So last week I met @thecolourbox in a dark and drizzly car park near Kerrang radio in Brum to give him money for his Wang. It was a surprisingly pleasant experience!
As a result of that exchange, I now have a little black box with an unfortunate name which I'm going to try to look past. It's a 15 watt 2x12 EL84 amp head with Hi and Low inputs, seperate 8 and 16 ohm speaker outs, and an effects loop that I've not tried out yet.
I got a chance to try it briefly before the weekend and had enough time to form a couple of conclusions;
- It seems like a reasonably solid amp - feels sturdy, controls feel good, and it's got plenty of gain on tap.
- It's brighter than the sun. With the bass on max and treble+presence off, it's a very bright amp. Any other setting and it gets painful. Looking past that though, the sound's got real potential.
So I decided to take it home and have a look inside - you know, pull back the foreskin, check the testicles for lumps, the usual. Here's what I found;
It's sturdily built. The headshell is ply, feels strong and looks neat. Chassis is strong and the transformers look decent. It's got 3x 12ax7 and two EL84s, solid state rectified. Every tube, even the EL84s, have shields. Not sure why the EL84s do, but there we go. I guess they are quite close to the transformers.
Flipping the chassis upside down to see the guts (Scrotum? Prostate?) it seems like it's built to a reasonably high quality. Certainly on a par with the Epiphone Jr amps, maybe a little better - Wima coupling caps and a mix of ceramic and polystyrene treble cabs. The PCBs themselves look sturdy and thick. Only criticisms would be that the board isn't very well supported along the side the preamp tubes are at - it wobbles a bit if you're trying to pull them out - and the transformer leads are all connected with spade terminals. In the long run, that might be less reliable than a firm soldered connection.
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The Wangs didn't need more gain, and was too bright. So I clipped two of the bright caps - the one on the volume knob which was 1nf, and the one immediately after it which was a 470pf polystyrene. Someone on another forum has christened this the "Vasectomy Mod" which I think is fucking hilarious.
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That will probably make the bass too flabby. 22nF is big enough. If it's still a bit thin, what are the cathode caps on the preamp gain stages?
Interesting that its jcm based, that's a Marshall right? I felt it as more driven fender sounding, though that might be the brightness you mention. Plus i only played it through a Lil night train cab! Good to see the little fella getting some use (!!!) in any case. Cheers!
soundcloud.com/thecolourbox-1
youtube.com/@TheColourboxMusic
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Yes, the first stage BP cap on the JCM is 0.68uF. Try increasing that to 1uF or 2.2uF. usually thickens the sound up nicely.
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
soundcloud.com/thecolourbox-1
youtube.com/@TheColourboxMusic
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al