Ruby Gain - Really?

[mydementia]

I recently built the Ruby amp from the GGG layout and really like the clean tone both from the headphone jack and the speaker output.  What's puzzling me is the gain...  I added a 1k gain pot (per the layout) and have no idea what it's doing.  When I crank the volume and gain pots, the distortion is quite nice (I'm a hard rock/metal player - so it's close to my 'mellow' distortion tone).  The problem is that it's REALLY LOUD!!  At headphone levels, I can't get ANY gain.  Any ideas?

I really like this little amp - I'm also trying to find an easy/cheap way to incorporate a pair of 6x9 car speakers (I've had laying around for several years) for the Ruby.  Anyone had success with 3-way car speakers (these are really nice JL Audio 6x9s)?  How do I figure out the impedence for series or parallel wiring?

Thanks in advance.
Mike

[Joecool85]

I would wire them in series for a total of 8 ohms.  All auto speakers are 4 ohm, even 3 ways.

[Peter Snowberg]

I love the sound of 386 distortion too.

The tone you want is inherent in the amp being overdriven, which by definition, means loud.

The way to get that signal back down to quiet is to use an attenuator on the output.

I use a 500 ohm pot in series with a cheap 10 inch Celestion and I get a really nice bedroom volume with that same overdrive tone. I've never tried the pot with headphones, but it should work similarly.

Get a 100 to 500 ohm pot, wire the CCW end to ground, the CW end to the output cap, and the wiper to the headphones with the return being ground. That should do you quite well.