jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I would try any 'tube' drives that run on 18v or less. it'll give you an idea what you're in for dynamics wise

that's the Ibanez tube king, butler tube driver, any tube works pedals from the 90s, the vox cooltron pedals... I feel like the Radial Tonebone tube pedals are also starved plate designs that run on like 22v or something? but I'm not sure off the top of my head. There are also a lot f cheap mic preamps that use a triode or two in starved plate to add some grit and squash to a basic servo type mic pre.

most tube nightmare stories have to do with arcing pentode power tubes (its not good to push certain pwoer tubes past the point of weak tone, they short and sparks might shoot out and if your fuse doesn't blow fast enough? VERY BAD THINGS)... most other tube amp nihtmare stories have to do with old or udnerspec supporting components dying or drifting into a value that's unsafe for such high voltages and KABLOOEY! the tubes are not usually to blame. its either the owner's negligence or the manufacturer's cheapness or just plain old age. A well serviced tube amp thatw as designed to last is actually extremely reliable. The idea that tube amps are unreliable is utter amdness. I've seen more solid state amps have unexplainable catastrophic failures over the years. You don't even wanna know how many SWR heads I've seen emlt down due to under-designed power supply circuitry. You wills eldom run into soemthing like that even in a budget tube amp. The voltages are so high that you can't cheap out very much and have the thing work right in the first place.

My main concern for you is that you'll spend a bunch of money you can't afford and you won't actually like the tone from this thing. Starved plate tube ODs are a very specific thing. The tubes aren't really amplifying, a dual opamp is, like in any OD/dist pedal... the tubes more take the place of the clipping diodes.

https://www.jj-electronic.com/en/12ay7

take a look at the data sheet for a typical current production 12ay7. Notice the bottom anode curve for 50 cruddy volts? You're getting maybe 18v if there's a charge pump. The tube ca safely operate on any plate voltage below 300, but its way outside of design spec like this and isn't performing as an amplifier anymore. If you look at 'typical characeristics on the top sheet you'll see how a dual triode of this type is actually designed to operate. Those are optimal, 'hifi' conditions and one might tweak the palte or cathode values a bit to create more gain or earlier internal distortion on one side of the waveform or the other for guitar use, but trying to run the tube like a low voltage device causes it to cease to act like a tube... It'll do something, and it might even amplify a smidgen, but mainly its just a complex clipper. Its my opinion that the whole thing is a giant gimmick and that similar results can be achieved in ltos of more cost effective ways.

marshall does better with bog simple amps... hoenstly, they should abandon the channel switching amrket to emsa and all the other crazy ehavy amp companies and just focus on making plexis and jcm800s.

I don't think tis terrible, its just notmy taste in gain channels. YMMV dude.... but yeah people love the 2000s for soem reason. I prefer them to a channel switching 900 (and even to a stock split channel 800), but man is the 900 series more reliable.

I love this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL68vqBBsqTi-2VX0SvecxbsI5yOdb-wfL

that's his marshall repairs playlist. Notice that every generation of marhsall amps the service gets harder to do and the problems seem to multiply? beware the DSL

the 2203 and 2204? easy to service... workhorses.... the split channel? not so good... the 900? needs some reliability upgrades but is easy to troubleshoot and service... the 2000s? they JUST KEEP COMING BACK TO THE GUYS SHOP

depends how well mounted the tube socket is, but assuming you don't whack the pedal directly I would think it'll be fine unless the tube came from teh factory with a very poor vacuum

edit: which is possible if its a new sensor 12ay7 if crazy tube circuits doesn't buy from a company that tests and burns them in or test and burn in themselves in house.... I never say never, but odds are you won't have any issues even if yougive the pedal a love tap with hammer every couple weeks for shits and giggles. If the tube craps out on you just go buy a better quality tube. JJs might not be the most exciting sounding tubes on the planet but their failure rate is really low and they take a lot of abuse. And in a starved plate circuit? A vintage 12ay7 (if you could find one) would be a real waste.

