Matchless Spitfire Revoiced

[@angryshoebox]

I wish more companies would give their guitar amps Matchless-style lighted control panels.

[@maxpeck4154]

I definitely see the appeal of the light up panel, but for me personally it's just one more friggin' thing to have to pull the chassis out to replace. Vibration and bulbs don't mix well.

[@robertisrael338]

​@maxpeck4154 this is why you can do what I did and get led pinball bulbs. They use #44 bulbs and there are lots of led ones available now in different colors and brightness. They don't have that vibration problem. Check out comet pinball

[@scottwilcox6313]

I really like the new speaker and pot change. It still has that mid focused tone but not scooped. It reallly doesn't sound like a Fender. Job well done. I think your client will be very pleased.

[@giulioluzzardi7632]

That would be a great amp, the Matchless amp stuffed into the Deluxe box with the Celestion Greenback...sounded ace at this end!

[@florentchatelain3057]

I’ve put a Warehouse ET65 and it’s wonderful with a Spitfire: less spiky more low mids. Warehouse really makes good products. Thanks for your videos.

[@michaelknight4041]

I've been wanting to try the ET 65. Really I want to try a 65 with something like a V30 in a 2/12 cab. I build mainly heads and I think a 2/12 cab would sound awesome with a voxish type thing I built awhile back.

[@michaelknight4041]

I've been wanting to do a 2/12 cab with an ET 65 and a greenback or maybe a V30. Kind of two contrasting speakers. Ive heard similar configurations that are really nice.

[@richardlynch5632]

It's great to know that an amp can be tweaked to the clients preference this way😁😎👍

[@vriendelijkegroet]

My Spitfire has reverb and is in a much wider cabinet. Sounds bigger too.

[@donciseau]

Great video sir!

[@kevinfarrellUK]

Good job! I liked the 'instant' A-B with the cabs with a seemingly seamless audio. Makes comparison much easier to hear. I guess it would be a pain in the vid editing, but more of that would be cool. Please excuse me going off topic but I am in uk and keep missing the live q&a's (I listen to them anyway!) but I have noticed you often test with the master volume fully on, is there a tech reason for that? Thanx, and great content as always. ;))

[@PsionicAudio]

Thank Kevin. Yeah, audio memory is short, so whenever possible I like to compare things quickly. A 3 minute test of one thing followed by 3 minutes of another doesn't really help all that much. Our ears acclimate to "the new normal." And amps sound best with the MV up full, so as much as possible I try to demonstrate that (I also try to point out when a MV sucks). I may do an early morning (here) live stream for my European friends. I'm just not really a morning person though. The time difference is a big thing, I know.

[@halhawkins7641]

Very cool!

[@giovanedepedri]

great video, I loved the sound that was left, could you tell me what values ​​and components were replaced?

[@shckltnebay]

I got a 79 DR about two weeks ago and it was not sounding good even after a full recap. The vibe channel was so sensitive I couldn't get it past 2 1/2 without it being piercing loud so I tested the ohms of its volume pot and compared it to the normal channel at five the normal channel is reading 250k while the Vib channel is reading 550k, swapped them and the amp is completely different

[@ryanb94457]

I was revoicing one of my amps recently and had the same issue. It's in an open back cab and trying to tweak it outside the cab is basically a calculated guess exercise.

[@Amp497]

Very useful information. It might be interesting to have a tone circuit bypass switch. A lot of the Hi-Fi guys really hate tone controls. I wonder how the amp would sound with the tone bypass. The same for the guitar. I think there should be tone bypass as an option on an electric guitar. I know this is heresy to just about every electric guitar player, but I would like to hear it without the tone controls, at least as an experiment.

[@PsionicAudio]

In this amp, bypassing the tone circuit would give it a lot more gain but also a ton more high end. This is not like a Fender tone stack. This is a variable high pass like in a guitar but it affects the load of the preceding stage.

[@richardchorley1593]

I don't want tone controls on a hifi amp because the producer and engineer of the music have already done this job and I want the simplest circuit possible . I'm drawn to guitar amps that have the least number of tone controls , but you can really hear the effect they have

[@michaelknight4041]

Yes it's not that unheard of to bypass tone controls. This idea has been used on both guitars and amps. Since passive controls always have some loss in gain just "jumping" them out results in quite a boost. I'd recommend keeping at least some way to control the tone either with the guitar or the amp. I did a conversion of an AO35 Hammond organ reverb amp into a voxish ac15 kind of thing. Instead of a traditional tone stack I used the method of selectable coupling capacitors via a six position rotary switch. After that I just have a volume control and a "cut" control that is a subtle tone control that works on the power section instead of the preamp. The result is a very "set it and forget it" type amp that you basically just adjust to the guitar and speaker cabinet you're using and then play the damn thing! It sounds great and there's no "dialing it in". If I can make it sound good no one else should have any trouble😅

[@johnwilliamson467]

Personally liked the sound of the alps in volume controls . 18 dollars for a 2watt pot is a bit much in tone circuit . Some people are a bit too original only for their own good . Bagging up the original parts is much more thoughtful than most people are. Has a rather workable range of tones to me IMHO.

