Lost amp designer in Phoenix. (well he might not actually be lost)

[fauxsuper]

About 7 years ago I purchased an amp from a man named Louis in the Phoenix area. It was loosly based on a tweed Deluxe and he put it in a little bare-wood cabinet with a round opening in front for the speaker. (The cabinet got damaged in transport and now the amp is housed in the back of an open-backed Lopo cab housing a Mojotone 12".) It is all point-to-point (no tag board) and I paid around $600 for it. People often marvel at this amp and one bandleader I know told me he wanted me to bring "that amp" when he invited me to come sit in with them.

I've now come to appreciate just how cool this amp is, and I wonder what this guy is doing now. There are some unique features involved, and they are:

It will seemingly run on virtually any output tube you put in the the thing that will fit in the tube sockets: I've had good luck with 6v6's and 6L6's, but I mostly run EL-34's in it. It does get a little warm, but I've used it for over 6 years without trouble. It seems to make a little more power (certainly more headroom) with the bigger bottles, and I'm thinking it puts out maybe 25 watts.

There's no tone control but there is a knob that seemingly voices the amp like a Marshall if you turn it to the right, or a more "tweed" type of tone if rotated to the left (running into a Mojo 12" alnico greatly adds to this sound). Last night, running my 52 goldtop into it through a couple of Eminence "Texas Heats" (one in an open cabinet and the other in a closed back cab) the drummer kept mentioning "Dickie Betts tone". Turning the knob to the center backs off the highs a little, and makes the amp sound a little cleaner. It's a little more flexible than it sounds like, but you can never cut the highs very much, so your guitar has to have a good set of tone controls. People often wonder just how this works, and so do I.

I've A-B's it closely with an actual 56 Deluxe that a friend of mine owns and it was amazingly close with 6v6's inside and turning the knob fully to the left where it sounded quite like the Deluxe with the tone control all the way up. The Deluxe had a little more "complex" harmonic structure and was more ragged on breakup, which happened at a lower level. Either amp will produce a very fuzzed-out sound if pushed far enough, but it happens at a louder limit with the newer amp. The Fender seemed like it wasn't happy (neither was the amp's owner) doing this, but you can do this sort of thing with Louis' amp without damage.

I typically set the volume near full and control things with the guitar's volume control. For guitars with more than one volume control, I typically use an Earnie Ball volume pedal. I also have an Ibanez SD-9 which I use mainly as a boost with the distortion near to being turned off. Again, you can control this with the guitar's volume Control.

The other thing is that the speaker out jack is in series. When I bought the amp, Louis showed me that you could connect all sorts of speakers to it in weird combinations like a 4 ohm 2 x 10" and the 12 ohm speaker in the cab with the amp at the same time. It seems to work just fine and you can get a great number of different sounds this way. I usualy run the two 12" cabs mentioned above. The two speakrs seem to interact differently in series, but in practice it works great. The 12" Mojo alnico and a 15" Eminence Legend with a ceramic magnet have a great sound together.

It's final quirk is that there is no "off" position, you plug it in and there is a switch which flips it off standby. There are two pilot lights, one for standby and one for on. I get around this by using a power strip with an on/off switch.

To get to the point, I've lost contact with Louis, and wonder if any of you in that area know who he is and if he's still making amps. Ring any bells with anyone??

[Wally]

I can't help you with anything other than I have heard of 'Louis'. I had a customer who had bought a very reasonably priced Tweed Champ clone from him. I told my customer at the time that if Louis was trying to make a living out of building amps he was not valuing his work very well. I figured he was a 'hobby' builder....obviously he knows what he is doing but I don't think $600 for an amp like you have will keep someone alive and in the amp building business. I hope you find him.

[Wally]

A second thought....that mystery knob is interesting. Could it be a damping control? Does the sound get looser in one direction and tighter in the other?
If not, it could be a presence or a negative feedback control. A good tech could suss it out for you.

