212Mavguy
Well-known member
Well, they arrived! Have not yet stuck a tube into the c-lator and run it hooked up to the amp, but did have a chance to tube-u-late and fire up the Hot Rubber Monkey unit. WOOOOOOOEEEEEE!!
What floored me was not the type of tone that I hear on the youtube demos, I got that right off the bat through my 16 ohm semi closed back 2/12 filled with JBL G125's, but rather, the variety of tones available in that amp. That was the biggest surprise. Never have experienced anything quite like it. Much more than the classic Dumble-y tones you keep repetitively experiencing within the youtube herd of posted clips. The pull bright, mid boost, and bass boost toggles all worked in addition to a well balanced tone stack. The footswitch has two buttons, one for the OD channel and one for pre amp boost, which removes the TMB tone stack for boosted raw guitar tones. That gives four basic voicings for each side of the rock/jazz toggle. The boosted cleans and OD's are louder, and most of the smooth OD tones you hear on youtube clips come from boosted OD settings with relatively low gain on the OD and OD trim knobs. I have not yet opened up the guts yet to try to adjust the TMB OD channel tone stack trimmers, and will do that after some more tube rolling. There is a PI trimmer inside to adjust balance of PI sides, but will leave that alone for now.
Stuck in a pair of vintage GE grayplate 6l6gc's to start with for the power tubes, they dropped right in and biased right into the heart of the recommended zone without having to touch the bias pot. It is built ready to handle el34's or kt66's with a drop in and rebiasing for the Brit voices. Have some Siemens and vintage Tesla el34 pairs as well as Genelex kt66's for a later date. The next day I changed out the GE 6l6's for a pair of vintage Sylvania 6l6gc's that biased within a half mv of each other at 38mv. Dumble favored that tube for many of his amp builds.
Stuck in a Telefunken NOS testing smooth plate 12ax7 in v1 and a balanced one in the PI slot, and sandwiched a Philips/Blackburn made 12ax7a/7025a shortplate 12ax7 in V2 for now. Wanted warm, compressed, smooth, sustain-y tones and got 'em with that pre recipe. Got everyting from a very blackface Fender-y sound up to a snarling, very Marshall-y vibe on the rock setting of the rock/jazz voicing switch, then for giggles pulled out my trans orange Gretsch-y H516 with bigsby and TV Jones-ers. Through many tube amps that hollow body guitar had a rather percussive, thumpy pick attack, but when I stuck that switch in the Jazz position, I was flabbergasted at how beautiful that instrument sounded, as a matter of fact I did drool on the guitar before I realized what I had done, and just sort of sat there and grinned like the guy sitting in the chair on the cover of Steely Dan's "Countdown To Ecstacy" vinyl.
Yep, I have Virtuoso products for de-drooling...
Each guitar sounds like that guitar, each has a gorgeous voice. My Heritage Millies and 555 sounded if not absolutely "better" than definitely more versatile than they have ever sounded through any of my other amps. I can't post clips, but from the viewpoint of having around a dozen tube amps in my stable this amp cops more tones with more adroitness than anything I have ever come across, and those tones are pretty **** amazing sounding, and don't have to crank it up loud to get it sounding good either. Easy to balance volume between clean and OD modes. I think that this is a truly valuable home playing, studio or stage asset to have, even for jazzboxes. Boutique amp for boutique guitars!
C-lator? Well, I ordered it like the amp, without tube(s) in it. Guess Nik forgot, for a brand new JJ ecc83s was inside it. So I removed it and stuck in a Telefunken ribbed plate 12ax7 that was balanced within about 10% and fairly strong, for the unique 'Funken compression and control of harmonics that the smooth plate provides, but a bit more top end glass in the tone endemic to the ribbed plate unit.
Since I got the amp brand spanking new a few nights ago, I wanted to burn things in for the circuit to open up and express more freely, so I left it on all night for the last two nights, last night with the c-lator connected and running too, and the results were plainly apparent when I turned it on tonight to jam along with the comcast blues channel following a beer, bath, and blues session... It blooms like a rose blossom that knows that it's the one special day for it to open, glow with color, and attract the local honeybees... YAY!
I went back to the Ceriatone site and RTFM for the C-lator before plugging into my 555 to better glean what was designed for me to do with it. I think that it is the secret weapon for the Dumble sauce. It allows smooth, musical harmonic content along with increased sustain for a given amount of gain settings on the amp's gain and tone settings. Tonight my 555 spoke to me in ways that it never had before, had a voice like an opera singer. Can't say it any better, so time to stop now.
