Ceriatone Forum

Hello. I recently completed a C-lator build and i am trying to use it with my Mesa Mark IIa . The C-lator seems to be functioning properly but i don't have nearly enough gain after the recovery stage to drive the power amp in my Mesa. Also, the C-lator seems to lack some low end compared to running the amp without it. I realize that the Mark IIa is somewhat of an oddball amp when it comes to the effects loop. I was told its not actually a passive loop per ce. I did try running a power booster (Electro Harmonix LPB-1) after the C-lator with pretty good success but its still not as loud as my amp without anything in the loop. Also, i tried testing  the C-lator in front of my amp with all C-lator controls dimed and there was a bit of a boost but nothing overwhelming. Is there a way to mod the C-lator to get some more boost, or perhaps have i made an error in the build?

Update:  Yesterday i left the c-lator powered up for about 6 hours and when i came back it was behaving totally different. No matter what i did it was acting like an overdrive distortion box. So, i figured maybe my tube went bad and i swapped it out for a groove tube 7025 that was laying around and still the C-lator was giving me the overdriven distortion sound. At this point i was pretty much baffled so i started trying different configurations and finally decided to remove the LPB-1 booster and lo and behold, the C-lator is now working perfectly. I have lots of headroom, lots of volume out of the amp, and noise level is quite low. I am now able to use my Ibanez SDR1000 in the loop and it sounds awesome. I still have no idea how i arrived at this point, perhaps i had a bad patch cord or something, but hopefully it stays working this way. :)