HTH AMP, 5w class A tube head, Led Zep clip with Tele (low gain vintage mode)

This amp started life as a Epiphone Valve Junior, but the owner wanted something more versatile with higher gain that would get him in the ballpark of the early Van Halen albums.

I stripped the amp down and completely rebuilt the amp using point to point wiring. The original Epiphone mains transformer was kept and used in the final amp as it was fine for the job, however the stock output transformer wasn't up to much and was replaced with a Hammond 125ESE.

The stock tube compliment of a single 12AX7 and EL84 was not going to get the amp into high gain territory, so I added extra holes in the chassis to run two 12AX7s and a 6V6 so the amp had a thicker overall tone.

The front panel has been kept quite simple with only gain, treble, middle, bass and master volume. The back panel has a switch to select either high or low gain modes. The high gain mode will do everything from Van Halen through Black Sabbath and even Slayer, while the low gain mode is more 'plexi' in nature and is more at home with classic rock like AC/DC, Led Zep and ZZ Top.

This is a real plug-in-and-play amp that you'd be hard pushed to get a bad sound out of. The cleans are nice, but there is no real headroom to speak of with humbuckers - you need single coils to get any kind of clean tone going. However, clean was never on the cards for this amp - its all about overdriven tones.

The valves used in this amp are:
V1 = Mullard ECC83/12AX7
V2 = RCA 7025
V3 = Brimar 6V6GT

The amp is very responsive to tube selection, so you have the opportunity to tweak the tone further using your favourite tubes. I tried a modern JJ 6V6 and the tone was brighter and less compressed which some people may like - closer to a 6L6 type of tone. Speaking of which, this amp could easily run a 6L6 with an adjustment to the bias, however a 10w amp is overkill for a bedroom amp (some may say 5w is too, but its all about the tone).

Hope you enjoy this - I used my 72 Tele Custom reissue loaded with a Shed Pickups Esquire bridge pickup (hoping that Santa will bring the matching neck pickup and a new scratchplate).

Category:

Music

Tags:

• HTH tube 6V6 6V6GT 6V6GTA EVH
• Led Zeppelin
• Led Zep
• Jimmy Page
• Tele
• Telecaster
• Shed Pickups
• Esquire
• Broadcaster

[diceman220]

Nice playing. How cool is that? REAL SICK What speakers are you using? THX

[TeleCustom72]

@diceman220 Speakers are old Celestion G12H-30s with bass cones (the 55Hz version of the speaker). they're creamback ones from 1973, yep, they're sweet alright.

[AlienSexDog]

Shed Up Guys!!!!

[TeleCustom72]

yep, it's a Shed Pickups Esquire bridge pickup in the Tele I'm using in this clip - it is awesome!!!

[fretboarder]

sounds very good..