What floored me was not the type of tone that I hear on the youtube demos, I got that right off the bat through my 16 ohm semi closed back 2/12 filled with JBL G125's, but rather, the variety of tones available in that amp. That was the biggest surprise. Never have experienced anything quite like it. Much more than the classic Dumble-y tones you keep repetitively experiencing within the youtube herd of posted clips. The pull bright, mid boost, and bass boost toggles all worked in addition to a well balanced tone stack. The footswitch has two buttons, one for the OD channel and one for pre amp boost, which removes the TMB tone stack for boosted raw guitar tones. That gives four basic voicings for each side of the rock/jazz toggle. The boosted cleans and OD's are louder, and most of the smooth OD tones you hear on youtube clips come from boosted OD settings with relatively low gain on the OD and OD trim knobs. I have not yet opened up the guts yet to try to adjust the TMB OD channel tone stack trimmers, and will do that after some more tube rolling. There is a PI trimmer inside to adjust balance of PI sides, but will leave that alone for now.
Stuck in a pair of vintage GE grayplate 6l6gc's to start with for the power tubes, they dropped right in and biased right into the heart of the recommended zone without having to touch the bias pot. It is built ready to handle el34's or kt66's with a drop in and rebiasing for the Brit voices. Have some Siemens and vintage Tesla el34 pairs as well as Genelex kt66's for a later date. The next day I changed out the GE 6l6's for a pair of vintage Sylvania 6l6gc's that biased within a half mv of each other at 38mv. Dumble favored that tube for many of his amp builds.
Stuck in a Telefunken NOS testing smooth plate 12ax7 in v1 and a balanced one in the PI slot, and sandwiched a Philips/Blackburn made 12ax7a/7025a shortplate 12ax7 in V2 for now. Wanted warm, compressed, smooth, sustain-y tones and got 'em with that pre recipe. Got everyting from a very blackface Fender-y sound up to a snarling, very Marshall-y vibe on the rock setting of the rock/jazz voicing switch, then for giggles pulled out my trans orange Gretsch-y H516 with bigsby and TV Jones-ers. Through many tube amps that hollow body guitar had a rather percussive, thumpy pick attack, but when I stuck that switch in the Jazz position, I was flabbergasted at how beautiful that instrument sounded, as a matter of fact I did drool on the guitar before I realized what I had done, and just sort of sat there and grinned like the guy sitting in the chair on the cover of Steely Dan's "Countdown To Ecstacy" vinyl.
Yep, I have Virtuoso products for de-drooling...
Each guitar sounds like that guitar, each has a gorgeous voice. My Heritage Millies and 555 sounded if not absolutely "better" than definitely more versatile than they have ever sounded through any of my other amps. I can't post clips, but from the viewpoint of having around a dozen tube amps in my stable this amp cops more tones with more adroitness than anything I have ever come across, and those tones are pretty **** amazing sounding, and don't have to crank it up loud to get it sounding good either. Easy to balance volume between clean and OD modes. I think that this is a truly valuable home playing, studio or stage asset to have, even for jazzboxes. Boutique amp for boutique guitars!
C-lator? Well, I ordered it like the amp, without tube(s) in it. Guess Nik forgot, for a brand new JJ ecc83s was inside it. So I removed it and stuck in a Telefunken ribbed plate 12ax7 that was balanced within about 10% and fairly strong, for the unique 'Funken compression and control of harmonics that the smooth plate provides, but a bit more top end glass in the tone endemic to the ribbed plate unit.
Since I got the amp brand spanking new a few nights ago, I wanted to burn things in for the circuit to open up and express more freely, so I left it on all night for the last two nights, last night with the c-lator connected and running too, and the results were plainly apparent when I turned it on tonight to jam along with the comcast blues channel following a beer, bath, and blues session... It blooms like a rose blossom that knows that it's the one special day for it to open, glow with color, and attract the local honeybees... YAY!
I went back to the Ceriatone site and RTFM for the C-lator before plugging into my 555 to better glean what was designed for me to do with it. I think that it is the secret weapon for the Dumble sauce. It allows smooth, musical harmonic content along with increased sustain for a given amount of gain settings on the amp's gain and tone settings. Tonight my 555 spoke to me in ways that it never had before, had a voice like an opera singer. Can't say it any better, so time to stop now.