I want it on record that (apart from some old ei tubes from Yugoslavia that had a 1 in 2 failure rate but sounded righteous when they worked at all) I've never had a preamp tube fail in my whole tube amp life.... not even when amps have been dropped. They wear out after a few years hard use at high voltage, but they don't tend to stop working entirely, just loose tone and gain. I've heard tales of tired preamp tubes freaking the fuck out but I;ve never seen it in all my years of tube amp use, abuse, restoration and repair. Generally if something goes insanely wrong with a preamp tube like this the socket or supporting componentry is to blame. Even that's pretty unusual

I'm tellin' ya though, don't listen to music radar and GW... the DSL? those amps BREAK and they're a nightmare to repair. Aso, the way the drive channel is done in thsoe things is like the jubilee and 900 series and that's not to everyone's liking. That diode clipped tube OD is a very specific sound, very 80s. I don't like it that much. Not even when friedman does it. YMMV.

Basically the clean/crunch channels on a DSL and jet city will be similar but the high gain channels produce their distortion in pretty different ways.

people love or hate the blue marvel speaker... it a cult thing. If I recall, the marvel is their EV voiced speaker and the sheffield is their ccelestion voiced speaker. Apparently the marvel is the better of the 2 because no one likes the sheffield. I think if you want a speaker that's less agressive the marvel will be it. I've always been a firm believer that if you want cheap spaker you should go for neutral sounding ones LOL

If you want I think I have a recent G12M greenback sitting aorund I cna sell you for a good price. Its an 8 ohm. Being a 25 watt it'll just barely handle your amp on tis own though as long as you're not planning on playing at 10 it should be fine. I'd sell it for peanuts. Say 40 bucks plus actual shipping which is usually another 20 in the conus. Just e careful not to blow it out. These chiense ones aren't as tough as the UK ones. I blew the other one of these I ahd aorund out LOL

I have a 50 watt 80s fane somewhere too and that was designed to go with a laney 800ish type amp, but I'm not sure where I put it and I'm not sure if its 100% working right. I mighta bent the frame taking it out of a cab a while ago, unsure. Y'know what... I would literally give you that speaker for 50 bucks shipped, buyer beware. Its probably fine and in case tis not I could insure it for the full value and fedex would have to give you the 50 bcusk back if it has a rub or something and we would both break even LOL

those guys make great stuff, all of it soudns great and is built well... its pricey though

heat... unless the tubes are run at high voltage like in an amp most tube pedals run in what is called 'starved plate' configuration, and the tube doesn't really do mroe than color the sound since its not able to do much amplifying on less than 200 volts.... even witha charge pump this tube's anode is seeing like 18 volts, which is not within tis normal operating range. Yes tthis tube will generate a little heat from the filaments, tis how they work, but without serious votlage swing that heat's not going to build up. It won't even get as hot as a lightbulb.

I would guess this circuit is very tube-driver-ish. If you like that sort of thing you'll probably like this. Pretty much all starved palte with solid state op amp designs have similar characteristics.

I would stick with the JCA20H, you'll thank me... although I cna't find a good schematic.

in chinese amps stick to brands known for quality control... so orange, jet city... ummm, not marhsall these days LOL

JCM harshness... it cuts a mix, trust me... other thing is sodano's voicing is a smidge different if Ir ecall. On top of that i think the jet city amps come in 2 voicings for the single channel JCA20 (the one I would get if you're not planning to use the high gain channel of the 22), there's a regular and a 'vintage' that's warmer... anyway, when i first went marshall many many years ago Iw as like, "HOLY BRIGHT AND HARSH" and eventually I came to the realization that from where the audience is standing a lot of amps are really dull at median settings... the hallmark of a good brit amp is a lead voicing that can cut your brother in half. Eventually you get used to it...

honestly speaker selection will have more impact then the amount of bass attenuation built into any given circuit. Put a brit voiced amp into V30s and its going to be a monster of razorblade mids.… put 'em into bass cone H30s or like JBLs or Fanes or something? toned down considerably

the JCA 20 and 22 are more or less a JCM800 preamp and a SLO100 (AKA dual rec, mesa flat out stole soldano's design part for part) preamp respectively.

