![$vboptions[bbtitle]](../../gifs/tdpr-headTRANS.gif)
fauxsuper
December 12th, 2007, 12:50 PM
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??
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??