From: aron (geoaron@geocities.com) Date: 5/8/2000 9:43 PM Subject: Dirty Little Monster - review/FYI Some of you wanted to know a little more about the "Dirty Little Monster" Trainwreck Prototype so here's my take on it.... ---------------- I got to play the Dirty Little Monster amp (Train Wreck prototype) the other day. It looked like a typical Train Wreck amp but with labels for the knobs. I played it through a two 12" celestion greenback cabinet (I think they were 16 ohm speakers???). I wish I had more details but I didn't have that much time to check things out that much. It's an 8 watt amp I believe and it can get pretty darn loud for what it is. How can I describe the tone??? The highs are crystal clear - and there's a twinge of "angry-ness" at the very top. Like a "biting" tone at the very top of the timbre. The lows are tight, yet complex, mids are fantastic. With the volume control of the guitar, the amp goes from crystal clear to angry and distorted. With a Strat/Fralins it went from extremely clean to beyond a bluesy tone - with a turn of the pot. You could easily play rhythm and then jump to lead with a turn of the pot. I played 2 or three Fender strats through it and you could hear each guitars tone. However, even when dimed, it had just a tad too little drive for the over the top kind of liquid soloing I like. Luckily I had my FET drive with me. For those of you who don't know, my FET drive/AKA Booster 2.5 has 2 Jack Orman Mini-Boosters in series tuned somewhat like an tube preamp (22uF bypass cap on first stage,100 ohm resistor) to Marshall style 470K/470K voltage divider with 470pf high pass filter to 1Meg pot with .001uF treble "bleed" cap. This then goes to a 2nd stage into a tone control. This is all based upon Jack Orman's Fantastic Mini-Tubes preamp. Man, what a combination! With just a little boost from the FET drive, this thing went from totally clean to singing sustain with BITE! You could get everything. Angry sounding leads to more "closed" sounding liquid leads using the FET drive as the distortion circuit. I noticed the amp was fairly bright and I had most of the Treble control turned down almost all the way. There's only treble and bass I think and there was a peculiar pot that only worked when the Master was used. Yes, there was a Master Volume on this one. My guess would be that the pot somehow affects a treble bleed cap across the master volume? That would explain why it only worked when the Master was used. There was another slope? control and I guessed this to mean that it affected the slope of the tone controls.... I wish I knew more but that's about all I know. I know this reads like an ad, but I wish I owned this thing. Well, I own the pedal. :-) Went back to my Fender Bassman and oops - where's the clear highs with complex mids and lows.... Hmmm.... left back at Hilo I think. Hehehehe Aron =============== from Steve Ahola: Did you read the recent post from "wreckboy"? I believe that he has the Ken Fischer-built amp that Aron mentioned last month... it was Aron's post that got me thinking that I ought to do *something* with those Trainwreck schematics and notes. Here is my post with the reply from wreckboy: "But if someone had really good ears for building an amp, they could hear how some combinations work really well and others don't. Like if you have perfect pitch you can tell right away when something is out of tune; the rest of us have to get our tuners out to check..." "In any case, I believe that Ken Fischer's "magic touch" has nothing to do with the voodoo topics like pure silver wire and other audiophile-grade components. I bet that if he was to work at any of our benches for a day or two, he could come up with an absolutely killer amp using the same parts that we have been using... (Or substitute whatever amp builder that you respect a lot for the reference to Ken Fischer.)" =============== "Steve, You're totally right. Ken can build a "Trainwreck" amp just using spare parts that he had laying around his shop (the same parts any tech would have). I own the first Trainwreck amp built. It's a 15 watt Class-A amp built on a gutted Fender chassis. No aluminum chassis, no custom transformers, parts from old Ampeg/ Marshall/Fender amp, using a stripped Fender circuitboard. He calls it a piece of "junk" made from "spare parts" that "blows away any AC-15 or Marshall 18 watter" ( and he has worked on and played a number of these classics). It was built to test out ideas ( ex. it had features like switchable fixed/cathode bias ) before he built the full power (4 EL-84) model. Ken does have the "Magic Touch" but he also has the "Magic Ear" to go along with it. It looks like just another Fender chassis that someone had modded.....but when you hear it ....Wow, it's like from another world. Hey, next time that Aron comes back home I'll let him play the the amp and he can do a review for Ampage:-)" ========================== From: aron (aronnelson@bigfoot.com) Date: 7/18/2000 10:02 AM Subject: What an amp day 2 - FYI Well, I got to really play the first Trainwreck ever built. It's in a Fender chassis. I will have more info on it later (controls etc...) It was amazingly smooth, even though when it was turned up, something was not biasing quite correctly. It wasn't loud at all - maybe 15 watts? It had that singing quality that I look for and it was (in comparison to some other Trainwrecks), darker and more mellow - very nice. I also got to play this Trainwreck Express: http://www.trainwreck.com/charliefourstar.htm Wicked. Apparently a mod got taken out and it was put back to its original state and this sucker is a screamer. Harmonicly rich and screaming - yet cleans up right away with a volume turn to jazzy mids and smooth textures. Why do the Trainwrecks sound so clear? hmmmm... Aron