The only MAJOR difference on the 20 I cna find is that it lacks the low gain onput that skips V1, therefore there is no high ehadroom option on the preamp so you're ot going to be able to put high gain pedals into ti for the siamese dream tones without modifying it. I think there are some voicing tweaks, some tweaks to the vltage divider values betweens tages and also a different bias point for V1b, the major clipping stage of the circuit making it more 'soldano-ey'.

THe JCA22 just slaps the SLO100 pre onto the same pwoer amp as the original 20. Actually its the hotrod series preamp, ebcause it doesn't have clean mode, just crunch and overdrive. The Crunch mode is a JCM800 more or less. That's where soldano started with his design abck in the alte 80s, the mghty 2204 and 2203. The high gain channel switches V1b out of teh circuit via opto-isolators and switches in 2 ore stages, an extra hifi-ish gain stage driving a really cold biased clipper stage that will brekup in clorious assymetric distortion with hardly nay input signal. Where the 800 design igneniously triples the size of the cathode resistor to induce early distortion, soldano quadruples marhsall's value for that resistor and then hits it with a little more gain from 2, rahter than 1 stage of gain, although soldano hevily attenuates them so nothing is giving up TOO MUCH dirt where it'll get into blocking distortion at high knob settings. The soldano design is pretty much just a juiced up marshall master preamp. If you like the 800 sound then you will like the soldano sound because t just takes what you like alreadya dn takes it to the enxt logical extreme. Soldano's design has been copied by every high gain amp since. He didn't exactly break new ground but he sure figured out how far you could go with the marshall concept. That said, the soldano design takes all of the jcm800 flaws viz-a-viz dirt boxes and magnifies them. The 800 high gain input will tolerate low gain dirt boxes and even does quite well with stuff like the tubescreamer, it cna take a rat at low settigns and if you're okay with goofy, splatty sounds you can do some fuzz too... the soldano's going to peform similarly on the lower gain 800ish channel but Mike Soldano really was trying to design an amp for 80s shredsters that would not ened external dirt to get those hotrod marhsall tones. Therefore the front end really doesn't wanna see pedals. You can get away with modualtion in the overdrive mode, but event hat soudns a bit ebtter in the fx loop, the front end is heavily gained up and bandpass fitlered. If I ahd an elaborate epdalbaord I would probably not be too into the high gain soldano channel. That said it soudns utterly brilliant. its one of the ebst amster volume distortion sounds you'll ever hear. It soudns good at low gain settings, it soudns good turned up to comical high gain settigns. Its fantastic.

the marshall jcm2000 line are the least reliable amps the company has amde since the JTM30 and 60. I wouldn't pay more than $250 for one. I would go used ebcause its pre-disastered then.

In cheap PCB marshally amps I much prefer the Jet City amps. Everything's a little sturdier on them. The Jet city amps also sound shockingly good.

If your amp must say marshall on it, look at the new Origin amp. I tried one recently and its not too bad. Not as good as marshall makes out, but like a nice, pale imitation plexi with modern features. Not sure about reliability, ever been inside one and they're too new to be turning up broken.

With it being the holidays I have't had time to put up mics but I will soon.

I couldn't possibly afford to build oen for free, its hundreds and hundreds of dollars in aprts just to build the most basic version with 2 band tone... the 3 band tone control design I haven't prototyped ebcause I'll need to order an expensive multi-tap inductor to do it the way I want. Without ordering 100 tranfromers the amp cost will begin with 300+ dolalrs just for iron for the 2 band toenstack and more 400+ for the 3 band. That's no chassis, tube sockets, caps, resistors, jacks, just properly wound, transformers and inductors with big, vintage grade iron cores. The choke on my prototype is amost as big as a lot of 40 to 50 watt tranformers in modern fenders and marshalls. Everythign is overspec and it contributes to the tone. I don't know how to design a cheap version.

I'll probably d some for cost plus a few bucks labor. Each one can be custom voiced a bit. A buddy of mine is thinking of having me build him a high gain version with a 1k mid scoop for metal, which will be easy. I can basically tweak anything within the circuit. I can do different tone control responses, whatever. But the stock tone controls I designed are really the sound of the amp to me. They're very much vox controls shifted to hit what I think are the important guitar ranges... and they don't suck for bass if you turn the presence down. But Ic an't afford to buy hundreds of bucks in components and then give the amp away, I would starve.

