Odd-ball amplifier ideas that actually work. All suggestions comments welcome!

[Enzo]

Some examples would be any of the Peavey VTX series amps:
Classic VTX
Heritage VTX
MX VTX

Also a number of Music Man amps have cathode drive.



Here are some schematics from those brands
Post 70's Amp Heaven Schematics - Acoustic Bogner Kettner HiWatt Matchless Orange Peavey Rickenbacker Rivera Soldano

[Austin]

Muhaha I just got two Hammond organ tube amps from ebay and the guy who sold them to me lives here in the same town so I didn't have to pay shipping! The power transformers are huge and they powered 2 6l6 and several odd ball 5 pin tubes and get this... 47 or so 12au7 tone control tubes each. It is good I didn't have to pay shipping as they probably weigh about 60 lbs together. I am thinking of building a otl circlotron hifi amp from 6080/6as7 type if the power transformers are the same voltage and low enough volts. I am hoping the heater supplies are up to the task for the big current requirements of those tubes. I have 7 of them so far I but I spose I would need several more. Hifi guys seem to turn there noses up at guitar amp guys, but us guitar guys don't have anything against hifi stuff though right? If not just some cool monoblocks would be ok. The ads said the amps were identical however one power transformer is slightly smaller than the other one otherwise they are the same so I dunno if I should complain and try and get my money back or not.. They were 60 bucks for both and included two nice chokes and three power filter caps each and one pp type output transformer each so I figure its still a good deal right? The pic is even the same for both so I am slightlly upset they are not completely identical..
What do you guys think/ Thanks in advance.

6L6GC x2 tube amp for DIY project 1961 (amp #1) | eBay

6L6GC x2 tube amp for DIY project 1961 (amp #2) | eBay

I think he might give me my money back or at least throw in some of the tubes that came out of it for the wrong info. That sounds only fair..


edit: Baldwin not Hammond, sry

[J M Fahey]

The ad claims they are Baldwin, not Hammond.
Just sayin' .

[tedmich]

wow looks cant get more conservative than the CGI, they look like old signal generators!

love the three colored phase switches

[J M Fahey]

Well, CMI was Chicago Musical Instruments, then the Gibson head corporation.
CMI also included Baldwin and Maestro pedals, they all were fond of multicolored switches.
As I said, I loved the "SG" series amps and cabinets coming already mounted in aluminum edge reinforced, road ready cases.

[Jag]

That was my first "good" amp when I was a kid. Used all the money I saved working at my Uncles gas station for the summer to buy it. It cost me $650, at the time, and I passed on the '65 Twin that was sitting right beside it for the same bucks. Wish I had done that different!

I had the behemoth 6x10 combo version. I ended up cutting it down to a head and 4x10 cab. Still have the head, waiting for the time to tear it down and see what I can make it into.

Oddly enough, I had a guy bring me the 15" combo version for repair about 5 years ago. Great amps for clean stuff.

[tedmich]

Gibson amps; often "interesting" never "great" (IMHO)

[Austin]

Gibson amps; often "interesting" never "great" (IMHO)

I have a gibson "Thor" bass amp that I like. Though not really loud enough for bass I used to play it at open mic blues jams because it is a combo and has plenty of guts to cut through a mix of other guitar players.

[Austin]

Just thought of one.. Plate driven. I read about it somewhere....


I wanted to make one (maybe a crazy octave pedal effect?) up kinda along the same lines is instead of trying to cancel the noise out with filter caps and common mode canceling or whatever you call it, you actually do all you can to make the power supply noise louder and build an (a tube powered even?) inverter and instead of using a signal generator or oscillater to make 50 or 60 hz you actually use your guitar or preamp to make the ac that powers the inverter that goes into a step up transformer that makes the 400 volts or so that gets rectified that powers another amp made with no power supply filtering and then the hum induced into your own sound would be your own signal...

Do you guys think this could work?

If you used your guitar for the inverter signal, and no caps for filtering, and dc coupled everything could you could make an amplifier with absolutely no capacitors at all maybe even...

[Austin]

Maybe a really beefy car amp hooked to a step up transformer (or an output transformer turned around backwards?) instead of the usual 2 ohm sub-woofer to power a really small se tube amp with no power supply filtering, then with a preamp buffer play the guitar through the car amp and the tube amp at the same time as an octave effect...

[Austin]

Here is an idea for maybe a way to convert a stereo console or something with two identical output transformer, but I don't know how it would sound or if the feedback would reduce the gain to one or what.






From here: Audio amplifier push pull output stage.