18watt x 18watt = stereo?

[carl44]

Building my 1st, an 18 watt trem or tmb not sure yet. Not doing a kit so I'm gathering all my parts and will fabricate a chassis to suit. My question is down the road I'd like to add 2 more EL84's with their own output transformer for a total of 36 watts, in stereo. Not like the usual 36 watt layout. Is this possible or even desirable? If someone could define "stereo" lol. Thanks for doing this site guys, amazing wealth of info

[JMPGuitars]

Hi, welcome to the site!

Building a stereo amp is a little tricky, but not impossible. However you decide to take on that mission, noise will certainly be an issue if you try to do it all in a single chassis.

I would suggest looking in our download section at the different options we have to start with and decide what you really want... Do you want the tone control of the TMB? Will you actually use a tremolo? Do you want both?

There's different ways you can go about doing this, but no matter what you do, if you plan on fabricating your own chassis, I would suggest designing something that fully encloses the circuit before it's installed in a cabinet.

Planning ahead is always the most important thing. If you do decide to build a split signal stereo amp, planning will be even more essential.

[carl44]

Thanks for the reply and advice. You are right, I'm doing a TMB first. My second I believe I'll do stereo. Is there a website you could point me to that goes through a few approaches to stereo set ups?

[carl44]

Ok I found Marshall used two 50 watt OT's on their early run of JTM100's simply because 100 watters were unavailable. A schematic is rare I'll bet...

[JMPGuitars]

Thanks for the reply and advice. You are right, I'm doing a TMB first. My second I believe I'll do stereo. Is there a website you could point me to that goes through a few approaches to stereo set ups?

If you're going for a TMB, take a look at the Superlite TMB and see what you think. That's one of my favorites. What people here have done is mostly used ABY type boxes for a stereo setup. If it was me personally considering what you are, I might ABY a Superlite TMB and an EF86 Lite. That's a personal taste thing though, you need to do some research and listen to some samples and such. If you're going to make a true stereo amp, that would have to be done differently anyway since the EF86 is in the first preamp stage.

Part of the problem is that the magic of these amps is in the simplicity of the circuits. If you over complicate the circuits, you risk gambling away the tone that makes the amps special. I'm not trying to dissuade you by any means, only want you to be aware of the whole picture.

I haven't looked into stereo much, but you can check the links on the left column here, ppwatt.com might have some discussion somewhere along those lines. Remember what I said about noise and isolation though. Manufacturing your own chassis set can give you an advantage if you do it right.

[carl44]

Yes I've been checking out almost all the different configurations, wow. I'm totally hooked on the sound of the 18 watts and it's only been abt 3 months so I am most likely going to build several. I'm retired so I've got all day in the man cave. Thanks for the advice and I'm sure I'll be asking a ton more. ps those are some sharp lookin guitars you build sir.

[JMPGuitars]

Yes I've been checking out almost all the different configurations, wow. I'm totally hooked on the sound of the 18 watts and it's only been abt 3 months so I am most likely going to build several. I'm retired so I've got all day in the man cave. Thanks for the advice and I'm sure I'll be asking a ton more. ps those are some sharp lookin guitars you build sir.

Thanks! If time permits, I might be doing a handful of 25th Anniversary models pretty soon (2019/2020).

I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun building the amps. Be patient and careful.