I had a friend who used a couple different Klones in front of an old Fender Frontman 212r. It sounded pretty okay, and that's a loud 100 watt solid state amp... so I'm optimistic but not certain. Worst comes to worst can sell it.

go for it,maybe you guys want something different then I do or maybe I have overly discriminating ears. I'm getting less and less punk rock in my old age.

I would just leave the musicman alone, they're fine the way theya re. Nothing super special about them but if you want a balckface fender that stays pretty well clean and has a 'dry' sort of sound? that's it. really, its like a twin with less harmonic cotnent. And I doubt any modification will change that vibe. its just the transistorized version of the fenderpreamp is going to have less harmonc zazz as you crank it up. Stock though they take modern pedals better than any other old solid state preamp. They really do. I think Joan Jett stills wears by one. They're getting a bit collectible too, so butchering it may be a financial mistake.

I mean, I've been hacking up my traynor into the 'jim-watt', but its the least desireable traynor model, although a bit rare. An even better candidate for my mods would be the 50 watt traynor 'custom reverb' amps, but those are kinda cool stock and they're getting mroe valuable, it'd be a shame to take it apart and redesign it this way. The PA head? its a passable guitar or bass head stock but no one will cry that I made it the prototype for my 50 watt amp design. personally, I don't think tis cool to hack up old amps that already sound petty good for guitar nd bass stock without any glaring flaws.

Yes. I've been designing my own amp. Almost done. I might try to market it. Me and a buddy of mine came up with the name "Lo-Down Amplification Co" and the mdoel would be the ODB502, as in Old Dirty Bastard 50 watt, 2 input. My prototype is 2 channels but I was thinking of going to 1 channel for production so it'll fit in a marshall 800 chassis and head shell and you would get high and low inputs like an 800 instead of 2 channels with only high gain ins.... I would just take the bright channel and put it ona push-pull pot on the gain control to revoice the amp I guess.... its also suitable for abss via my excellent 'presence' control design that revoices the wholepoweramp to really thump when it goes below 5. You will want one.... but I have a feeling building them from scratch will be expensive just based on the high spec transformers and enormous power choke I'm using. If I use anything smaller and cheaper I think it'll lose the firm, clear tone.

but yeah, tuebscreamers, they're all similar... as is the SD1. Just a couple little parts value changes. People make much of it.

oh man, the Klon…

I've used a real klon when finnigan was making them because I'm that old. I knew someone who bought a gold one right away, mailed a check his mom wrote, shit you not. I think the dude still ahs it. At the time I really liked it but I couldn't beleive he was charging a couple hundred bucks for it and there was a wait list. If I had known what they would be worth I woulda bought a few and sat on them until now. Coulda bought a new car.

in klones? I've only had the ehx soul food. I quite liked it, particularly into a fender tweed to brign out some extra britishness. but it has an enormous bass drop out like a lot of pedals. I feel like the original had that too. Hoenstly I felt like the soul food was close enough for me.

My problem with msot OD pedals is the extreme high passing. You need that tog et the distortion circuit not to fart out but unless I'm going to leave it on all the time tis a deal breaker for me. I don't care how much boost I give my output signal into the amp I still hear my bass fall away and no matter how good the circuit it sounds like an effect to my ear and it bugs me. The whole klone ideas was 'more of what you like about your amp'. I remember that was in the original guitar world ads. In always on distortions? Any old thign will do, really. The Klon s nice, but so is the tubescreamer, sd1 rat, sd9 etc etc etc. I have tons of them to this day. The Klone is really nice and is dead clean at 0 gain with only the bass cut as an artifact and that's cool. But that bass cut. when you take intoa ccount the treble control? Whoa dude. If its not always on its just as annoying as any pedal. If you don't give me a tool tomake up my low end after the clipping I don't want to use your pedal. It plays hell with sound guys who have to be ready to cut your lows every time you turn the dirt off (although most of them don't and so you sound like a weenie in the PA). Klone's would benefit from a 100hz bass gyrator circuit like onthe mx custom abdass. I also think they would sound better if the diodes to ground were diodes to bais potential like on the fuultone OCD, because the klon isn't very dynamic the way it rbeaks up, its a classic brickwall design, sort of a suped up distortion+ with some ideas from the rat. So's the OCD abut its got that dynamic version of ahrd clipping. If you put the 2 together it'd be a really amp-like OD for a diode clipper. REALLY REALLY amp like. No one does this. I would do i but I don't like building on PCB and with the charge pump and everything the klon could get really big and messy if you did it PTP.

