The following is strictly my own opinion. 

We were on the subject of split loads and multi gain stage preamps earlier, but the thread got nuked.

I want to first credit and thank Ken Fischer for the design that I will talk about below. Ken is a big help and a very friendly guy to deal with. He has helped me with many aspects of amplifier designs. Ken is really cool about giving design advice for his amplifiers if you ask nicely(are not in the business of marketing clones of his hard work-remember Callaham? Supposedly he could have been one of these guys.) and if you want a "one off" amp of his design for personal use only. But, I will say that he is even cooler about helping you out with building and perfecting your OWN designs. Rather than merely have a copy of one of his designs(it's not the real deal anyway), I would rather have one of my OWN designs that kick ass in great part to some great advice given to me on everything from voltages, transformer manufactureres, to socket suppliers and input topologies. Having said that, I have screwed around with the designs information given to me by Ken himself, and the following is my opinion and dissection of the Trainwreck preamp. 

I just tried out a split plate load in my experimenter's amp tonight. The amp is a 6V6 duet loaded by an 8K primary. 425 volts on Plates, Fixed Bias, Volume, Treble, Mid, Bass, Cut(Vox Style-.0047uF/250K), and Presence. Standard LTP PI: 470R bias, 10-22K LTR, 100 and 82K plate loads, .047uF coupling to 6V6's, 100K grid loads to 6V6's, 1.5K grid stoppers to 6V6's, 1K/2W screen resistors. It uses a Park 20 Watt style first stage(100K plate, 2.7K/.68uF cathode) and tone stack, a typical Fender style recovery stage(100K plate, 1.5K/15uF cathode), and a Marshall/Trainwreck style 3rd gain stage(100K plate, 10K cathode). First stage: 1Meg/No padding, 100K plate, 2.7K/.68uF cathode, 250K treble and bass, 25K mid, 100K slope, 220pF treble cap, no series resistance to second stage. Second stage(see above for parts used): I replaced the second stage 100K plate load with a split load this evening. I'll report using differnet values here(such as 68/33K and 47/47K, etc). Highly recommended by some real good guys who perform lots of mods, repairs, etc. Old HiFi trick. Fanfuckintastic. Less gain and compression trades off to tighter bass(yeah, a LOT tighter), less fuzz and buzz in the preamp, and a more controlled and articulate preamp. Did I mention headroom? The third stage uses a grid load of 100K(no series resistance or voltage divider), and a .022uF into the PI. This is perhaps one of the nicest variations on the fabled Trainwreck Express preamp I have tried to date. With my Strat(the preamp was originally designed for singles), this amp sounded REAL close to Lowell Goerge's cleaner tones on Waiting For Columbus. I love this fucking album to death. It did not get up and go quite like his slide leads, but the clean is worthy through a 4X12 loaded with G-12T75's(hey, I LOVE this speaker, no matter what anybody says). With the PRS, this topology approaches the quality of my Plexi-Like preamp(my favorite) for a good crunch. The PRS drives the first stage, leading to a good deal of tight, beaming compression. Great for leads(obviously). Rhythm cleans up nicely when backed off the guitar's volume. Not as fat as the Plexi for this, but a lot better than a Boogie. The highs stay put pretty well.

I want to talk about this first stage a bit and how I came to use it in my stuff. Like the Park, Various Marshalls, and Trainwrecks, the .68uF/2.7K are a real "players" type of input. Coupled with NO input padding, and a 1Meg grid load, this is especially nice. As I wrote before, In late 1997 into 1998 I picked up a copy of Stevie Vaughn and Double Trouble's album "In The Beginning". I highly recommend this album for SRV fans. I think this tone on this album is raw, gritty, and plain old fun. I wonder whether this tone is what Cesar Diaz referred to as SRV's shitty tone. Whatever. At the time that I was working on this amp(my first completed in late 1997 into early 1998), I happened to listen to this album a lot. I wanted SRV's tone on this album. I designed and built my first amp using the following preamp topology. During the design I recommended using the details of this preamp to Steve Carr and Ken Fischer who both seemed to like the topology. It kicks ass for Strat players, so anybody who likes to play Strats should try it and see if they like it. EL-34's in fixed bais loaded by 6K primary impedance. Voltages 410VDC on EL-34's plates. 1k/5W screen resistors. First stage: .68uF/2.7K, 100K plate, 1Meg volume, .0022uF(Mallory 150), and a 470K series resistance into the 1+1. 1+1 stage: 100K plate, .68uF/2.7K cathode, 100K CF load, 220pF treble, .022uF(mallory 150) bass and mid, 250K treble, 250K bass, 10K mid. Wire the mid pot as a voltage divider. Standard LTP PI: 22K LTR, 820R bias, 100K/82K plates, .047uF coupling(150's), 5K/.1uF presence(100K from 16R tap), 100K EL-34 grid loads, 3.2K grid stoppers. Filtering: 220uF totem pole plates(110uF), 1K resistor replaces choke, 100uF totem pole screens(50uF), 20uF for PI, 1+1, and first stage. Voltages on preamp should be in the 320-380VDC range for B+. This amp is a solid performer, and yes, I plan on possibly selling it, but you can feel free to build it. Enjoy it, it is truly a killer design. Best for Strats, IMO.

As for my "new" EL-34 amp, I'll tell you that I switched to a differing preamp(among other things like filtering, layout, voltages, etc). Instead of the .68uF/2.7K input, I now use a 4.7uF/1.5K because this amp was desinged primarily for my PRS. The Strat likes this amp as well, but I feel that the fattest tone is to be had with this setup. A good medium for both types of guitars. I'll probably wind up changing my mind anyway at some point. One thing I really dig is Ken's attention to the type of guitar that is going to be played with the amp. Each guitar and player is unique in it's inherent design, and that should(IMO) carry over into the amplifier design. Remember those 47pF brite caps on the volume on your Deluxe Reverb? They were put there supposedly to make other manufacturer's guitars sound like Fenders. yeah, there are technical reasons as to why the caps are there, but I can believe that Fender was into Fender's best interest, hence the brite caps.

Jason C. Arthur