Ceriatone Forum

There's been a few posts about the kinds of sounds produced by the Expression.

I have to say I like the concept of no pedals: just touch, guitar, amp and speaker. My problem with this amp is after checking clips on youtube and so on is that it has too much gain for my tastes. I use crunch sounds, raunchy sounds and jangly clean sounds with the guitar vol backed off... but I just don't do full on turbo-charged nuclear fision sounds that often, as great as they are.  To my ears, TWs and their clones are really high gain.

People have mentioned using lower gain preamp tubes. But I was wondering how much they actually lower the amp's gain... are we talking Stones sounds or still in EVH territory? Any thoughts from forum members would be useful. Cheers!

Well, we were having oscillation problems so I started making changes.  I did go with a 12AT7 for the PI, there is till plenty of wildness left in the amp.  It all depends on the player and the guitar.  It is so easy to change pre tubes; all I can say is try it yourself and see what kind of results you get.
Good Luck

I've had my Express for a month or so now, and I love it- however it isn't an amp for super clean tones.  By your description of your style I would recommend the DC30 or the Heywatt rather than the Express.  I lowered the gain in mine by using a combination of 12AT7 & 5751 (I think) the lower gain 12AX7 pre-amp tubes (but watch out for microphonic tubes- the amp will oscillate with cheapo or bad examples) that cleaned up the drive nicely; I also re-biased & installed 6V6's - it's still a ridiculously loud amp but at least wallpaper stays on the walls now!  I would describe the tone now as a raunchy Keef Richards/Pete Townshend if you avoid turning the amp up too far- anything beyond a third up in volume and EVH tones are there lurking.  Another thing to bear in mind is the Express doesn't have a master volume, so I use a Powerbreak with mine to avoid nuking the audience!

I have build an Express with two PPiMV, the first sets the volume to an acceptable level
and the second I can footswitch in/out when I use High Gain sounds.
So I can have a louder cleaner  sound and a manageble heavy sound.

I used a PPiMV type 2 from the trainwreck pages and a relay with DPDT to switch a PPIMV type 3
ontop of the first PPIMV.
Works great for me, the amp is used all the time and leaves my Overtone Special collecting dust...

Check out my video in the sounds and you will hear what a 12AU7 does in V1. I'll endeavour to record some more sounds with different valves soon.

I would be very interested to see a modded layout for this feature.

I rather think this amp will be my next build.

I don have a layout with my mods, but it's simple.

I used the 6,3V to power the relay, not the best thing to do use a seperate transformerwinding if possible,

Rectify this with 4 1N4007 in bridge configuration. put a 100uF 25V on the DC side.
Now put a 6,3 inputjack between the DC and the relay, now you can switch.

Relay must be 6V DPDT.

Look at the Trainwreck pages and you'll see how to put PPIMV Type 2 and Type3 together with
the relay.

IMPORTANT: if you use the 6,3 fillament you can't ground the switch
If you have a separate winding, you can ground the switch.

To use the Express you need to use your volume control on your guitar.  Also, there is limited head room on a Expess if you don't mike for gigs.  Run the amp into a 412 cab with 25w greenbacks.

To decrease the gain to 60 use the 5751 in v1 and sometime I will also use the 12at7 in the V3 PI section.  If you like clean and the chime of the Vox then the Liverpool is better and has gain when cranked.  My favorite is the Rocket uses rectifier tube with 4 el84s and 3 12ax7s.

Mark