[skeksis]

sorry, haven't heard of louis; s'pose you could post on the local craigslist as there's a ton of traffic (with a few gearheads) that might have some tips. good luck.

[fauxsuper]

Originally Posted by Wally

A second thought....that mystery knob is interesting. Could it be a damping control? Does the sound get looser in one direction and tighter in the other?
If not, it could be a presence or a negative feedback control. A good tech could suss it out for you.

I've had a couple guiys inside it, out of curiosity, and nobody quite figures it out. They wonder why it gets brighter in different fashion, depending on the direction. When it's dead center, the control is at it's "dullest" (for lack of a better word) and takes on the different characters, depending on right or left.

What seems to fox them is that there are only two pre-amp tubes involved and the signal doesn't seem to go anywhere that would make that large a difference.

It's been several years and the explanations went beyond me real fast.

At any rate, I've got an amp on order from Jim Freznel for one of his amps that would seem to offer some of this amps abilities (to run on different output tubes and both Fender and Marshall voicing) with about the same output. It sounds like it will be a little more flexible. If it can produce a good simulation of a Tweed Twin or a Bluesbreaker, (Like the Louis amp can) at a lower volume, I'll be ecstatic.

I'm convinced that the level of output these smaller amps have is in just the right range for most uses I have. 15 to 18 watt amps seem to be unable to produce a clean signal in some situations (jams, playing with a loud drummer)where the 25 to 30 watt amps can stil produce a fairly clean signal.

I used to use an A-B switch to switch between a 40 watt Fender for clean and then a Deluxe reverb for leads. This worked well, but you get tired of having to use two amps all the time, and lug them around.

[PRNDL]

>> There's no tone control but there is a knob that seemingly voices the amp like a Marshall if you turn it to the right, or a more "tweed" type of tone if rotated to the left

I'd love to see the chassis up close.
Any chance you can send a photo?

[RodeoTex]

Some rainy afternoon you should sketch out the schematic. I bet Johnny Crash and a few others here could answer your questions.

[JohnnyCrash]

Originally Posted by PRNDL

>> There's no tone control but there is a knob that seemingly voices the amp like a Marshall if you turn it to the right, or a more "tweed" type of tone if rotated to the left

I'd love to see the chassis up close.
Any chance you can send a photo?

Yes! +1

It would be interesting to see this control. Photos extremely welcome :)

The guys here would figure out what the knob does and probably describe it in layman's terms. Lord knows they spoonfed technical amp stuff to me - and that musta been hard for these guys to distill into language a bonehead like me could understand :)

[fauxsuper]

I'm going to make a good faith effort to contact Louis, as the amp is his design and who knows what he's doing with it. If I cannot do that, I'll will take a couple photos of the inside of this thing and post them.

It's become a part of my signature to a degree, and I do worry about anything happening to it, as I've never heard anything else quite like it. I've got more compliments about the tone coming out of it than any amp i've ever owned. I have an Ibanez AS-100 that just clicks with this thing straight into the amp. With the Fender style guitars, a pedal is needed to really drive it into sustaining distortion.

[getbent]

Originally Posted by PRNDL

>> There's no tone control but there is a knob that seemingly voices the amp like a Marshall if you turn it to the right, or a more "tweed" type of tone if rotated to the left

The Tone King Imperial that Mark Bartel builds has a knob that as you turn it the amp goes from tweed deluxe to marshall territory... it is pretty awesome and very dramatic.

[Mike Simpson]

I can ask around... I know a few guys that been messing with amps for a long time... It might be a while before I run into all of them. Did he frequent any clubs or follow a particular style of music? (blues, country etc...)

[keiths]

I know it is a long shot but is it this guy?

http://www.louisamps.com/

I would be interested in seeing pics as well. I dabble in the black art of amp mojo!

[Poppatwang]

Try a post here
http://www.ppwatt.com/forum
Lots of amp junkies there.