This pedal is also pointless into a solid state amp. 50% of klon users use it as a clean to slightly dirty boost and that's a joke in front of another transistor device. The klon produces a reasonable amount of its own distortion as you crank the gain but its not soft like the tubescreamer so it is going to be harsh as shit without the benefit of a tube stage shaping it, compressing away the rough edges and smoothing out the top end a bit... if you don't have a decent tube amp don't bother.

I think the best bang for buck klone to test out is a soul food. I think tis a handful of minor components to get it accurate anyway. The thing is damned close. I think it lacks the secret sauce germanium diodes and ti chaps out ina few other departments that amy or may not be audible. If you like the soul food you like the centaur. The actual centaur (and probably the archer) just does it a bit better.

Hi... Ask.. Some of my gear was stoled, how can I put it on the "HAD" list? And, how can I add new gear, I dont remember thanks

click on the gear on your list, on the page for that item click on the orange 'saved' icon, there will eba pop up and within that a grey drop down emnu that allows you to change between "I have it", I want it" and I used to have it."

I aim to debunk electric guitar tech mythology.

its nothing to write home about, much is made of the difference between the 808 and the 9 but its a few components, the biggest difference is the output impedance. I guarantee you that's why you perceive the 9 as harsh. The 9 was redesigned a bit to sound better with solid state amps, it was the 80s, the JC120 was everywhere. The 808 is more like the boss OD1 it ripped off, designed to go into a tube amp. its a ew component differences, really. It way over mythologized but that mythos allows small builders to charge an arm and a leg for soemthing and have a huge profit amrgin... at elast the fuzz face and related circuits have you tsorting and discarding a lot of germanium transistors with unsuitable HFE or elakage so i udnerstand why you're making a epdal that costs the same as an amp, I'm payingfor all the aprts you bought and discarded. The grandaddy soft clip OD, the boss OD1 has a special oddball opamp in its original version and that might sound different. The aprt is out of production so if you wanna charge an arm and a leg for an OD1 clone okay. But a TS808? There's nothing in there that's not in current production and the original 70s pcb layout is readily available for free.

that said, I just did a reverb search and CSW green thing seems to be pretty fairly priced in the used market. trades for 50 to 100 bucks which is what a tubescreamer is worth.

Ironically, you have a solid state amp and putting the 808 into it you're not really hearing the 808 the way maxon intended you to hear it since until the 80s they were designing for the reactive load from tube amp inputs and the x0x output sections were tuned up for that. The 9 series really was the redesign to accomodate all the new wave bands who were using roland and Ibanez solid state gear. I would guess that your 808 clone is super smooth through that champ due to loading from the amplifier inputs on the higher impedance output circuitry

have you opened it up tos ee if tisa straight 808 clone or if its modded?

welcome, keep rpacticing and keep aquiring ger...

welcome guys

weren't you going to get pickups for your epi SG?

I only try fancy pants strings when the string companies give them to me and ernie hasn't given me any strings to try in a decade.

I do... i have cooler gear for it actually...

I've owned a lot of guitars in all ends of teh price spectrum, My real forte is amps though.

now tell me who Mark Linkous is again because I'm drawing a blank

it just hit me, I ahd a memphis jap or korean p-bass copy with that ehadstock! its a memphis strat!

https://flic.kr/p/6s1NdR

not the strat model, more of a mutt, but they made a strat copy... some were Japanese and of variable quality, kidna b-list jap lawsuit axes.... others were Korean and of sketchy quality

It could be, they had that kind of headstock...

