5E3 with 10" Alnico

Easter stat holiday here today, so I have time to enjoy a morning coffee while reading through my favorite corner of the internet. I really enjoy reading and talking about our home brew amps.

For the past 2 months, I have been waiting for my trannies to come in for my 5F2A project. I have the 5f2a tweed cabinet, so I mounted a 10A100 Weber in there. To try it out, I ran a longer speaker wire and plugged it into my 5E3 clone. I've been playing it regularly that way, for about 2 months or so. I really, like it. The 10" sounds very different than the 12" ceramic C12N I have mounted in my 5E3 cabinet. The 10" puts out considerably less volume it seems. It allows me to turn the 5E3 volume to any position without the huge volume the 12" puts out. I play at home a lot in the basement with my family upstairs so less volume is nice. With the 10" speaker, I fiddle with the 3 pots and dial in lots of sounds, for hours, and not irritate everyone or my own ears. I really notice the 10A100 compressing. It seems to compress more than the 12". The 10" seems to also handle the low end frequencies very well. I don't notice much difference there between to 10 or 12 regarding low frequencies. With my guitar straight in, I actually find it too bassy for the neck position on my strat. I try to dial down some bass if I can.

Overall the 10" just sounds great! Less volume, plenty of compression, maybe slightly less clean room. I happen to love dirt and prefer it, so it suits me fine. Rolling off a nice heavy, thick, dirty, E chord through this set up just make me melt.

It's got me wondering how far is the is the 5E3 from the tweed harvard circuit?

Hmm...Maybe a tweed Harvard clone would fit nicely in between my 5E3 and 5F2A on the floor in my man cave?

Check out Grab This Thing from The Great Memphis Sound of the Mar-Keys. It's on iTunes. I still have the album I bought in 1965. That's Cropper with the tweed Harvard, one of his best solos ever. Compare that to your 5E3 with a vintage style Tele. IMO, no difference assuming the pickups and speaker are close. That's what I'm getting with mine.

Compare a 6G10 schematic to a 5E3, and you'll see a lot of similarities. Like they could have started out with the 5E3 design and said, "Let's make a one channel version of this with one 6V6 instead of two."

I'm running a 10" Celestion Gold in my 5E3 and it sounds fantastic, this is the closest I've had a clone sound to a great original 5E3 out of many clones (in fact, it sounds good enough that I am selling my 65 Lil Elvis)... I've tried all kinds of parts combinations throughout nearly 50 5E3 builds and speaker choice is a big factor in an amps tone.

Compare a 6G10 schematic to a 5E3, and you'll see a lot of similarities. Like they could have started out with the 5E3 design and said, "Let's make a one channel version of this with one 6V6 instead of two."

The 6G10 is technically just a tweed Princeton that was left over after they came out with the brown 6G2 Princeton...which technically should have been the new Harvard IMHO. I think the 6G10 Harvards even have a P prefix in the stamped chassis serial number because they were Princeton chassis.

To the best of my knowledge, Cropper used the 5G10 Harvard which is more or less a single channel, fixed bias, tweed Deluxe. I had one and they do great cleans and edge of crunch tones. I don't recall what the original speaker in it was, but it was a 10" alnico.

Overall the 10" just sounds great! Less volume, plenty of compression, maybe slightly less clean room. I happen to love dirt and prefer it, so it suits me fine. Rolling off a nice heavy, thick, dirty, E chord through this set up just make me melt.

There are a lot of "junk" 12" vintage alnicos that do the "Poor Man's Attenuator" trick. Vintage Rola twelves for instance. I keepin' quiet about my absolute favorite "junk" 12" alnico. I get 'em cheap and I like 'em better than vitnage Jensens. :twisted:

It's got me wondering how far is the is the 5E3 from the tweed Harvard circuit??

Want to know what a tweed Harvard sounds like? Stick a 5751 in your Deluxe. A Harvard is like one channel of a tweed Deluxe with more gain. The Harvard is fixed bias which makes for a sharper attack.

Hmm...Maybe a tweed Harvard clone would fit nicely in between my 5E3 and 5F2A on the floor in my man cave?

How 'bout this...

A tweed Princeton is a little amp in a big cabinet. It's not a whole lot smaller than a tweed Deluxe. Gets me to thinkin'... why not change the cutout in a tweed Deluxe cabinet and stick a Princeton in there? It makes a lot more sense to me than a tweed Champ in a Deluxe cabinet (Victoria 5112). A Champ in a Deluxe cabinet just looks weird.

MuchXS, interesting what you say about putting a tweed Princeton 5F2A in a Deluxe cabinet. I have both and I was just measuring the chassis cut outs on both today. Yes you are right the Princeton and the Deluxe are not that far apart. Here they both are:


https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-XA93McEwzpc/Tz1rDOU-6CI/AAAAAAAAAzM/JT_O2d10QKI/s800/IMGP2650.JPG

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-qP2mwOXiY3E/Tz1rC7xKp3I/AAAAAAAAAzI/iIawXoOkkYw/s800/IMGP2649.JPG

I'm running a alnico ten in my 5E3 using a Mojotone baffle adapter. Lowers the headroom and tightens up the bass tremendously. Great for home/recording use. I'd take the 5E3 circuit over the Harvard any day. In addition to cathode bias on the 5E3 I think there are some differences in the preamp.