Good four stage tube overdrive?

[shawsofhell]

Hi I'm after a circuit for a great 4 stage tube overdrive. My current amp I a Laney GH-100L which i think has an awsome overdrive tone the only problem is that it is single channel so I have to use it clean and run some tranny based pedals to get my distorted sound. All I'm after is at least four gain stages, bass/mid/treble/gain/volume controls. Any ideas would be helpful!

Is it possible for me to replicate to preamp circuit from my amp and build a replica of that? http://www.laney.co.uk/html/Downloads/Services/GH100L.pdf
If so how would I do that?

Also what sort of voltages do these tube overdrives need?

[Lonestarjohnny]

Checkout some of the previous thread's on 6V & 12V DC radio tubes some of the guys are building with, I'm sure you could build a Cascadeing Preamp circuit out of them and at 12 V dc it would sure be a lot safer if you've never dealt with high voltage tube's before,
JD

[petemoore]

I just built a couple Shaka Tube cuicuits, and they do sound great...quite a difference between a tube and transistor stage IMO.
 Anyway by just adding another Tube stage or more to the input of an amp, you might find you like it for the extra drive it provides in a tubey way.

[slajeune]

Hi shadow,

as JD mentioned, you could use 2 x 12U7 (not 12AU7, but 12U7).  This would give you 4 gain stages.  They are 12V tubes and therefore, are safe to play with.  Their gain is a bit low (x20), but, with 4 stages and proper biasing, you could get a very nice distortion with NO ic's or opamps, only tubes (and a voltage regulator)!

Cheers,
Steph.

[Johan]

.. i think has an awsome overdrive tone the only problem is that it is single channel so I have to use it clean and run some tranny based pedals to get my distorted sound.

why dont you set the amp up for overdrive and then use an stompbox-EQ to lower the volume and reshape the signal for your clean sound?...its a little backward thinking but it works...like a "cleanbox" instead of a fuzzbox...

Johan

[shawsofhell]

i've tried that approach but i normally use all five gain stages on my amp and when i tried it i couldn't get it to clean up all that well.

So do these 12v tubes sound as good as a pair of 12ax7?

[slajeune]

Hi Shawsofhell,

i've tried that approach but i normally use all five gain stages on my amp and when i tried it i couldn't get it to clean up all that well.

So do these 12v tubes sound as good as a pair of 12ax7?

I think that they sound great!  But, don't take my word for it.  Go here http://www.sopht.ca/index.php?s=26 and listen to the clip of the 12AL8 ( here is the direct link http://www.sopht.ca/sounds/sopht_12al8.mp3 ).  This is basically 3 stages driving a tetrode.  Change the tetrode for another triode stage and you could be all set.  The distortion will be different though.

Cheers,
Steph.

[YouAre]

I'm also really interested in laney like distortion.

[Lonestarjohnny]

Why don't you build a Emulator Pedal of the Laney Overdrive Cha. if you run into a problem doing this I'm sure the Guy's at ROG would help you out with any problem you might have doing this, you can read some of the older threads on this subject to get some good Ideas for your project,
JD

[Paul Marossy]

I think that "The Real McTube II" is a four gain stage circuit, IIRC.

[jazzyfingers04]

Correct me if I am wrong, but couldn't a person just build the latest version of the sopht amp and use a different transformer to stepdown the output to line level? This would allow us all to have power tube distortion that could be placed in  any effects chain. If I am just missing something, please point it out, but this seems to me to be the best way to use this idea.

[cd]

I'd try a Soldano SLO type circuit.  Unless you're scared of high voltage (and it's good to be if you've never used it before).