Ceriatone Forum

British Style => 20 Watt Lead, Bass => Topic started by: Franc on December 06, 2007, 08:15:07 PM



Title: Building a 20W Lead & Bass
Post by: Franc on December 06, 2007, 08:15:07 PM
I am building a 20W L&B for a customer and also one for myself.

Here's a sneak preview of it on top of my JTM45

(http://www.vernetamps.com/0ee6ae20.jpg)

If that ain't cool, I don't know what is  8)


Title: Re: Building a 20W Lead & Bass
Post by: BillYancy on December 20, 2007, 12:28:10 PM
That looks AWESOME!

I have decided to get the 20W Lead & Bass head kit. 

Dumb question, but how does it sound?

I'd be mating it with a 1x12 closed back (detuned) cab or the Marshall Handwired 2061CX Speaker 2x12 cab. 

Volume is an issue so that's what I'm looking at Nik's masterpeice recreation.  Thanks!


Title: Re: Building a 20W Lead & Bass
Post by: Franc on December 20, 2007, 06:16:44 PM
Here's what it looks llike, finished

(http://www.vernetamps.com/0fcdfe70.jpg)


Title: Re: Building a 20W Lead & Bass
Post by: Franc on December 20, 2007, 08:48:10 PM
It sounds great. Not a huge amount of gain, but a tubescreamer goes a long way.

With every chord you can hear the individual notes even at high volume, which is great.

I am really sorry to have to part with it this Saturday already, but I am building another one!


Title: Re: Building a 20W Lead & Bass
Post by: narapo on December 21, 2007, 11:58:44 AM
Hi Franc,

Nice amps and cabs ; did you make any mods to the quality of the components (resistors, caps etc) or to the layout (master volume, cascade mod ...) ? any picture of the guts ?

I am about to build myself one from scratch (unassembled boards) and I am still hesitating to go for the PPIV Master or to add a London Power scaling kit.

I also like the personalized logo plates, where did you order them ?


Title: Re: Building a 20W Lead & Bass
Post by: Franc on December 21, 2007, 06:47:50 PM
Hi,

I use German Mustard cap clones and sometimes Sozo's and I use my own carbon film resistors.
I also wired it as much as the old Marshalls, including grounding.

To this one I added a PPI Master Volume, the second one will be more stock.

The logo plates are made by Nik for me  :D


Title: Re: Building a 20W Lead & Bass
Post by: ampkits on December 25, 2007, 06:20:21 PM
Heya all,

Cool!

Weird...as soon as I made the first 20W L&B, I thought..hmm..what? To me, it doesnt have as much gain as the 18W TMB, and since I dont play with pedals, thats a bit of a letdown.

Thing is, I made the plates first before offering the amp. I thought they'd never sell, but we're already on 3rd run of plates!

If one dont need that much distortion, and want to color the tones with pedals, it'd be a cool amp.

It's also so small, chicks think it's cute! LOL!

I think it's a blessing in disguise, since I am coming up with several new amp models using the same chassis and cab, or same sized chassis. The small size would make good for single EF86 channel amp, or other very tone-specific type of projects.

Thanks!

Nik


Title: Re: Building a 20W Lead & Bass
Post by: Franc on December 26, 2007, 10:35:13 AM
Customer is very happy with it, but says there's not a lot of headroom.
No clean sounds at higher volumes, it starts to crunch really fast.
Nature of the beast I guess, to me, the 18Watt doesn't have much clean headroom also.


Title: Re: Building a 20W Lead & Bass
Post by: sixstringsteve on March 10, 2008, 04:24:33 PM
I'd love an EF86 version of the 20 LB, that way you'd get plenty of crunch.  Or, if you could get a plexi sound out of those 20 watts, that'd be even better.


Title: Re: Building a 20W Lead & Bass
Post by: Franc on March 10, 2008, 06:28:11 PM
Here's the second one I've built:

(http://www.vernetamps.com/14eb5c10.jpg)