I know, a friend of mine had one in highschool back when they were new

Yep, and he did have an Ampeg amp... :)

who hasn't? my bets friend still owns a bunch of old ampegs... I got fed up with their weird tube compliment but I used to love the V series

on close inspection its either a harley benton as you suggested (not sure they amde them going abck far enough but who knows? store branded budget fender and Gibson knockoffs have a long history back to the 70s starting with some decent quality Japanese axes from the same factories thatw ere doing Ibanez, tokai, Yamaha, Greco, burny, Fernandez etc etc etc) or a hamer slammer strat copy which is a cheap orean import of the 90s from the period wherehamer and dantzig had sold the company to kamen industries and kamen insisted they eneded a low end and sourced some guitars from the factory that made the korean ovation electrics for them

the first couple look like he stuck a 70s Ampeg amplifier badge onto the headstock ROFL....

lots of knockoffs have ahd similar headstock shapesto the benton and the picture has insane motion blurring... get a better picture

ever buy pickups?

anybody looking for an affordable 50 watt vintage amp bite on these? I've actually been fully hiwatting mine... hit some snags along the way, but its getting there. Someone should do this. Guys are always whining on ehre about the poor quality avilable today at this price point.... wake up and grab a tryanor ebore they get any more expensive.

happy thanksgiving

good luck on the jazz band, its a great thing to do in highschool! for exercises on any strignd sintrument I recommend the chromatic and whole tone scales as they'll walk you allover the fingerboard. I als recommend you take a normal major and minor scale and practiece 'inverting it'... its a 2 steps forward, 1 step back sort of thing, so in a major scale you wuld go 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 4, 3, 4, 5, 4, 5 , 6, 5, 6, octave....in triplet time, then reverse back down. Its good for your coordination and you'll hear tphrases like that in a lot of rock and jazz solos...

last but not elast, you're game you can do major scale variiations like 2 and a half octave majors (look them up), these scales will take you well out of your starting handposition as you climb the scale. You cna also take any scale and change your hand position so you can begin the scale after the 1, so for eveyr note on say a G major scale you cna start at that note so first you begin it on G, the second time you begin on A, then B etc. There's probably diagrams online for this sort of thing...

I beleive you, who would lie about that?

Do I wanna get into this with someone I know? How you feel about the ehx pedals with ac cords is really personal....

alright, i'ma do this, rip me a new one Shok... I know these boxes well, I've ahd soe apss through my hands for repairs, so here's my negative nancy view with some solid reasoning behind it as well as some other ideas for soem clone-tone.. any other EHX worshippers feel free to crucify me, I'm not going to read the replies. Last tiem I trashed the big muff I caused so much uproar... here goes:

personally I wouldn't bother with an old clone theory even if the pedal were affordable. Its a nice design on paper, but vintage EHX effects in the deluxe boxes are pricey and a huge hassle to make into useable instruments. A deluxe msitress for example is 10 times as noisy and twice as much hassle to modify into soemthing with good output and an acceptable signal to noise ratio as the regualr mono mistress... and the simpler pedal soudns a little ebtter too. 9 out of 10 people agree about the mistress. Only the deluxe memory man offers substantially better soudns then its kid brothers. On the other hand there isn't a direct equivalent to the clone theory in a small box. Allow me to elaborate until you're so bored that you would rather lsiten to unshielded power suply hum bleed into an opamp for an hour...

the clone theory uses the same mn3007 BBD chip for its delay line as the pre-sovtek small clones and is very similar in design. The main differences for the end user are, obviously, in the wet/dry 'stereo' output option, the separation of the depth and rate controls and of course a switch to select chorus, vibrato < 20ms flange mode with the handy addition of a mix control for mono chor/flange opreation. Last time I tried one of these Iw as able to get some good Andy Summers electric Mistres toens in flange mode, although without regen you'll enver get anything else form it in flange mode. The clone theory also runs at 15 or 16v if I recall so the amplifying stages will definitely have more headroom than the small clone and that might be a good thing if you're planning to wail it with a signal that's mroe than 1v peak to peak for some reason (maybe reamping as a mix-down effect?), but for guitar (and a lot of syntehsizer) use, assuming you don't have a cranked boost out front of it, the headroom is unnescasarry. Its probably running the chip and clock a little differently at that voltage, but I really don't think it'll make a huge difference to the effected signal's timbre. The original clone theory is also incredibly noisy due to the onboard AC/DC transformer being too close to the ins and outs (like msot AC chorded EHX, MXR and DOD pedals of the era) whereas the small stone utilizes a battery or wall wart and is one of the quietest vintage choruses ever made. In my experience it was even noisier than a deluze msitress, and that's too noisy to be used for anything but a paper weight or door stop in my book (YMMV).

