The first LBA Guitar Amp

Last night was the first test of my first guitar amp build and it was a massive success!  I'm building a tube amp for Benjamin Wade and the only requirement is that it be a studio amp of Lightning Boy quality.  What we have here is a head that puts out 20 watts of pure class A single ended tube tone.  Its a low gain amp with controls for input gain, bass, mids, treble, output gain.  Its currently powered by a 5U4 rectifier tube, an EL34 power tube and a 12AX7 preamp tube.  In the coming days I will be converting it over to a 6L6 power tube and I'll be adding some simple tweaks such as a jewel lamp, which its currently missing.  It has outputs for 4, 8 and 16 ohm speakers.  

Hows it sound?  Well, on first listening the very first thing I noticed was a significant amount of headroom.  Thats always a good thing!  It can get really clean and "nashville" sounding, but you can dial in a raw and angry crunch with both gain knobs cranked.  With the gain pegged, it has almost a wild sounding purr to it, like a lion.  The breakup is pretty unique sounding in a very hip kind of way.  The EQ controls are buttery smooth and very gradual, unlike the EQ on most amps I have played through over the years.  I may mess with the EQ points a touch because the bass is so deep that its not all that useable for guitar and the low mids are a little too low for my taste, although they sound really nice!  

Next update will include photos at least, but also some sound samples!  I think I shall call her the "Custom 13."