36 watt mod or trebble booster ? please help

[bonanza2252003]

Hi. I have a 36 watt built by Nik at ceriatone. The problem is I find the amp just a little too dark or lacking presence. When I compare it to my Hand built Matamp .The Mat has more presense and or treble probably because it actually has a presence knob plus reverb and the high end sounds a little brighter and lusher. So what I want to know is should or can I modify the 36 to get a little more high end /presence or will a trebble booster or EQ pedal do the same thing.Just want to brighten it up a bit .Any suggestions.Keep in mind I am totally technically challenged. Am I retarded or has anyone else felt this about the 36er. I also have some high end hearing loss from playing profesionally in th 80's so maybe thats got something to do with it haha. But I can clearly hear the difference between my Matamp and the 36. I'm running it through a 4X12 with G12H's but have two Hellatone V30's on order and am going to swap out two of the g12h's and have two g12h's and two V30's in the cab .So maybe I'll wait till I get the V30's before I try anything else ?Also When I roll the guitar(59 LP reissue) volume back the cleans are sweet and lush and lack nothing its just when dimed .Maybe due to higher compression levels ?

Thanks

[tarzanalog]

It's your speakers.

The V30s will help you immensely.

Preamp tube selection will help as well, i.e. something like the Tung Sol RI ECC803S has a LOT more sparkle in V1 to my ears than the JJs. If you still have the JJ preamp tubes in there... try something else pronto!

A good treble booster (get something like the BYOC Tri-Boost) is a must-have with a 36W IMHO especially when gigging... nothing cuts through a band like an upper-mids missile!

FWIW - I have Nik's EF86 36er and that channel has sparkle to burn. The TMB channel is also fairly bright though, but I'm using an AlNiCo with my Hellatone 30 (when I'm not using the 8x10... I know now why it's billed as a "Lead" cab: the cab itself is a treble booster.)

Good luck with your new speakers!

[bonanza2252003]

does any one else have any advice on the best booster pedal? and by the way thanks for the advice Tarzanalog.

[d95err]

The BYOC Tri-Boost would be a great kit for you to build. It's essentially three boosters in one (Rangemaster, LBP and a clean MOSFET boost). At least one of those should be able to suit your needs. These kits are very easy to build, so I'm sure you could manage.
http://www.buildyourownclone.com/tri.html

Kevin O Connor describes a simple trick in his book "The Ultimate Tone 4". Insert a small cap in series with the signal inside a cable plug. Now you have a bass cutting cable. Very simple to do and you don't have to modify the amp.

[Franky]

I got 2x12 G12H30 and are facing the same problem to get my amp sound bright. I got a lot of input here that V30 and Red Fang would be good choice to improve the brightness of a G12H30. If you read reviews of G12H30 speaker you'll usually hear that they are kind of dark sounding. Their strong side is the creamy tone you can get out of them. Because of these two sides of the speaker a lot of people combine them with brighter sounding ones.

What I did so far is to reduce the bias resistors in the preamp to get more highs out of my circuit. And I tell that did a lot. Now the sound is kind of like nice soft highs wrapped into strong powerfull tone. But I'm not completely where I want to be.
Therefore I almost purchased V30's, but then heard that Red Fangs do improve highs, too, but deliver on top of that a nice alnico compression and more sparkle (don't really know what alnico compression sounds like, but since a lot of people like it I wanna try it, too)
Another thing I did was to increase the power tube and preamp tube's voltages but with bad results. Overall it sounded less bassy but not brighter.
Have you ever tried to bypass your tone circuit? Sometimes that can make the amp sound brighter without loosing punch and bass when turning down the bass and mids while the treble is fired up.

Looking forward to your response, hopefully something is working for you.

[tarzanalog]

Re: the Red Fang...

A GREAT speaker and has the bonus of not being harsh before being broken in unlike the BBQ AlNiCos and the Celestion Blue and Gold speakers. It's a 30W speaker and an 18 won't really push it into it's nice compression range, but a 36er would. Definitely worth a look.

[Backbone]

Hi guys, I am facin the same problem with my 36w from NIK. I have bee playing with my les paul Custom (Paf Pickups) with Bass and Mids on ZERO and treble on 3 o'clock. My cabinet is a closed Back G12H&V30. I would like to have even less bass and Mids with Less Paul.

With strats I just put the bass a little and it's OK.

Do you guys have closed or open cabinets? What do you prefer with Les Paul and 36watt?

