Tone Stack Question

[blown240]

I am going to build a small stomp box / amp that is going to have a Vibracaster style preamp with either a Marshall or Ampeg style tone stack in it, followed by a little gem style amp. 

What I need to know is the tone stack will operate the same at 9v or 12v as it does at high voltages?  Like will an Amped B15 tone stack sound the same at 12v as it does at over 200 volts.

Thanks!

[Bill Mountain]

Well, tonestacks are passive so you won't need any power.  But you'll most likely need a buffer or some make up gain which can be powered by 12 volts.

If you're talking about using all of the tubes that surround the tone stacks in these amps then you could just build that as a preamp and you won't need to build the vibra/valvecaster.  It should work (as long as your power supply is up to the task) but you won't have very much clean headroom and most of your overdrive sounds will have that compressed starved plate sound which you may or may not like.

Good luck!

[FiveseveN]

The 386 has plenty of gain so I doubt you'd need extra make-up if you plan to use it clean-ish. In fact you might still want to pad down the output if you want to keep the preamp's "character". Are you planning on using a "master volume" control (between preamp and poweramp)?

[blown240]

The layout will be like this:

Inout - Valvecaster - Tone Stack - Vibracaster - Little Gem (or Ruby)