Replace Reverb With More Gain?

[neddyboy]

Uneducated tinkerer here. I've done plenty of restoration work with tube amps, so I'm not going to kill myself, but I'm not comfortable with going off on mod ideas. Hence this potentially stupid question.

I have an early '70s Sound City Concord combo. It has two channels: reverb & non-reverb. These amps are known for clean tones rather than overdrive. I can get it to overdrive a bit with high output pickup at earsplitting volumes, but I'd like to make it more Marshall-y. Can I disconnect the reverb tank and transformer and just feed the reverb driver tube into the reverb pickup tube to create more preamp distortion? I don't want to do anything permanent or non-reversable.

The schematic is here: http://www.soundcitysite.com/sc_webpages/concord.pdf

Thanks in advance for any answers...
Ned

[tedmich]

it might work but probably not

I have heard if you disconnect the NFB (which goes thru the VU meter?) they sound better...


Sound City Concord 2x12 combo? - Telecaster Guitar Forum

[neddyboy]

Thanks tedmich, I'll be trying this over the weekend. That's my kind of mod!

[tedmich]

make sure you have the right wire! NFB comes back from the output transformer/speaker side. No dangerous voltages there, but I'd cap it anyway. good luck! (I too love "subtractive" mods)

[Gtr_tech]

The old trick here is to solder a 470k resistor (parallel a 470p cap with it for added brightness) to the hot terminals of a couple RCA plugs and plug that assy into the rev send/return jacks. That way yer using the rev drive as another gain stage that is varied by the rev level control. Not quite optimal, but it does work to varying degrees.