any Pignose amp mods?

[TheWaker43]

hey folks,
    Before anyone laughs, I know it is not a great amp.  In fact mine has been sitting in my folk's basement for almost ten years now.  Well, the past year I broke it back out to use as a bench-top test amp rather than keep walking to my music room.  I am really just looking for some new fun project while waiting for other parts to arrive.  Are there even any good 5" speakers?  Or has anyone rehoused a Ruby or Noisy Cricket into a 7-100 cab.  Just looking for something to do, thanks
     casey 

[petemoore]

  Pignose is a fine design, the one I have here has what looks like output transformer in it. That says 'inexpensive was not the bottom design-line on this one'.
  Gets last drops of what 9v 'juice' can offer frequency/output. 
  Er..that I've managed to glean from 9v so far.
  open the case, use the volume knob, alter what goes in it using efx.
  It's a little does what she does with 9v and 1knob amp, a treble knob or tonestack feeding it can help it produce various amp/speaker effects.
  The large magnet speaker in mine is bright brute mid-honker, haven't found anything more loud [small box makes penetrating signal with this in it.
  There are alternatives, I searched 5'', 6'', 8'' 10'' 12'' speakers pretty thouroughly recently, in 5''size I found a few 'super for guitar' entries.
  Moving up from there, 2 speaker box, or 1 larger speaker. Big difference between the eq on pignose stock and vintage-stereo 6''er 'featherweight' alnicos in larger enclosure.
  Otherwise the supply voltage [check to see what the max is, subtract at least 10% for AC input surge margin, pretty sure it is only the capacitors that you need to be concerned with as far as do-not-over-voltage.].
  Bumping the supply voltage up increase frequency response and current output of amp. Basically more headroom at higher supply potential.
  Improved performance from different amp ?
  Factory stuff is the high performance for easy-cheap route unless:
  You happen to have say most of the amp/power supply laying around anyway, perhaps some chassis and wrapper goods etcetera's, you already mentioned time.
  There is a special need-goal that a factory amp won't do. These cases are fewer and farther between for SS amplifiers [tube too]. The best use of DIY amplification is made by those who understand why making it 'this' way stands to gain them an advantage.
  With the advent of chipamps, the output amplifier circuit is more like a little addition to the power supply, preamp, heatsink, layout, and of course...anything else applied.
 
    

[B Tremblay]

I've found that the Pignose sound is helped by a buffer.  I recall liking the Tonemender set for unity gain ahead of the Pignose, as it provided the buffering and some EQ-shaping.

[hackertronix]

i've read that pignose makes a good talkbox.