Mission 5E3 mods - suggestions?

[RickyD]

I have a Mission Tweedy Deluxe that I finished building about a month ago. It sounds great, literally so good that I didn't know an amp could sound so good. I have this urge to tinker with it. What if it could be even better?

I'm interested in suggestions for mods.

Mission offers a choke kit, a tone and volume control kit, a humbucker and Paul C kit, and I'm sure there's more. I bought a pair of NOS RCA 6K6GT's to cut the power back for home use. They sound OK, but not as good as the JJ 6V6's that came with the kit. So the 6V6's go back in until I'm in serious trouble about the loudness.

I play jazz and 60's R&B. Primary guitar is a Squire Standard Tele with Fender Original Vintage PU's. Also use an ESP 400 '62 Strat copy with Rio Grandes. Occasionaly use a Vox wah, but no other effects. Normally ply in the bright channel with tone at 12 and volume at 5-6-7 (more or less cranked).

[TD_Madden]

I put the volume/tone mod in one of mine and the Paul C mod in both of 'em. No chokes as of yet...have the HB-mod, but haven't yet installed. All my guitars have humbuckers so it's a no-brainer.

[stokes]

I like the Paul C mod,its easy to do it is only a couple of resistors.I use a 5V4 rectifier and increased the filter caps to the plate and screen to 50uf.Speaker can make a big difference too.I tried a few and settled on the EVM 12L.Made a big difference in volume and bass response.Didnt like the .1 coupling caps went to .02.

[RickyD]

Did the tone/volume mod change the sound at all, or did it just give you more control?

What effect did the Paul C mod have?

[galibier_numero_un]

It sounds great, literally so good that I didn't know an amp could sound so good. I have this urge to tinker with it. What if it could be even better?

I'm interested in suggestions for mods..

Hi,

You'll get a lot of great suggestions from all of the usual suspects on this forum. The wise and kind the folks posting here (Bruce included) all led me to Mission Amps and my placing an order for one of his Auroras. I feel very fortunate to live in the Colorado Front Range, both for the outdoors activity (we won't talk about shoveling snow) as well as because of the great and talented folks like Bruce who live here.

As I was pondering which amplifier direction to take, I gave serious consideration to a Mission 5E3 Deluxe kit. The choke mod, the Paul C mod, and possibly a fixed / cathode bias switch were all on my short list of things to try.

My auditions at Bruce's this week led me to an interesting observation about cabinets, but you'll have to wade through the rest of this post to to get to it.

To resolve any suspense, I ended up ordering a minor variant of the non-reverb 6V6 Aurora - the MA-18 FB (fixed bias). I'll have more to say about it when I start beating on it at home in a month's time.

For the record, Bruce called the amp I ordered an MA 18-22 FB, because it had a couple of differences from the stock amp. It is essentially the mid-power reverb amp without the reverb. It has a GZ30 rectifier fit to it along with larger output trannies which are fit to the MA-22R FB. I'm a big fan of not changing something I love (unless of course it is easily reversible), and I ordered my Aurora exactly as I heard it.

I also ordered the Turbo Jax option which is very cool. You might want to see how it behaves in your 5E3. I can't comment on this.

In the course of auditioning, I also played through a 6L6 reverb (MA-35R FB). Both this amp and the one I ordered had the larger cabinet (standard with the reverb amps and a $100 charge on the non-reverb amps).

Bruce wanted me to hear the smaller cabinet's effect, and so we plugged the MA 18-22 FB into one of the smaller cabinets he had on hand - a Tweed style cabinet which has a thinner (3/8" thick), floating baffle.

The difference in cabinets was not subtle. The Tweedy cabinet was ... well, Tweedy. It had a warmer mid/upper bass thing going on and broke up in a very pleasant way. The larger Aurora cabinet had a thicker baffle (1/2" thick vs. 3/8" in the Tweed), and the baffle was anchored down along all 4 sides.

I preferred the large cabinet overall, but the Tweed cabinet most certainly had its charm and I could easily find myself living with it. I can see myself doing a 5E3 kit at some point - as much to deal with my soldering Jones as anything else.

If you know which end of a saw to hold , you might try a reversible mod.

Get some 3/4" x 3/4" hardwood cleats and cut down some pieces to anchor down your baffle along the left and right sides. If you do all of this from the inside, it will be invisible and reversible - save the few screw holes on the inside of the baffle and cabinet walls. I haven't studied the clearances between the edge of the driver frame and the side of the cabinet, so you may not be able to run full length cleats on each side, but I'm sure you can tighten the cabinet up considerably.

I'm not saying that you'll prefer this sound, and I can't state if you'll have as much of an effect due to the thinner baffle. The fact that its linear dimensions are fairly short might "help" out in terms of there being less surface area to support. Perhaps someone who's tried this out can comment.

In the end you may end up reversing this, as well as any of the circuit mods, but you knew that

Cheers,
Thom

[TD_Madden]

vol/tone mod gatve much more control and increased the usability of the volume control.. Paul C mod just seems smoother on the breakup

[RickyD]

Many thanks to all for your thoughts. TDM, if you install the humbucking mod please post your reaction to it.