Ready made, I don't know. Although all that's involved with the footswitches is some making and breaking of contacts, so making a diy thingie to do this wouldn't be that complicated to work out and put together.

Yes, switch V1 and V3 for a quick and easy solution. I think you'll immediately hear the difference.

Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but maybe it'll head you in the right direction - http://www.tonebone.com/tb-headbone-vt.htm

I'd go with Gregg's recommendations - he knows a lot more about these than I do!

Based on your musical choices, I'd highly recommend the bluesmaster, either the 50w or the 100w version. My 50w through 2 EV 12in speakers makes a whole lot of sound, but you get more clean headroom with the 100w version. Supposedly. That's what I've heard.

Love the amps in your sig! My personal favorite amp that I'll forever kick myself for selling was a 65 Twin Reverb - what a great amp!

Ceriatone makes some 17 different varieties of Dumble clones. Kit and assembled versions. All kinds of mods are possible. There's also Fuchs, Twin Rock and a few other well known clone makers.

Howard Dumble made several hundred amps, and may not be done making them. Just about every one is different. He customized them for the buyer.

A bit of google research time will fill you in on a lot more history.

Someone will hopefully fill in more details about the different kinds, but if you could narrow down what kind of sound you're looking for, it would make life easier for all involved.

I have a Bluesmaster 50w head that I built from a kit, and it's an outstanding amp, exactly what I was hoping for.

Somewhere I read a long article about which tubes were best for the PI application. This was by the owner of Groove Tubes, so I guess he kind of knows the stuff. His suggestion was that a 12at7 was probably the optimal tube for this. I'm not sure if he had a specific amp in mind though. I don't remember if he mentioned the 12ay7 or whatever else. I have a nice new 12at7 here which I've been meaning to try out, but just haven't gotten around to trying yet.

Are you referring to a Two Rock Custom Reverb Signature V2? If so, well of course it's going to sound different - it's a whole different animal than the bluesmaster. I don't know which dumble style circuit is in it, if any, but unless it's a bluesmaster variant, it's going to sound quite different. And you're going to pay a whole lot more for one of these, if you can even find one.

Yes, this amp is really bass heavy. I have the front panel bass knob set on 2 1/2, and the internal trimmer just barely turned on. It's still got more than enough low end like this!

The OD channel is incredible, but takes some fiddling to find the magic. For me, I never use the od channel without the pab engaged - otherwise you're running through 2 tone stacks, which leads to weirdness. And I needed to spend some time finding the magic settings on the internal TMB trimmers - I think I have the bass one at the just barely on setting, midrange on about 9 oclock, and the treble at around 1 oclock. Then it's just a matter of finding a balance the the 3 gain settings that work for you - I push the first volume control - 7 or 8 for a strat, 6 for humbuckers; the overdrive drive knob is set at 7, and the OD knob on the back is at 11 oclock - this combination is pretty intense for most stuff, but if you back off on the guitar volume you'll find the magic spot.

Welcome to Bluesmaster land!

How long is hard to say - it took me about a month I think, but that was only about an hour of work a day, maybe 3-5 days a week max. I would just do one part of the assembly at a time, and make sure I got it right. I did a lot of online research of every aspect of what I was doing - researching how others did it, looking at all the pictures of others versions, etc.

Somewhere deep in these forums is a detailed thread about my build process, and it had a lot of pictures but the links may be dead on those - if you find it and want it fixed up let me know. There are several other similar threads - I used this one as a basic reference - http://ceriatoneforum.com/index.php?topic=1160.0

As far as complexity - hard to compare, as I'm usually doing pcb type stuff. Most of the soldering was fairly similar to the panel wiring I often do, although some things like the ground connections took a bit more heat than I usually use because they're attached to large heat sinks. You don't want cold solders on your grounds!

My bluesmaster 50w was my first amp build, but certainly not my first electronic project - I've been building modular synth components for years, and various other things. I think the key is to really have solid soldering skillz, and a pretty good grasp of basic electrical circuits. And some decent mechanical chops won't hurt.

Bad tube? Dead v2 would cause this.

Nope - it's really well documented actually - the Grateful Dead built 2 of these systems to tour with, because it took too long to set it up between shows, so they leapfrogged the 2 systems on the road. And they basically kept the Macintosh amp company in business during the run - they used an insane number of power amps. They only used these systems in 1974 - they went on a year long break in 1975, and sold off most of these systems then - lots of this stuff ended up in the earliest Imax theaters, and some of it's still in use in this capacity.

The Dead got these guys started - http://hardtruckers.com/ - building speakers for this system.

I used MM transformers on mine - I don't remember which of the transformers it was, but for one of them I had to drill 2 holes in the chassis because the predrilled ones wouldn't work.