also got a 50 watt OT which I expect doesn't saturate as much as the two-bolt versions are famous for.

The more interesting difference is a simple cathode/fixed switch in place of the regular stand-by. This is a really useful mod in this particular amp. Depending on the room, it will give you a quicker break-up but still be very smooth. Mine is a DPDT on-on-on with the F/K on one side and the Standby on the other. Other versions I've seen use both sides of the switch so the bias circuit doesn't bleed completely to ground. I do use bigger resistors to compensate. If you are using an aftermarket chassis, the polarity switch is a good candidate since you are hopefully using a three wire cord.

A cathode-biased 5E5-A is still different than a 5E5 but this thing makes two very pleasing sounds at the flip of a switch. Some of the other amps I've done this to didn't sound much different or one tone was far superior.
In the pic you see the unit with a not-quite-matching standalone reverb. The latter is based on the Ampeg tube-driven circuit and they work well together. It isn't quite so "sproingy" as the transformer coupled versions.

FWIW, Skip