Vintage amp restoration and Beyond

[GoldenVulture]

Hey leave the windsor in one piece and working.

If you look at the 9 pin sockets there's one wired for heaters and nothing else yet.
I'm thinking of doing an FX loop  in/out there or alternatively a reverb unit.
There's more 9 pin socket holes so maybe I could do both.
The power Transformer is a monster and should be able to deliver plenty of power.
One thing at a time. The new O.T. should be here later this week.
The second channel is getting a mid control too when a few new pots arrive with the O.T.

[karpathion]

I just don't play the Windsor anymore. The modules in my MTS Randall, cover all my high gain needs, and it works for me a bit better than the Windsor does. I'm digging out all of my parts and components tonight, to see what I'm working with, and see what direction I want to go. I'll start a thread on it later.

I would definitely run an FX loop. A home brew, real, tube driven reverb unit, would be a great next project when this one is buttoned up. You ever think of a post PI master volume? I hear lots of good things about that setup. Really good for super powerful amps like yours.

[GoldenVulture]

Speaking of loud , I've been meaning to calculate the output. 800's run a plate voltage of around 500V.
where as I'm running around 700v. which means higher output. Judging by the way the O.T. overheated when I cranked it , it's pushing close to the 160 watts or more , I estimated it would produce.

[GoldenVulture]

I just don't play the Windsor anymore.

It just seems like a waste of the time and effort you put into modding that. You seemed pretty pleased with the results at the time.

[karpathion]

I was always told that Plexi/2204 amps were underrated as hell. The actual was more like 140W. If you are running KT88's in the power section, you have surpassed that. 160W is probably about right. If not a bit more.   :32:

My ears couldn't take it, with a 4x12 in a small room. The sound waves would push my guts through my arse, or I'd have one badass, pristine, clean tone... One of the two.

[GoldenVulture]

I was always told that Plexi/2203 amps were underrated as hell. The actual was more like 140W. If you are running KT88's in the power section, you have surpassed that. 160W is probably about right. If not a bit more.   :32:

The 2203's have had a reputation for being loud. The original Marshal Majors were a Quad of 88's and rated at 200 Watts output. They kept on blowing up output transformers apparently.

[karpathion]

   It just seems like a waste of the time and effort you put into modding that. You seemed pretty pleased with the results at the time.

My total investment was extremely small, and it has a few very nice parts that would kill on the new build as a custom project. The tubes have been out of it for around 5-6 months, and I couldn't sell it because of the mods, no matter how cool it is. It would be a win/win scenario for me to scavenge from it . Lol!

I'm more curious of HOW, you are using your amp. Are you using the preamp at all, or just pushing it to power tube breakup? Either way should show some nice results, IMO.

[GoldenVulture]

I can take it up to some really loud clean sounds at about 50% pre-amp and then turning up past that on either channel they start to overdrive. The KK pre channel [1] has a mad amount of gain and it overdrives the valve into distortion which is unusable above about 80% gain [ for me ] . It gets really noisy from there up and loses it's tonal balance. I haven't really got into hammering it much because of the O.T. overheat. It's going to be hard to get Power Tube breakup because of the high plate voltages.

[GoldenVulture]

I was about to throw down some sounds on the PC today when along came a thunderstorm. That put an end to that. Maybe tomorrow.

[GoldenVulture]