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Re: Much more fun playing fuzzguitar......

PostPosted: Sun May 25, 2008 6:14 pm
by Donner
Yes great to have you Alex !!
So what is the difference between louder and more ??? :)


You could just call it the 'LouderMore'

sort of like the Edgar Allen Poe story



Thus qouthe the Raven ~ "LouderMore" 8)

Re: Much more fun playing fuzzguitar......

PostPosted: Mon May 26, 2008 2:28 am
by VacuumVoodoo
Thanks for the welcome! This place has a nice feel to it.

Donner,
Another EAP fan? cool! Why not "Tell Tale Amp"?

Ok, the tech thing:

It's a hybrid with solid state discrete (no opamps) preamp, goes from NEAT to OTR (On The Rocks), toggle on top adds rocks to the neat whiskey in the jar. The NEAT/OTR toggle will be replaced by a footswitch

"Louder" knob does what its name suggests, goes from whisper to eviction volume if you live in an apartment.
"&" knob operates on edges of the "rocks" smoothing them out or roughing up. This knob is active only in OTR mode.

"More" knob is, if I may say so myself, a real innovation in tube amp circuits - I somehow felt obliged to justify being called "super intelligent freaking genius".
You've seen the Triode/Pentode or Triode/Ultralinear/Pentode switching arrangements on many amps before.
This does "More". Operating mode of the power tube is continuously variable between triode and pentode with varying degrees of UL mode in between. Besides the obvious reduction of available output power in triode mode it also provides some presence/edge boost as the knob is turned more towards UL/pentode modes.
Output Power in pentode mode is ca 3W, in triode mode drops to about 1W.

The MORE circuit is PAF for no other reason than to shag certain collector of trivial tube circuit patents. To be honest, the basic idea was published in 1972 in a Czech electronics magazine, however the proposed circuit didn't work as intended. Yes, please add "Evil" to "genius".

Re: Much more fun playing fuzzguitar......

PostPosted: Mon May 26, 2008 12:55 pm
by nichcope
Alex the sound is great and very cool idea with the more knob! Any idea on a tentative release date for the amp?

Re: Much more fun playing fuzzguitar......

PostPosted: Thu May 29, 2008 5:54 am
by VacuumVoodoo
nichcope wrote:Any idea on a tentative release date for the amp?


Well, the BIG question is not when but if.

Turning a prototype into a product is a time consuming and costly process. What I mean by "product" is something that can be manufactured at reasonable cost with reproducible performance i.e. falling within specification limits at sellable at price point.
At this time we're awaiting quotes from subcontractors to get an idea what production volumes we'll need to budget for. This will be the basis for a go/no go decision.
In the meantime we'll have to hand build 5-6 pre-production prototypes to verify consistent preformance.
Till then it's all a big unknown.

Re: Much more fun playing fuzzguitar......

PostPosted: Thu May 29, 2008 11:54 pm
by Donner
You know Louder and More reminds me of Shrek the lovable troll - whom I believe has 3 digits on his feet.... so maybe instead of Pentode or Triode you could just have a green Tritoed knob ~~ mmmmnevermore or less

Re: Much more fun playing fuzzguitar......

PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2008 5:05 am
by VacuumVoodoo
Donner wrote:You know Louder and More reminds me of Shrek the lovable troll - whom I believe has 3 digits on his feet.... so maybe instead of Pentode or Triode you could just have a green Tritoed knob ~~ mmmmnevermore or less


If you only knew what it took to find these retro look perky-nippled hooters....why do you think we put 3 of them there?

Re: Much more fun playing fuzzguitar......

PostPosted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 4:35 pm
by VacuumVoodoo
So, we are slowly but stubbornly moving forward. A sketch of cabinet design has been submitted to the carpenter for quote.

The idea is for it look a bit like miniature slanted 412 with some twists. Baffle is moved back a little and slanted 3-4 degrees. Grill cloth will be stretched over a separate baffle made of flexible plywood so it can be bent into a convex shape. The slits in the front baffle are designed to give a similar but very different function to beam blockers - instead of blocking high frequencies the slits form sort of acoustic diffractive lens. I think Gibson used this principle in the early days.

British Green vinyl covering, oxblood with interwoven gold threads, logo in polished brass. Dimensions in mm WxHxD 450x400x225
Control panel will be on top, recessed.

Let me know what you think

Should look something like this (don't mind the colors, I suffer from mild color blindness)

Re: Much more fun playing fuzzguitar......

PostPosted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 4:54 pm
by cabo
VacuumVoodoo wrote:
The idea is for it look a bit like miniature slanted 412 with some twists. Baffle is moved back a little and slanted 3-4 degrees. Grill cloth will be stretched over a separate baffle made of flexible plywood so it can be bent into a convex shape. The slits in the front baffle are designed to give a similar but very different function to beam blockers - instead of blocking high frequencies the slits form sort of acoustic diffractive lens. I think Gibson used this principle in the early days.

British Green vinyl covering, oxblood with interwoven gold threads, logo in polished brass. Dimensions in mm WxHxD 450x400x225
Control panel will be on top, recessed.

Let me know what you think



I think it sounds like it will be a grand creation 8) ,,, please sign me up! :D

Re: Much more fun playing fuzzguitar......

PostPosted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 12:54 pm
by DocRock
Very cool, looks to be great fun!!!

:mrgreen:

Re: Much more fun playing fuzzguitar......

PostPosted: Mon Jun 09, 2008 11:34 am
by BJF
Hi,

On this Louder and More adventure, as it was agreed that we'd make one half each and my half got to be the preamp my absolute first thought that an amp like this must have a FUZZ switch...........
There are such occasion when you'd like to play a saturated fuzz sound but at wisperlevel..............
However there was one other reason we were to get one knob each so unless there would be a switch the amp would have had to be cranked for distortion and more or less clean on lower levels...........hm that didn't sound like bowl of fun......more fuzz to the people

In remembrence of the first rehearsal amp I used, a Chicago taperecorder with a diode input............when plugging guitar into that input the greatest sound on Earth resulted.........I think that sound has been inside my brain ever since

Anyway fast forward many years and I got this protochassis with a poweramp and a speakercabinett.

Now listening to the amp and speaker in it's raw shape preampdesign could begin and I made a proto from listeningtests. The main idea was to make a huge sound from this small package and a convincing distortion throughout range of the dials and a fuzz sound that would hold together at maximum output and setting eq for a guitaramp response...........oh yes the output from the preamp was also designed to allow just within range break up so it would fit the input range of the poweramp, therefore yes cranking the volume will result in some light distortion when strumming hard ;)

Right well after several tests the final test came in a bombshelter the night before the Goteborg show and I will say I was most content with how the proto behaved.

More later from mr Louder

Have fun
BJ