Fame Tonmeister

Hallo, I purcased a Fame Tonmeister from Musicstore (Eurozone) in June and wanted to share opinion with other owners (are there any?).

The amp is a mix between a head and a combo, since it has a small 6 inch (jensen) speacker. Controls are just tone and volume.
It is a class a tube amp with 2x12ax7 and 2xel84 that gives around 15 watts and it's made by Yerasow for Musicstore's amp brand.

At first I thought it was just the head version of the Fame 15GTA, but the board looks different from the pics I saw here.
I did not traced it, but I believe it is not a copy of the Pro Junior: I am pretty shure it has no negative feedback, and it's missing the conjunctive filter on the output that the Pro Junior has.

Soundwise it is good (expecially for the price) and I am satisfied. I use a 12ay7 as first tube and a 12at7 for the rectifier tube: that's because stock it tends to distort quite early (volume at 3), and I whanted to raise a little the clean volume available (now it crunches at noon).
The amp is a little bit hissy, at home it is quite noticeable, at reharshals anyway that's not a problem (the pa or the bass amp can be worst) since the hiss level is fixed and does not increase when you increase the volume.

I own a VHT special 6 head too, and at home I use always this (more silent, less power, great sound) the Tonmeister is too loud for home use, so the "bonus" speacker gets rarely used.

Ok, so it seems that tonmeister owners are scarce, or shy: on musicstore the amp is backordered tough...

Today I tried a tube swap (another :mrgreen:); this time I put the my 12ay7 as phase inverter and the original jj 12ax7 on the first position. I will report, if someone is interested, after I test this tube arrangement with my band.

By the way, since I opened the amp (a necessary operation in order to change tubes) I post a pic of the amp guts.

Hallo, I found some info on the tubemeister on a german forum: http://www.musiker-board.de/verstaerker-boxen-e-git/455284-fame-tonmeister-15-erfahrungen.html
I had to use google translator and the results were quite strange, anyway a guy showed up in the tread and said that the tubemeister is inspired from the marshall 18W amp: ok now I understand it better and everithing makes more sense.

Tube right now are a 12at7 as first tube and a 12ax7 as phase inverter.

Thanks for this. Been looking for some info on it.
Gonna get one, I think.


Any further thoughts on it?

Hallo.
Well, I am still happy with the amp: I had a gig and it sounded good in a 1x12 semiclosed back cab; I let play the amp to a guitarist from another band and he said it really loved it (I was in the crowd wile they were playing and I can say that the sound was good).

The only problem is that it crunches very early, so right now I have a 12at7 as tube one, and a 12ay7 as phase inverter in order to have a little more clean volume. But swapping tubes is just an addiction for me:lol: so maybe I just should start playing more with my volume knob.

The speaker is really just a bonus (I would have preferred a small discount instead) because at home you can't go higher that 2 on volume (and one is loud too). The cab is so small that as soon you wind up too much the volume you will have microphonic problems from the tubes.

The quality - price livel is really good anyway.
Before this I tried other amps in this power range: night train, tiny terror, laney lc15, galileo 15... I am happy because I saved some money, the amp is well made and the sound is a good.

Ok in the end I think I will settle to two 12at7 in the preamp and phase inverter section: maybe I got a faulty 12ay7, or maybe the amp is not designed for this kind of low gain tubes (a 12au7 I tried in position of v1 and v2 gave a strange sort of feedback with the volume at three), but as soon as you play with some volume, and hit the amp with an overdrive, I experienced an annoyng high buzzy sound.
It seems that the 12ay7 boosts too much highs...
With the 12at7 the gain gets a little bit tamed, and the highs too (but not too much or in a bad way).

A small update and a small mod tip for who owns one of this tonemeistersz.

recently I came back to a 12ay7 phase inverter, and noticed a decrease in hiss level; I tried to put a 12ax7 there and the hiss was a lot more, regardless of the volume: the hiss was there even with the volume at zero.

So I thought that the source of the hiss was the PI and I tried to trace that part of the circuit but... I am not so good at it sadly; anyway comparing the values of the components with the yerasov-fame gta-15 schematic you can find on the web I found they are quite the same (except I can't understand if there is any negative feedback or not :confused:).

I rised the value of the 47pf cap put between the PI triodes plates; actually I soldered a 1nF 1000V capacitor between pins 6 and 1 of V2 (now I have 1047pF between the plates). The hiss went away almost completely.
I was scared to cut too much treble by doing this, but they seem all right (I use only single coils guitars).
It is an easy mod to do and even faster to undo in case you don't like it.