Sonny JR (I / II) amps

[dl5mhk]

Back in those days no amps were designed for a dirty sound, everyone was trying to get clean.

That's a funny thing by itself, i think. I know, that the guys back then were after clean amplification - and they had to live with nasty distorted sounds. We could have tons of clean sound, but we're running exactly for that nasty overdriven sound from the 50's - and we spend a whole lot of money and efforts for our search for amps and mics...isn't that crazy? Maybe LW would play clean today, glad about powerful and undistorted PA systems?

From what I've heard of the SJ1 it's better at capturing a later 50's style LW tone (Temperature, Nobody But You) than something like Rocker.

Do you have an idea about what circuit concept the SJ1 is?

cu,
Ralf

[Morten Stenbaek]

I don’t sound like Little Walter

My reason for being interested in these amps are that they should have been design for a dirty sound - right ! I like the Little Walter sound on Rocker.

Before the whole forum starts telling me that I don’t sound like Little Walter ! (which I don’t) I was merely trying to give a picture of the kind of amp-sound that I like. We all know the track and hence we all got the same reference in mind when I’m mention this track right ? However I did not write this because I was offended in any way – just trying to keep the thread on track (my search for a dirty amp – loud enough for stage use) – sorry for my selfishness ; ) And if there are better designs for this dirty amp-tone please let med know – thanks !

[dl5mhk]

(my search for a dirty amp – loud enough for stage use) – sorry for my selfishness ; ) And if there are better designs for this dirty amp-tone please let med know – thanks !

Hi Morten,

there is such a lot of amp designs out there...and although a whole lot of them are good, they all do indeed sound a bit different - with the same player testing different amps as well as with different players.
Do you really want the sound gritty? All the time? I have a master volume in my amp - so i can choose the amount of dirt in the preamp section, then i dial in my volume, ready. From nearly clean up to John P.

What i still want to try is a paraphase inverter - maybe it adds some nice flavor to the amps sound.

What about building a Bassman or Super Amp clone? Two designs with a lot of merits in the harp world, especially the Super is not too complicated, enough power, what else do you need?

cu,
Ralf

[Morten Stenbaek]

Hi Ralf
I do like that gritty sound all the time yes ; )
I have own a Bassman, but was not to happy with it. It newer got dirty enough before either feedback or getting told to turn it down since it became to loud – all depending on tube setup. I then made a Bandmaster (which I still got – but don’t use), thinking that this would be like the Bassmans little brother – no happiness found there : (. But now that you mention the Super ! This should, according to Bruce, be the ground design for the Sonny JR : 0

Best
Morten

[dl5mhk]

It newer got dirty enough before either feedback or getting told to turn it down since it became to loud – all depending on tube setup.

You could add a Master Volume pot - that way you can use preamp distortion.
Or a very hot microphone. A local harp player her doesn't like crystal mics with the Bassman, he always uses Shure CM or CR elements for it. I'm using a low Z CM element with a little impedance transformer - it's much hotter than a stock high Z CM element and makes the Bassman growl.
What you won't get from it, is power amp compression - it needs huge volume to experience that. Steve Baker uses a Power Soak to make the BM compress at low volume levels.
I didn't play a Fender Super yet, but when i have a look on the schematic, it seems to have less gain than the BM, what means (in my opinion), that it would distort less - but it has a paraphase style PI, maybe it's particular sound is caused by that. If you still have an amp at the moment, you could try to change it's PI to paraphase style...that shouldn't be a big effort...

cu,
Ralf

[MWJB]

I seem to remember Sonny saying the prototype was a Masco head shoehorned into a 5F6A cab with 4x8" baffle board.

[dl5mhk]

I seem to remember Sonny saying the prototype was a Masco head shoehorned into a 5F6A cab with 4x8" baffle board.

Ah, so it's a rather simple approach, not to gainy, maybe with a Cathodyne PI and p/p output section. I have a Dynacord DA-16 (or is it a -18?) in the closet, that should be similar, but it has only a single 8" speaker. Could be worth a try to plug my 6x8" array in...

cu,
Ralf

[MWJB]

Ralf, check out the picture posted by Bruce, earlier in this thread..

Paraphase PI, simple tone stack, cathode biased preamp with 2 triodes in parallel...it's all there in the photo.