80's marshall mods what were they doing?

[stevesamps]

I met Tim Caswell today, I heard the #39 amp in person
wow? wow... you have to see it to believe it!

I have a dumb question about adding gain stages
how do you add them without a volume jump?

It just seems when I try to go for high gain
I get it, kinda but it just keeps getting louder and louder
and grainy not smooth

I use uneven voltage dividers and I do attenuate between stages..
and I prefer knobs
between stages but I guess I want to learn the ropes
of the whole hot rod marshall , old school style..

and there is no way it sounds that good with the master volume
down low I am starting to think its more to do with the
poweramp sensitivity then what I am throwing at it from the preamp

this is not my bag amp wise but I would like to know
how they dial in the mods to be subtle in volume
but large and stable in gain..

I guess it would help to start with a marshall and not one
of my own amps....

sorry if I rambled
Steve

[jaysg]

Do you know if he added a tube to #39 ? Some will create a 4 stage preamp by stealing the cathode follower.

[drewl]

There's been some cryptic blogs that pop up every now and then about this amp.
Supposedly it was a trem model, so it had the extra tube to mess with.

Look at a Mesa or later model Marshall and you'll see that they usually use a voltage divider of some sort after the extra gain stage(s) to get more grind and then knock the level down so it doesn't kill the following stage.