Due to its relative rarity and collectible status the vintage theory is just not worth purchasing*** in my view***. A good exmaple is going to cost you a pretty penny (unless you get lucky at a yard sale or find a pawn shop manned by internet luddites) and still have major noise issues unelss you modify and devalue it. The ones I have repaired and/or modified (under protest) for other people are still in their hands and I really wodner just how many of these EHX made. For all its faults if I wanted the mn3007 EHX chorus tone I would get an analogman chorus and mod it for wet/dry stereo operation which shouldn't be too hard. If you wanna go on a wait lsit you could even ask him to build it that way, include a d-time switch and throw you on the mix knob for mono operation. Mike is a great guy to deal with and will work with you. With analogman stuff you know you're getting a legit 3007 chip and first rate components and workmanship. The tone will be damned close, you'll just lose the flange mode. Buy a msitress. I would personally NOT pay market rate for a pedal that has design flaws in the pwoer supply, switchign and buffering... nor do i recommend anyone else do it. But people do...

Okay okay, no small clone replica, fine... the closest thing to a vitnage theory I'm aware of is the master effects replica which eliminates the power supply noise by going to a modern boss wall wart setup supplying the 16v via a charge pump inside... it uses some better modern components and unelss you beleive in magic old capacitor mojo it'll probably make the epdal better due to a lwoered noise floor... if the wet/dry pseudo-stereo is make or rbeak then again you'll have to mod it ebcause I feel certain they did it as a mono only pedal. If I recall the thiing is true bypass and has unity gian when engaged unlike an original that has the tone-sucking EHX bypass and low output elvel of all thesir modualtions and delays from back int eh day. I'm not sure this guy still makes his clone clone (heh), but they turn up from time to time on the usual sites and are well regarded by the EHX cognoscenti. Anotehr option is the polychorus. Its more small clone-ish and vintage examples can fetch big money, but it has a more faithful reissue from what i udnerstand... although a lot of eople really like the little-box clone theory reissue, although its missing the mix control (it can probably be added via a small alpha pot ona flying lead if you wanna drill a hole in the side)...

I'm pretty much done mine,thanks... doing little things... deciding if I like ti ebtter with the choke to smooth the ripple in teh pwoer supply or a big 5w resistor, hiwatt style... little stuff. There's only 1 more hiwatt inspired tweak I would like to make but Ican't figure out if it'll fit in the space I have left (and it certainly would all be on flying elads because that section of the original eyelet baord is PACKED), so unless I have an epiphanyas to how to build a white cathode follower off my remaining unused 12ax7 stage in about a square inch of space this amp is good to go and is oen of the ebst sounding EL34 amps I've ever owned. But its my nature to try to tinker a little more and leave no parts unused (the stock amp dumps a triode offa V3 like a hiwatt but it omits the tube between the tone controls and the phase inverter which is really unity gain but lowers impedance into the PI for better sparkle and dynamics)

I think anyone who likes british rock tones of the 70s will really dig it the way I have it now and its really an hours work and a few dolalrs inc aps and resistors now that I've done all the listening tests for you

