marhsall 18 watt clone

Ceriatone is well known as a provider of quality clone kits, components and amps. The stuff rocks pretty good. I would really like to try their JTM45 clone.

You can find more info on 18watt.com. Lots of people use their stuff.

 

.......and the price is right as well!

 

I built the 18w kit from GDS amps. It was a great kit with a good instruction manual. I later heard about Ceriatone. I have heard many good things about their stuff & no complaints. I think you wouldn't go wrong with either. The Ceriatone is cheaper by a 100 dollars I think & is built or save 200 as kit.
Pretty good deal. I am not sure who makes his Trannies though. The GDS trannies are clones of the Marshall made by Heyboer. I built mine as a Trem head & have since changed it to the TMB for more tone options since I dont really use trem.

Super amp from either

Some build pics

 

Nik (Ceriatone) is a great guy. I've never heard his OT, but I'm sure that if you wanted to order the Heyboer OT instead he'd supply a kit/amp without his OT for you to add the Heyboer.

 

Wow MikeP, that is a nice looking build you done there. I may be interested in an attempt build myself a tremelo 18 watter for slide playing. I was looking at my Reinhard 36 watter guts a while back and can see why these amp builders like their jobs. I'll bet you guys have alot of fun putting these things together and tinkering with different diode, cap values, tube combinations ect. to arrive at the desired tones. I don't think I could ever get it as neat as what I see in my amp though.

 

Hi
Yeah it is a lot of fun & kinda addicting
I am not that versed in it though & only assemble kits. I am learning though & that was the original reason I built the 18w

I also just finished this last night. So far I like it. I wanted a bedroom amp that you could actually drive the output tube not just the preamp. I might sell the 18w Marshall clone as it is too much amp for my bedroom
So far the Gilmore sounds pretty sweet to my ears. It is only 1/2 watt but even that is actually quite loud for a bedroom.
The kit is from guytronix.com & is called the Gilmore Jr.

Pics of the Gilmore

 

now THAT is cool!

right on brother!

 

What's a TMB?

 

TMB stands for Treble, Middle, Bass
The original version just has a volume & single tone control
on the normal channel & on the Trem channel it has Speed, intensity, Tone & volume.
So when you do the mod you have the normal channel & on the trem side you no longer have trem but you have those three tone controls.
Very nice actually.
If you look at the different pics in my build you see the old face plate versus the new face plate
My build

 

Thank you! That is a killer Idea! I've always found tremolo to be the most useless effect anyway, lol. I'm having issues with my 1974X, I'm getting a crazy squeal and pulsing on the tremolo channel with the trem controls fully counterclockwise.

 

You know when I first built the clone I had that problem too.
It turned out to be a lead dress problem. Seems the trem circuit is super sensitive to how the wires are running.
If you are careful & use a wooden chopstick you can turn it on & move a few of the trem wires (one hand only & only holding the chopstick) You can probably find the problem & just move the wire a bit.
Do this only if you feel comfy touching high voltage things
If not take it to a service guy.
Mike

 

If I remember the variious postings at 18watt.com right, the trem circuit is very sensitive to the gain of the valve in that position. So a valve swap may fix things.

 

Yes it is valve sensitive too
I had to use a 12ax7wxt from sovtek
the amp only laughed at my NOS tubes