Ok, that’s it. I’m building a tiny tube amp.

Image from Gizmodo

Ridiculously overpriced DIY and affordable tiny tube amp, that is. Two reasons:

  1. The DRRI is WAY TOO GODDAMNED LOUD at 22ish watts RMS (into an 8ohm Jensen 2×12 cab with Webers), even for just recording in the basement. (Perfect in a power trio club gig, though!)
  2. 1950’s era NOS Brimar 6v6s sound fat, grindy, and beautiful. RCA greyplates sound even better; they sound more refined and do a beautiful clean. I’ve got about six or eight of these two types just laying around doing nothing, and they’re worth about $50 each.

One of these tubes in a Class A SET would make, what 8-9 6-7 watts? Probably still way too loud, unless I find a nice really inefficient speaker. But that requires building a cabinet, and I don’t really have a wood shop or any of the tools that would make that remotely possible. So, now I’m thinking rewiring the Jensen cab into two separate inputs, and building a single-chassis stereo 6v6 SET amp. I could run one amp at around 7-8 and one at around 4-5 to get the whole dirty/clean thing going on…which would be so sweet. Schematics, anyone?

I wish I knew more about circuits! A cheap mic pre and a good tube headphone amp are still on the to-do list.

For your pleasure, find below just under 6.7 Million resources:

Come on…you know this looks like fun:

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Published:
4.24.08 / 2pm
Category:
Music
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