EDIT: make sure you have a good, temp controlled iron, lead/tin rosin core electrical solder, solder flux for grounding to the chassis (its the only way to make ground for your cathode resistor/cap if you decide you want to cathode bias any of the preamp tubes that are grid leak because the bunch of wires that passes for aground bus is a mile away from the sockets and sloppy as hell, the amp is well made and well-laid out but its not elegant like a hiwatt, though not as sloppy as a vintage marhsall), jewelry making pliers/crimpers set, heavy duty wirecutters, wire strippers, old-style cloth covered wire to make it look right (they used yellow and blue, I like black n white and that's going to help me recognize my wiring years from now when my wire ages), and lastly some good quality shielded hookup wire (there's some spots with long leads in this amp thata re unshielded that might benefit form this if you're getting crosstalk, radio noise or oscillations, mine has some new shielded wire to the worthless FX loop, I'm ignoring it but I could walk you through making it useable though it'll require a different master volume design then mine and there's also shielded wire from the tonestack to the phase inverter that may or may not be original because they've been making this style wire since the mid 60s and theys till make it, I have stuff that looks just like, I digress, these parentheticals are outta control)

for safety you should have a multimeter if only to check if the filter caps are discharged enough for you to work safely (although traynors have bleeder resistors so its easy to drain the amp without doing a chassis shunt, you can just turn the amp off without going into standby first which is harmless to the tubes, only the power up is hard on them)… you'll want safety glasses in case something hot splashes on your face (hopefully coffee and not solder).... and you'll need good ventilation for this amount of soldering and unsoldering because there will be a shit ton of lead and chemical fumes in the room if you don't have them airing out constantly and that shit's not good for you...

also, I am not recommending you do this yourself if you have no experience, you should go to an experienced tech with my mods and not do it yourself, working with high voltages is life threatening so don't say I didn't warn you if you get electrocuted a little and no one better sue me if you get killed because I swear to god I'm warning you, learn at your own risk, otherwise hire a pro or draft in a friend who regularly works on his own gear... have a healthy respect for these voltages. If you do try this yourself which I do not recommend (wink wink) make sure to discharge the amp properly with the no-standby shutoff procedure, always unplug from the wall right afterwards, check to see the voltage levels are safe before you touch anything inside (there are tutorials online of where to put your probes) AND if you need to poke around inside the amp because its acting up you absolutely need to be sure to do it with a wooden chopstick. I've seen guys use the eraser end of a pencil, and that's good for tapping tubes, but DO NOT use a #2 pencil to tap caps and resistors to find bad connections, if the metal touches you'll get sparking, mucho dangerous. CHOPSTICK

but seriously, don't do this if you think you might get sloppy with your work/precautions and kill yourself because I don't want your mom to sue me... and I'll feel really bad too. I'm explicitly telling you not to attempt this and that I am not liable for you screwing up my safety instructions if you do. But if you were to attempt it would be a fantastic learning experience and its really rewarding when the amp is done and it went from a weird PA/bass head into a 70s rock machine.

I'm doing more to mine lately as a project then i wll recommend you do... but yeah, its fun and easy. Mainly rearranging the parts that are already there... buy you'll want some .022 and .047 uf caps around maybe 2 of each in mallory 150 at 250v, one of each value as 150s at 450v or thereabouts and then a couple .047s at 600v and you could use orange drops or panasonics there in the power stage although the stock vlaues okay, but you might want the option of shaving a little extreme bass in the power stage... uoi want a bunch of 100k and 220k 1w resistors... I recommend you replace the existing master with a 250kA push-pull, what's there is a 1M linear. You can reuse it, and it goes pretty well out of the circuit at 10 the way I have you wire it, but the taper sucks and all the useful range is between 1 and 3 whereas the 250KA worked better for me in ractice. You could change the the gain pots to 500KAs but the 1MLs work okay... if you wanna get tweakier you could get a 470ohm resistor and an electrolitic cap at 10uf or more to change the bias scheme on 2 of the inputs like I did to be a more traditional cathode bias with early hiwatt specs or elave them stock but et yourself a 100pf ceramic disc or silver mica cap. All resistors should be carbon comp for this amp. I'm ntos ure if you'll need fitler caps, you'll have tos ee if they're originals or new.

if you buy the amp get the parts I lsited and take a stock photo and I'll walk you through versus a picture of mine

I already did a lot of the trial and error work here with values... I've really optimized the overall voicing to be more hiwatty and to interact well with an SG but some channels will be brighter and some will be darker. They have different gains tructure going in. I decided to milk something different out of each since its a guitar amp when we're done.