If you take a glance across my blog topics on this site, it may become clear that I am building a small collection of unusual musical instruments and equipment. This will all be used to realize my musical vision, through live performance, and particularly through recordings. Guitar has always been my "main" instrument, and electric guitar will figure prominently in the new sonic mix I am seeking to create. Up until recently, however, my designing and building efforts have been aimed elsewhere, particularly towards finishing my Pandalon. Consequently, I've been making do with less-than-ideal guitar sounds, produced with the help of DSP gadgets and whatever old tube amps I have laying around. It has always been my intention to remedy this situation, and at last the time seems to be right.
In the past, I have obtained good results by assembling guitar systems out of various rebuilt and re-purposed vintage tube gear. My most recent system (as of about 2000!) involved a homebrewed 2 x 12AX7 preamp, feeding DSP digital reverb/effects, into a 4 x EL84 hi-fi amp (Eico HF-32) and 12" closed-box speaker. Tone was not entirely unlike the Vox AC-30, although cleaner from the power amp given negative feedback and the closed speaker -- and dirtier overall thanks to my preamp, because I love distorted and overdriven tones.
As I started to sketch out the outlines of a new guitar system, I soon realized that I want to design and build from scratch this time. Given that decision, I realized that whatever I come up with, may be of interest to other builder-musicians. Hence, this blog! Enjoy...
Please note, some of the circuits I will present are my own design entirely (I'm proud to say), but others are either copied verbatim, or derived or adapted, from well-known circuits available publically on the Internet, from companies such as Fender, Marshall, and others. In many cases, these circuits were probably originally patented. The patents may well have expired by now; and in any case, I consider reverse-engineering or copying circuits for personal use, to be "fair use", and the same would apply to any reader of this blog who wishes to replicate my work for themselves. However: if anyone (possibly including me in the future) wants to build amps based on this work, to sell to the public, then I simply warn that a closer look should be taken at possible legal problems with any of the copied circuits. Caveat Venditor!
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