HTH AMPS, 5w class A tube head, Van Halen 'Unchained' (high gain 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 trusty road-worn 1990 Les Paul standard loaded with BKP Abraxas pickups.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• HTH
• tube
• 6V6
• 6V6GT
• 6V6GTA
• EVH
• class A
• unchained
• van halen
• BKP
• bare knuckle pickups
• abraxas
• Epi VJ
• valve junior
• hammond 125ESE
• point to point
• ptp
• hand wired
• VHI

[UKToneKing]

I been watching loads of your vids bud, U are an A+ player man, Your really good with that slide too, I suck at that lol would U say a glass slide is better for electric guitar ? some say they are, and steal for acoustic, Jeff Beck uses that method also,

[TeleCustom72]

@UKToneKing: cheers pal, glad you dig the playing - much appreciated (you should come and see Scandal play). For electric, I use a light 1" chrome slide - with an electric set up for normal playing you don't want a very heavy slide or you'll have trouble controlling it. However, if you put heavier strings on and have the action higher, then anything goes - in this scenario, I do prefer a heavy glass slide (warmer tone) or a brass one (more attack).

[nitrousn2o]

Great gain! is this the Plexi SE PCB? What speakers are you playing through?

[TeleCustom72]

@nitrousn2o: this amp is PTP wired, no PCBs in this amp. also, the design is not a Marshall-esque type or a copy of the Plexi SE or anything else. its loosely based around a Trainwreck preamp, but with an extra gain stage added to make up for the loss of the phase inverter gain (since single ended amps have no PI). Cheers, Ian

[nitrousn2o]

@TeleCustom72 It's got a great rawness to it that my Plexi SE with 2 12AX7s and 1 6CA7 doesn't exactly get. I've also got 2 modes, 1 for "vintage" plexi and 1 for cascaded high-gain. Both sound great but I would love to have a little PTP monster like this too. Great amp!

[TeleCustom72]

@nitrousn2o: if you're using current-production 6CA7s, then you're fighting a losing battle - either get NOS ones, or use EL34s for more bite. Also, this amp doesn't use a cathode follower anywhere, so changing your tonestack feed from the plate of the stage rather than the cathode will give you more gain and 'spit' - course you'll need to work on the circuit a little to make this work - good luck. Cheers, Ian (HTH AMPS)

[jamemusical]

great ,sounds awesome .

[manleftfields]

Great sound man!:)

[TeleCustom72]

yep, just recorded with my digital camera so the quality isn't amazing, but you should still get a good idea of how the amp sounds.

not 100% sure on the chord voicings on RWTD, I learnt both of the VH songs here in 15 mins - they sound close enough for demo purposes.

[lidesnowi]

How did you recorded it ?

(sounds like you used a camera mick!)

Still i can imagine it would sound great if it was correctly miked up whit a Sm57 or two!

Interesting chord voicings on RWTD!