Cygnus X1 wrote:I was thinking of building a Fender Deluxe 5E3, but I own a blackface Deluxe Reverb, so I think I have that territory covered fairly well.
The Tweed Deluxe has little in common with a Deluxe Reverb. Tweeds have lots of midrange, big but loose low end and the high end rolls off real early. The extra midrange, coupled with low headroom make Tweeds far more like Marshalls than BF/SF Fender.
But the 5E3 isn't a high-gain amp either. Sure, it's a fire-breathing overdrive machine when cranked but the preamp is pretty lo-gain.
Hi-gain amps are usually designed around hi-gain preamps coupled with clean power amps that reproduce the sound pretty faithfully.
Cygnus X1 wrote:So, what I'm really thinking about building is a low wattage, Champ type single ended, with good gain options. I've seen somewhere about running
6V6's chained, to give a nice full gain stage. Does anyone have a schematic/
layout to build something like this?
Look into:
http://www.ax84.com/The site began a joint effort to design an simple first amp that could be modded easily. It exploded with people designing all sorts of variations...Fender preamps, Marhsall preamps (november), hi-gain preamp, etc. Many of these designs are now in their "classic amp projects" section. The site emphasis has changed to be more modular; under "component amp projects"." You can pick the size of power amp you want and then pick a preamp to match to it.
Cygnus X1 wrote:I've done a bit of work on amps, never built one from scratch, but I feel confident in my ability to pull it off. I'll likely build it as a 5E3, then build on it as time goes on. I have a PT and OT designed to work with the Deluxe 22 watt design, so it should be able to handle whatever I throw at it in gain.
The 5E3 is a wonderful circuit (my #1 amp is a '60 Deluxe), and lots of mods have been designed for it, but I wouldn't consider it a good platform for a hi-gain preamp. if you want to use those DR trannies, I would find a hi-gain preamp you like (Soldano? Dumble?) and match it with a DR poweramp.
A company called Brown Note makes a 22-watt Dumble lone called a D'lite. The cool thing? They also offer it as a kit. The even cooler thing? They publish the assembly guide and layout on their discussion board willingly; they seem very supportive of the DIY crowd.
http://www.brownnote.net/
http://store.bnamp.com/diy.html
http://www.brownnote.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=329
You can easily base your design around this.