tube pre -I pretty much dont know what I'm doing.

[samuel1]

Ha I'd like to start out and say I pretty much dont know what I'm doing.

I have the schematic and parts for a solid state 40W power amp, which I am confident I can build. I would like to build a tube preamp to bring the guitar up to line leval and give it some colour, particularly fender twin style tube sound (i'm pairing this with me '64 strat). I have a limited budget, and somewhat limited knowledge. Does anyone have any ideas for me? Maybe you guys can also answer a few questions I have:

What kinda of circuitry does it take to get that fender tube distortion sound, how many tubes, and do I need to use these high voltages I read about to get the right sound? How many decibels of gain does it take to bring guitar up to line level?

When I think about this project and they way I want this preamp to act the vox ac 15's separate preamp gain nob particularly comes to mind.

Any advice that you guys have for a newbie woud be welcome :)

PS: common request i'm sure, but I'm not lookign to dive to deep into my wallet for this project. Thanks

[kheper]

Line-level voltage is 1 - 1.5 V. Once the
standard line-level was 1V. You could
use any distortion or fuzz box to
bring the low-level output of the
guitar pickup to line-level.

Electronic Projects for Musicians Book,
by Craig Anderton, is a good place to
start. It is sold at -

http://www.paia.com/

His 'Tube Sound Fuzz' uses a +5V
TTL CMOS chip to produce the
tube sound. Overdriving that chip
produces a very realistic old
school tube amp sound.

Paia also sells a kit for a guitar
tube pre-amp.

[samuel1]

I had a particular pedal design in mind, one I found online. It uses one tube (12AX7), with slightly lower voltage then you might want for the best sound but I figure it might be safer. It says it will produce 20 DB of gain, is this sufficient? If so, I would like to build that, build a carbon copy of an ibanez tube screamer, and place them both in the chassis of the amp. thoughts?

[Shannon Parks]

Hi Sam! Why not post that 12AX7 link for us?

[samuel1]

check out the preamp/pedal i was hoping to use here..
http://olcircuits.com/olc_eclipsevalve.html

and check out the ibanez tube screamer kit i was hoping to build into the chassis here...
http://www.tonepad.com/project.asp?id=1

thoughts?

[dhuebert]

I love that pedal with the tube sticking up, just don't miss after a few beers...

Don

[samuel1]

If someone has taken a look at this preamp, can you tell me what effect raising the plate voltage to 24 volts would be? Would it require a second power supply?'