LeonC
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2002
- Messages
- 799
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One of my best friends is an amp tech named Terry Dobbs. He recently restored an old Gibson GA75 for a customer and was very impressed with certain aspects of its design. He decided to build an amp that incorporated some of the GA75s features and added some Valco elements (their parahpase phase-inverter design) as well. Terry used some old iron, chassis and parts that he had lying around. He called the amp the Smoothie and gave it to a friend of his, but he had told me about it and I found it intriguing. So Terry gave me the schematic and I designed a tagboard-type layout and just put together my take of the Smoothie.
Man, it is a great sounding amp! It's cathode-biased with a 5U4 and pair of 5881s on the back end. The Gibson tone stack has active treble and bass controls; it's got that '50s darkish GA40 kind of voice...but you can really feel/here the Valco phase inverter's personality in the way the amp overdrives. It's got a pentode up front in the pre-amp, giving it a really responsive character as well. It's ultra-sensitive to pick attack and guitar volume changes.
Here are some photos of my build and a quick and dirty clip.
Chassis
Add a few more holes
Filaments and PT added
Pretty much done
Faceplate added
I still haven't build a cab. I'll be building one over the next couple weeks; will update thread. Here's the clip.