Introducing the Balls Powerful Booster!  What we have here is a recreation of the famous Colorsound Power Boost of the late sixties. The circuit provides a huge volume boost to push your amp into lush, smooth distortion. Coupled with the boost is a tone control circuit that allows for big booming bass, and bright, glassy highs. The tone control is a boost/cut type and leaving the controls in their middle positions results in a basically flat response. Turning each one down or up results in a respective cut or boost of that frequency. The Powerful Booster also uses the original 18V power supply using two 9V batteries to provide increased boost capability. There is also a normal external power jack to accept standard, center-negative pedal power. Using this jack, the Powerful Booster can be run off of a normal 9 volts, as one would with a standard pedal, and the only affect is a little bit less boost. One can also supply 18 volts using the jack, if a suitable 18 volt,center negative power supply is available.

Balls Powerful Boosters were built as part of a custom order for Tommy’s Guitar Shop in Everett, WA, where they will be in stock shortly.

When it rains it pours.  Here’s a new, more official name to an old idea:  the Balls BF-40.  The concept here is a distilled down version of several Fender amps from the 60s, commonly known as the “blackface” amps because of their black control panels.  This is a similar circuit to the bones of a Super or Twin reverb, but just one normal channel.  Its clean and pretty through most of the control range but if you really jack it it’ll crunch up nicely.  Essentially its a perfect clean amp to be used as is, or as a platform for pedalboard fanatics.  It features normal high and low inputs, a volume control, and a full treble/middle/bass tone stack.

40W. 1x12AX7, 1x12AT7, 2x6L6GC.  Fixed Bias with external test and control.

Introducing the Balls TF-40.  This is my take on a classic “tweed” style circuit in the 40W range.  The attempt here was to incorporate all the things that are definitive and characterizing of several tweed Fender amps like the Super, the Pro, and the Bandmaster.  There is clean tone to be found here, but what most people want in a tweed is some of that classic crunchy grit a la Neil Young, Pete Townshend, and so many others.  This guy has that grit in spades.  It features normal high and low inputs, as well as a normal and bright channel that can be jumpered if you like.  The tone stack is a characteristic 50’s style Fender one with Bass and Treble controls, as well as a Presence control.  A master volume was added per the customer’s request, which is accessible from the rear of the amp.

40W. 1x12AY7, 2x12AX7, 2x6L6GC, 1x5U4GB.  Fixed Bias with external test and control.

Amp catch-up posting continues!  This one comes in the form of a custom build in a gutted chassis and cabinet.  The husk in question was an old Ampeg V50H from the 90s, and the goal was vintage-style Orange.  Lovely idea.

First a few words about Orange amps and the vintage vs. the modern company.  The original Orange and Matamp amps of the late sixties and seventies were quite unique beasts when compared to the offerings of Marshall/Fender/Hiwatt/etc.  They featured a different tone stack and phase inversion and all-in-all made for a different sounding amp with unique sounding distortion characteristics. Add to that the snappy design and bright orange tolex made them look absolutely phenomenal.  Well that company came and went, and Orange has re-launched several times over the years, most notably the very successful re-launch in the 2000s to present day.  The sad thing, however, is that the modern day Orange company retained nothing of their former self other than the bright tolex.  The newer Orange offerings have more in common with a Marshall than they do the original units.  This isnt to say that they sound bad or anything, but in my opinion it is criminal to skip out on the unique features of the originals.  If you’ve only had experience with the newer Oranges, i highly recommend you check out the older ones and hear the difference.

So this build was pretty straight vintage with a few tweaks.  First, Orange amps varied their phase inverters very slightly in about 1972, but sonically the difference is huge in my opinion.  Per the customers request, this amp has a switchable option to toggle between either the pre or post 1972 option, but my hunch is that it gets left on the pre-72 setting, as its much more articulate and dynamic sounding.  Additionally this one includes a master volume control like what was used in the late 70s on the Orange OD series of amps.  The amp is a 50W (Orange cited these as 80W but those definitions are largely subjective) with controls laid out in accordance with the customer’s requests.  To match the theme of Orange, an amp named after its color, we went with a black theme on this one and a big “NOIR” badge on the front. The end result was simply mind blowing.  The sound on these is really rich and the tone control capabilities are extremely wide with this tone stack.  Add to that the distortion is different than what you normally hear.  A bit more grit to it, and it goes smoothly from full-bodied clean and huge sounding to this thick creamy distortion.  I go back and forth between my favorite pieces in amp design and the completion of this custom job definitely tipped me back in the direction of the classic Orange elements.

Ahh the next in a series of catch-up posts on amp building.  This build was a custom request for a pretty standard build: a clone of the venerable old Fender 5E3 Deluxe.  This style amp is one of a few Fender tweed amps that are known for making up Neil Young’s signature sound, as well as the sounds on countless other classic recordings.  No real tweaks here, just the standard issue 15 watt 5E3 is all its beautiful, crunchy glory.  The amp has very simple bright and normal inputs, bright and normal volume controls and a master control.  Sprague caps and Kamaya carbon composition resistors were used throughout.  The speaker is a Weber 12A125A Alnico 12″.

DANG. Long time since my last post and ive been busy lately with a lot of amps. Are the two related? Nope. Just laziness. But lets talk about some amps.

Amps! God I love them. And with a really solid one in your corner there’s nothing you cant get done. This one came to me as a salvage effort from a Sovtek head that sat through a flooded basement. Petty much none of it was worth a goddamn thing when i got it except for the chassis and cabinet, but hey thats something. What I wanted was around a 50 watt head to use with bass for myself. Thats right, ding dong…just 50 watts for bass because its often all you need. I like a little bite and im a big fan of the EL34 and british amps in general so I went with a pretty tock recreation of the Marshall 1986 circuit. This was their “Bass” version of the 1987 “Lead” version, and the differences are relatively minor, just some tone shaping elements and a bit lower in the gain department. Channel one is a lower gain and deeper channel, and channel 2 ups the brightness and gain a bit when you really feel like laying into it. A Marshall for bass? YES. This one is a total ripper with both guitar and bass, alike!

Pics show the amp in its original, garbage-bin state, then the reclaimed finished product.

Not long after this amp was finished I got a custom order for an amp that would be used for the same time of application. I made another of the same circuit for the customer in tweed, per his request:

The Buzz Balls is here!

Just spotted two rad demo videos from Gearmanndude up on youtube for the Balls MkII and Black Balls.  Dig em!

Hey all, at current i’ve got three of these for sale from a special run, first come first serve.

These are Uni-Balls one knob germanium fuzzes built with a batch of teeny Mullard OC59s. Compare to Colorsound One-Knob, Vox Distortion Booster, or DAM Meathead but germanium and tuned 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 not a terrible amount of rasp. These guys are total stoner riff machines. Sprague/Vishay caps, IRC Carbon comps, Carling footswitch. $170 USD. $10 domestic shipping, and international ill have to quote you. Email at thedoctor@ballseffects.com

Howdy all, just wanted to share this AWESOME sound clip from a song by K. Campbell called “Summer Dress”.  The solo following the second chorus was recorded using a Balls MkII unit and sounds positively brain-melty.  Dig in!

Summer Dress