[@jimbeaux4988]

Forgive me for this beginner question. If the pot has more resistance as it goes up, does that mean less treble gets bled to ground as the pot goes up?

[@michaelknight4041]

Mr. Sonic, have you ever just hooked a new speaker up to a Variac and turned on a low voltage? I've done this a few times to break in a new speaker in a hurry just pump 60 hz through it at just enough voltage to get the speaker moving good. Take it somewhere else and just let it hum! Shoot the coil with your temp gun every once in awhile, I've never had one get hot but id always check em and it lets you know how much voltage you can get away with too. Two or three hours of that really loosens them up.

[@michaelknight4041]

Those pec pots are outrageous! I've never tried them. Are they really that much better?

[@TwangThang57]

Curious about your speaker choice. I've used and enjoyed several different WGS speakers, the G12C/S was the only one I disliked with whatever I drove it with. I used it in a 1x12 open back cab with a '61 6G6 Bassman, an '82 Princeton Reverb II, and a '65 Sano 20 Watt mode, as well as in the combo cab of the PRII l. The big orange WGS just sounded dull and lifeless. What else have you successfully tried that speaker with?

[@jammininthejammies4982]

You didn’t change the screen grid resistors on this one like you did on the DC-30?

[@greggalbraith2842]

Oh my goodness. I have run into the exact problem as the owner of this Spitfire! Yes, although I owned an original Matchless DC30 back in the day, I don't own any amps more than 25 watts or so at this point. (trying to save what's left of my hearing!) I built a Spitire clone from a lowly kit and the tone control is a bit useless. It hits max just after halfway. I was literally trying last night to figure out what pot to sub for the 1meg. Since I'm not nearly as experienced as Psionic, I was thinking maybe it was just me that found the Spitfire tone control problematic. Now I know it is "a thing!"

[@jammininthejammies4982]

Did changing the tone pot affect the gain of the amp? My Spitfire doesn’t get brighter after 1 PM on the tone pot, but it does get gainier.

[@moodyvol89]

Mine is the same! It’s a cool feature, I thought turning up the tone would cause my ears to bleed with treble but not at all.

[@terrybanks5063]

nice one, only found your channel yesterday and subbed. question though, viewers or creator... whats the name of the terminal strip that the components are connected to on this amp? i always forget the bleeding name, help appreciated, thanks!

[@williambock1821]

Semi-related question-does the JMI ac-4 have a 5meg screen resistor on the ef86? I built an ac4 and the schematic calls for one. I replaced it with the more common 1 meg and it TOTALLY opened up the tone. Sounds like a mini ac-15,now. Voltage on the plate is now 69.8. But of course -no more tremolo. I might rebuild the tremolo but I never really cared for it anyway. I was just wondering if the real ac-4 you worked on had that same 5 meg resistor.

[@PsionicAudio]

1M the old ones

[@williambock1821]

Boy I’ll SAY!! What a difference!

[@clickpicks5796]

Do you know where I can get a bad cat cougar 15 and do you recommend it?

[@daveandrew7014]

It’s normally come stock with the G12H Matchless instead of the Greenback Matchless.

[@HandWiredAmps]

? G12H and GBs have brown cork, not black. V30 has black. Ribbing looks similar. This is from quick google pics, so ????? Not sure if they use whatever cork is in stock. Also no coil leads out from the dust cap, like all 3 speakers mentioned.

[@daveandrew7014]

@@HandWiredAmps pretty common knowledge the 1x12 combos comes stock with G12H. I’ve owned 3015 and a Lightning plus played regularly with Spitfires. All came stock with Matchless G12H.

[@daveandrew7014]

@@HandWiredAmps by the way I wasn’t saying the speaker in the video is a G12H. Just noting the fact that they normally stock with G12H.

[@PsionicAudio]

I was going by the sound. Sounds more GB than G12H to me.

[@HandWiredAmps]

@@daveandrew7014 I wasn't calling you out, just interested in what speaker it was. Post can be short on emotion, due to being short. I just built a 40 watt Spitfire version, so this has been interesting to follow. Thank you for your knowledge on the subject!

[@sgt.grinch3299]

Sounds great to me, but your 335 always steals the videos.

[@fredfrederici7562]

smaller voice coil on the wgs