Author Archives: ballseffects

Balls Twenty

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Always and forever never making blog posts.  So here goes…a build from a little while back which is currently on sale at Main Drag Music in Brooklyn NY!

The Balls Twenty is an amp designed around several classic elements from English and American amps of the 60s, and is well suited for guitarists that seek that a vintage, classic tone with large tonal flexibility. The Twenty is a 20-watt, 6V6 powered single channel amplifier with simple, yet extremely flexible tone controls to make the amp capable of producing a wide variety of tones from blues to classic rock and country by just adjusting the knobs. The twenty can also run the full gamut from beautiful clean tones, light overdrive, to full-blown thick sludgy crunch. The Twenty also takes pedals extremely well and loves boosts (especially Rangemasters!), drives, fuzz, etc. Like all Balls effects units and custom amplifiers, the Twenty is built in Brooklyn NY with hand-wired care, high quality parts, and attention to detail.

As always, with any questions or requests for custom builds please feel free to contact me at thedoctor@ballseffects.com

 

 

Balls P-50 (Apr. 2015)

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Here’s a custom build from a little over a year ago that I neglected to write about.  The customer in this case wanted a pretty standard English heavy rock sound and so this is based on the Marshall plexi format with a few appointments made to my taste.  Channel one is dark and pretty clean and channel two a bit more bright and gainy.  My favorite way to do a plexi!  Parts in this are Sprague orange drop caps, Mag-Comp iron, CTS pots, and my favored pairing of Mullard reissue EL34s and TungSol pre-amp tubes.  The amp comes standard with jacks and pot for exterior bias adjustment, because screw paying for a tube re-bias!

Balls H-100 (Aug. 2015)

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What we have here is a pretty bog-standard Hiwatt-style build.  This is built using a traditional Dave Reeves style layout, and a DR103 circuit from the early 70s.  Parts in this are Mallory caps, Mag-Comp iron, CTS pots, and my favored pair of Mullard reissue EL34s and TungSol pre-amp tubes.  About the only departures from a vintage circuit that have been made for this build were an adjustable bias circuit, with standard jacks/pot for exterior bias adjustment, and full/half power switch on the rear panel.  Not much else to say about this one but enjoy the pics!

Balls Piglet (Nov. 2015)

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Holy smokes its been FOREVER since I wrote a post….time to catch up!

The more savvy among you may have heard of a rare Marshall called a “Pig”.  In the late 60s, Marshall’s very first foray into 200 watt amps was a unit called the Marshall 200.  It utilized 4 KT88 tubes, and a very unique preamp not used by any other amp in the Marshall line.  The 200 in this configuration only lasted about a year or so and was replaced with the more common Marshall Major which used a preamp much more akin to the other JMP amps at the time.  The original 200s are rare.  And theres really only one famous guitar player known for using them: Mick Ronson during his time with Bowie and The Spiders from Mars.  The story goes that Ronno nicknamed it “The Pig” because of its large size.

The controls on a Pig were unique.  The preamp circuitry actually separates the input signal into two paths, one filtered for increased treble and one for increased bass.  Each path has a volume control associated with it to allow the player to turn up/down the highs and lows respectively.  Following that there is a single master volume control to rein in the overall volume, and thats all you need! The amp had intrigued me for some time but no one really needs a 200 watt amp nowadays, so what I set out to do was capture the same tone but with a smaller output section.  Instead of four KT88 output tubes, I went with two KT66 tubes to get it down to a much more reasonable 45-50 watts.  Other than that the preamp is essentially stock the way Marshall made, with information culled from various schematic snippets, photos of original units, and the input of other experts.  The result is the Balls Piglet!

No clips yet, but they’ll be coming soon.  Sonically it nails the Ronson/Bowie sound!

 

Buzz Balls In Action

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It pleases the fuzz-gods when I get recorded clips of Balls pedals in action.  This one just came in from Justin from the band Honeysmoke out of Charleston, SC.  He’s using his Buzz Balls unit on their recording for “Gypsy Girl”.  Its an awesome usage and a perfect reminder that there’s plenty of room for fuzz-tones outside of the heavy/psyche/stoner box.  He’s told me that the track isnt finished yet, but it sounds absolutely killer to me.  The Buzz Balls solo is great and happens at about the 1:50 mark in the track.  Thanks, Justin!

 

As a reminder the Buzz Balls is currently on sale for $145.  Get em direct through this site or at Main Drag Music in Brooklyn, NY!

 

Clearance Time

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Hey all, got some stuff on the shelves that needs to get on its way to make room for other new stuff, so i’ll be periodically posting some special deals.  In this case its a deal on the last Uni-Balls units.

I’ve got two of these available; one normal and one misprint with a slightly crooked label. These are absolutely KILLER one knob germanium fuzzes built with a batch of Mullard OC59s. Compare to the Colorsound One-Knob Fuzz, Vox Distortion Booster, or DAM Meathead but with germanium transistor goodness and tuned special to my taste. The tuning is just slightly darker than what you get with the Colorsound box. The OC59s sound stellar. Nice, big and round, with a minimal amount of rasp. These guys are total stoner riff machines. Sprague/Vishay caps, IRC Carbon comps, Carling footswitch. One knob controlling output volume.  $150 USD for the normal one, and $120 for the misprint. $10 domestic shipping, and if you want international shipping ill have to quote you.

Email me direct for either of these at thedoctor@ballseffects.com

And here’s the misprint unit: