For Sale: PRS Custom 22 Soapbar
Sometimes the chase is better than the having. So it goes with the PRS Custom 22 Soapbar I purchased last year after chasing it for over a year. It looks beautiful and sounds great, but I just never bonded with it. Now it’s off to a good home.
The guitar is from 2001, and the SN is in the 1 54xxx range. Overall the guitar is in excellent condition for an eight year old instrument. There are almost no signs of wear—no pick marks scratches or dings on the top, sides, back or neck. The frets look great and the Indian rosewood fretboard has great coloration. There are a couple of very small “issues:” the first are two tiny—literally pinpoint size—marks on the top of the guitar. These are nearly imperceptible, but I wanted to point them out. There are some pick scratches on the middle P90 and the guitar had different tuning machines fitted at some point.
They say that a picture is worth a 1000 words, so here are 10,000 words. Click on any one for a larger version.
For Sale: Ceriatone DC30 with Matchless Transformers
Sold!
I’ve been bitten by the amp building bug and am selling my Ceriatone DC30 Matchless clone to fund some other projects.
Building the Ceriatone DC30 Matchless clone was a lot of fun, but after building my JMP50 clone I found out how enjoyable building from scratch can be. So… I’ve decided to sell my DC30 clone to fund some other possible projects.
Information about Ceriatone’s take on the DC30 can be found on their site. The DC30 is Ceriatone’s take the classic Matchless DC30, a 30-watt hand-wired, two channel amp. Channel 1 is driven by two 12AX7 in a parallel-triode configuration, while one high-gain EF86 pentode drives Channel 2. Channel 1 controls include volume, bass and treble. Channel 2 is controlled by a simple six-position tone switch and volume. Both channels share a “high treble” cut control and bypassable master volume. A 12AX7 phase inverter drives four EL84 power tubes. The rectifier circuit gives you the flexibility of using one 5AR4 or two 5V4s.
Much of the basic circuitry in this amp was build by Nic and the guys at Ceriatone before being shipped to me. I installed OEM Matchless transformers and choke to try and get a little closer to an authentic Matchless sound. Currently the amp is outfitted with good-quality tubes, including Tung-Sol and Mullard preamp tubes, and JJ EL84 output tubes. I’ve swapped the GZ34 rectifier tube for a Sovtec SSR solid-state rectifier, but I can include a GZ34 as well.
The amp sounds great, though I have a hard time describing amp “tones.” It isn’t as crunchy as my JMP50—I’m enjoying the JMP dimed!—but is more of a medium-gain sound that is versatile and usable for anything from clean to light breakup, up to overdrive.
Here are some pics. The oak cabinet will be included as it helps protect the amp during shipping. It works fine, too, but safety-conscious will want to cover the front and back with something so the unaware can’t stick their hands in an grab a hot tube.
My new “Old Wood” ‘08 R9
After 14 years of waiting and looking, I’m now the proud owner of a Gibson Les Paul. A stunning 2008 1959 Reissue, to be precise.
I’ve wanted a Les Paul for years. I remember going around to different guitar stores and checking out the historics when they first came out around ‘94. (I still have the original Gibson Historic Collection brochure I got from Victor’s House of Music.) I was just out of grad school and there was no way I could afford one at the time. A couple years ago and I started playing again and could afford better gear so I started looking around but was discouraged by the limited choices I had locally and put off by the usurious asking prices. I wound up buying other equipment and telling myself I was happy.
But GAS for an R9 proved irresistible. About a year ago, I started trying to hunt down an LP that would get me close to “old wood.” The few times that I found a great guitar, it was snatched up before I could get my act together. When a MyLesPaul.com forum member listed this one on eBay, I jumped. In addition to the old wood top, he thoughtfully upgraded it with all the good stuff—Peter Florence Voodoo ‘59 pickups (amazing), Dr. Vintage ‘50s wiring, Vintage Clone ABR-1, RS Guitarworks tailpiece, Historic Makeovers inlays. This is a great guitar.
Maybe it’s just the honeymoon, but I don’t think I’ve even picked up another guitar more than once in the past two weeks.
My Old Yamaha Pacifica 1412 Lives!
I had this guitar for over a year with the best of intentions to fix it up, but never got around to it. There were always other guitars, different projects, so I traded it away toward a Yamaha Weddington Classic at the beginning of the year. In less than a month, the new owner cleaned it up, had a setup done, reinstalled the pickups and had the guitar back on the road. It looks great, he’s happy with it, and I’m happy with the Classic. Win-win all around. How cool is that?
JMP50 Clone Build, Part 10
A shakedown run with the new JMP50 clone. It lives!
After I finished the building and running through the basic tests I dragged my 2x12 cab and guitar down to the basement for a shakedown test. I started with the presence and tone controls at 5 and the channel volumes and MV at 0. Gradually increasing the MV and channel volumes, I was thrilled—and a little surprised—that everything worked the first time! The tone controls did what they were supposed to do, and the volumes worked correctly. Ramping up the MV and channel volumes, the 50W was getting loud… fast. I didn’t keep it cranked for long for the sake of marital harmony.
I did notice that in addition to what I expect is normal gain-stage noise, there was a fair bit of hum. Too much. Poking and prodding the leads going to V1-V3 didn’t seem to have any effect on the hum, so I began to think there was a problem with a ground point. Up to this point each cap can and the transformer each had their own ground point. The turret board and input jacks shared a common ground lug, drilled into the chassis between the volume pots and the input jacks (I noticed this on Greg Germino’s amps). I re-ran the input jack grounds over to the buss bar on the turret board, next to the volume grounds, and then took another lead off the buss bar from the presence end back to the same point the transformer is grounded. This helped a lot. There’s still some hum when I start to turn the amp past home playing volumes that I need to work on. I’ll probably take things apart again and ground each of the cap cans back to the same mounting point, creating a true star ground and see if that solves the problem.
Othewise, I’m still getting used to the overall sonic signature. Ch. 1 is a little brighter, and ch. 2 is a little muddier, than I would want individually. Combine them, however, and things start to sound pretty good. I would describe it as woody or stringly, but that doesn’t mean much. Higher gain than I was anticipating, but still relatively articulate. And I’m enjoying the “kerrang.” Even my wife noticed the difference and said she prefers the JMP50 over my last build, a Matchless DC30 clone.
What’s next? I just ordered a head case from Metro and will probably make some minor tweaks before I wrap it all up. I may try a .022uf coupling cap and different bright cap in ch.1, and some different values in ch.2 to see if I can tame ch.1 and make ch.2 a little more aggressive. I also want to swap out the 3A diodes for 1A fast recovery diodes and see how that sounds. I might replace the 10k bulk resisters in the power supply with Vishay/Dales just to be consistent. And, if I get really adventurous, I may try mounting the 5.6k swamp resistors on the turret board with leads down to V4 & V5, but I’m not sure how I would stake the turrets without taking the whole board out of the amp. Otherwise, there’s not much else I feel compelled to do other than get some playing time in.