[zaphod_phil]

There's a couple of simple things you can do with the circuit to improve the top end presence. One is change the two 8.2k grid resistors on the EL84s to 1.5k ones. EL84s are naturally bright tibes, and this will help more of that brightness come through. Some of the TMBs have a 0.022uF coupling cap between the first and 2nd stage. That's worth changing to 0.01uF. It's also worth reducing the cathode bypass cap of the first preamp stage. Some folks just reduce it to 10uF, which may be OK with a Strat. I prefer 2uF or 1uF in that position.

[Franky]

I'm using a self constructed 2x12 G12H30 cab that can be continiously set up from open back to closed back. It's usually 10 cm / 4 inch opened to get more punch than with a open back while still having the highs that "spread" from the back throughout the room (you don't have to sit right in front of your cab to hear the highs, especially when you practice at lower volume levels).
Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I'm playing a strat.

[Franky]

I changed over phil's advice to use lower coupling capacitor (in my case 5nF = .005uF) and reduced the bipass cab to 2uF.
It's easy and it works nicely. Thanks.

[bonanza2252003]

Hey franky .I think I'll try Phils fix too since you have already tried it .But since I am totally technically illiterate, can you give me a clue or perhaps a picture of your amp to show me where these caps and resistors are that I should change and what Type to use and also where to get them. And thanks everybody you have been a great help. My V 30's should be here tomorrow so I can stick those in as well. Also Just want to mention I mostly use MY LP with PAF's

Thanks Everyone !!!!!!!

[Franky]

First of all, you should wait till you got your new speakers. Since these speakers will change your tone (more highs) you probably gonna like the sound comming from the circuit you already built.

Please post a schematic of your circuit that I can tell you which part on which pin has to be changed.

!!!shortwire your caps with a cable or anything else that works, before you touch them (1kohm, at least one watt resistor would do the job)!!!

[bonanza2252003]

Thanks Franky. I think you are right .I will wait until I put the new speakers in then I'll check it again. Iff I want to still change it after that I'll post a picture .

[bonanza2252003]

Hey franky.I put the V30's in. The highs are better now but still missing that sparkle. My Amp was built by Nik (ceriatone) its the 36 watt not the EF86 but the other one. the layout is on his website iff you want to take a look at it. And tell me what ones you changed.You may have to circle them or describe them in detail as my electronics knowledge is non existent.
Thanks

[Backbone]

Hi Guys I was talking to NIK last night and he advice me on 2 things: Put a 180pf capacitor in volume pot (like the Matchless DC30 schematics) or use another tap from the OT input. I will try the cap first 180pf or 200pf and then I will let you know...

One thing I did also yesterday and with good results was to down a little bit the pole magnets from the first 2 strings and raise a little bit the poles from last 3 strings. It gives more strengh and emphasis to the high frequencies.

[Franky]

Hi,

I already saw some things that can improve your sound. Unfortunately I only found a layout but not a schematic. So please post one. Oh I almost forgot - it would help much to have a picture of your build (layout) so that I can mark the elements that shall be replaced.

Post which 12ax7/ECC83 and which EL84 you're using and which of your channels sounds to fat, too.

[Franky]

I'll give you a short overview of stuff I did to improve highs:

- I removed the input resistor thus getting more definition in highs. (You got 68 kohm)
- Reduced the coupling caps of the first stage
(18 Watt has a lot .015 to .005 uF). This will cut of some of the bass to make the highs more present.
- My circuit had 22uF and I changed it to 1uF. You already got quite low kathode/bias caps in first stage(s) (1uF) but you can change them to .68 uF as seen in some other marshall amps to improve the amplification of the higher mids.

- Another thing you can do is to reduce the grid resistor of your power stage from 8.2kohm to something about 1-2kohms which will let more highs come through than with 8.2kohms.

In your circuit, I believe, the part that cuts of highs and enforces bass the most probably is the high resistance to the grid of your second stage (channel B in the layout).
In my powerstage I feel that biasing the EL84 too hot leads to a overall spongy and unprecise tone. In the layout there is only 68 and 62 Ohms bias resistors. I would replace them by two 120 ohm (as seen in 36 Watt at the download section) resistors to clear up the tone a bit.

However, I need a schematic of your amp since it's hard to trace all the wires in the layout.

[bonanza2252003]

thanks for the help and responces guys . I'm going out of country for 4 or 5 weeks so will have to resume this at another date. But With your help I now have some good ideas of what to do ,so thanks again.