Ceriatone 5E3 - opinions, reviews, alternatives?

[nokaster]

been thinking about a 5E3 for some time now...
ceriatone seems to be the best deal $-wise.
i've been mailen nik @ ceriatone and he's really helpfull.

so if anyone has one, has played one... i'd like to hear some opinions and reviews.
maybe someone knows about better alternatives? (same dollars...)

thx!

 

[icd]

I recently completed building one. I asked Nik for no pre-assembly, as I wanted it to be "all my own work". I don't have any other 5E3 to compare it to so cannot vouch for it's accuracy as a clone. Compared to my other amps, it seems to have the right amount of 5E3 crunch - I have an Eminence Cannabis Rex 12" in the combo.

As a kit, you are pretty much on your own, which is what I wanted, you get the layout and thats it. But I am sure that if I had hit problems Nik would have been happy to help. As usual, the most difficult thing I found was the tolexing - I hate tolexing!.

 

[tjalla]

A good sounding amp, I had one briefly in a pine cab/Jensen RI P12N, and I do regret selling it.

 

[bmcmusic]

Ceriatone 5E3

I built a ceriatone 5E3. Nik provides good quality parts and the build is very easy. My only problem with the 5E3 design is for me it lacks clean head room. The volume ramps up real fast. the interactive volumes were kinda cool but every 5E3 tweed sounded a little dark and mushy to me. Personal opinion. I modded mine with separate volume for each channel and the Paul C mod to the phase inverter. No problem with the kit though, it did exactly what it is supposed to do. I found I needed a little more modern sound.

Bob mcmusicsound.com

 

[nokaster]

more opinions on the ceriatone 5E3 are more than welcome!!!

 

[stvnscott]

I can't say that I've played a Ceriatone 5E3, but I've played many other clones. What I can say about Nik at Ceriatone is he is a class act who makes great products.

Your best bang for the buck if you in the USA is from Richter or Little Dawg. They both make excellent tweed clones at silly low prices.

IMHO, the stock 5E3 is a little dark, muddy, farty, fuzzy. So I modded the preamp to fix those "problems." The details are here:

(link removed)

 

[macheesmo3]

I have a Ceriatone 5E3 and it sounds great . I just keep fiddling around with what speakers to put in a 2x12 cab to go with it ( mine is in head form ) .

have lately been thinking of a combination of one Alnico ( weber 12a125 ) and one ceramic ( eminence cannabis rex) for total tonal variety and a tad more headroom without giving up that yummy alnico sound ......

 

[JohnnyCrash]

What I can say about Nik at Ceriatone is he is a class act who makes great products.

I have similar positive experiences with Nik. He's a great guy to buy from.

Your best bang for the buck if you in the USA is from Richter or Little Dawg. They both make excellent tweed clones at silly low prices.

It looks like nokaster is in Belgium.

It is a good idea to check those guys out too though. They may be able to ship cheaply as well as use power transformers that will work on European AC voltages.

 

[RomanS]

nokaster,
Dirk, the onwer of www.tubetown.de is currently organising a group-order of amps from Ceriatone - that should bring shipping costs down a bit. I#m sure they wouldn't mind including someone from Belgium, and while their forum is in German, I'm sure they'll answer in English, too - but if you want to get on board, hurry up, sicne the deadline was today (though i'm not sure whether the didn't extend it). Here's the link to the relevant thread:

http://www.tube-town.de/ttforum/index.php?topic=6427.0