Epiphone Valve Junior - the Gain Matrix Mod

Here's a gain reduction mod I recently completed on an Epiphone Valve Junior. The owner was looking for less volume and less gain. This mod has 3 switches each with three positions:







With all the switches set to the left the amp is stock. Flipping a switch to the center position reduces the gain by taking the cathode bypass cap for that stage out of the circuit.

Flipping it all the way to the right switches in a different value cap for the cathode bypass. In the right position the upper two switches act as differently voiced bright/body switches and the bottom one acts as a deep switch.

The amp can now be made quiet enough to be used at home. It can be cleaned up for less gainy sounds and brightened for more clarity. And it can be quickly returned to stock if you miss that muddy sound it had when it was new. The various combinations of three switches give a total of 26 alternate voicings.

I shot pictures of this mod but I haven't written up a whole description. If anyone is interested in seeing the whole process, let me know in the comments section of this post and I'll put the details together.

Fender Champion 600 Cathode Bypass Mod Pt 3

Here's the response curve for the switched cathode bypass caps in part 2 of this post. The first graph is for the stock tone stack:



From top to bottom the curves show:

6V6, 1st stage (12AU7) and 2nd stage (12AX7) engaged (stock).
6V6 and 1st stage (12AU7) engaged.
6V6 bypass cap engaged.
All bypass caps disconnected.



The curves in the next graph follow the same pattern but this time the Tone Stack Bypass is engaged. There is a great deal more gain with the tone stack bypassed. If you click to enlarge the graphs and look at the right hand scale you'll see that the peak response in the modified amp is about 10dB higher than in the stock one.



This amp has the 12DW7 mod installed so the 1st stage has less gain and correspondingly less increase in gain with the cap engaged. In a stock amp the jump from the aqua curve to the green curve would be increased to about the same as the jump between the green curve and the dark purple curve on top.

Fender Champion 600 cathode bypass mod Pt 2

When I wrote part 1 of this post I'd been planning to lower the cathode bypass capacitor values in order to clean up the up the bass response. What I ended up doing was removing the cathode bypass capacitors all together in order to get a bit of compression for a fuller low volume clean tone. The effect is a more roundness and a good deal less volume - very nice for a bedroom level clean sound. This meant I needed to find some other ways to control the low end (see the Input Voicing and Presence Plus mods).


For this mod I put in a three pole four position rotary switch that adds the cathode bypass caps in one by one. With the rotary switch the gain of the amp goes up with each setting until it reaches the stock (fully bypassed) position:




This could easily have been three separate switches, but I thought the single control made the operation a bit clearer and didn't clutter up the chassis as much. Since I'm limiting bass response in a couple other ways I ended up keeping the caps at their stock values. The first and second stages could easily have values from part 1 substituted if you have a need for greater bass reduction.

Here is:

THE UBIQUITOUS DISCLAIMER: AKAVALVE ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE SAFETY OF ANYONE IMPLEMENTING THESE INSTRUCTIONS. IF YOU ARE NOT FAMILIAR WITH SAFE PRACTICE IN HIGH VOLTAGE CIRCUITS, DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS YOURSELF.

And here's the internal view of the switch with the ground wires in place:





This is how the ground wires hook up:




The wire with the black arrow connects to the lower side of the C4 space on the pc board.

The wire with the blue arrow connects to the lower side of the C10 space on the pc board.

The wire with the red arrow connects to the lower side of the C3 space on the pc board.

Here is the rest of the switch wiring. Notice that the leads for the large blue cap (which serves as C4) jump three pins on the switch.


The stage 2 wire jumper two pins. This wire attaches to the shrinkwrapped end of C10 (indicated by the red arrow).



The wire connecting stage 1 to the switch connects to only one pin. It connects to the shrinkwrapped end of C3 (again, indicated by the red arrow).






If you've removed these caps and are reinstalling them, make sure you observe the proper polarity when you put them back in. The indented end of the cap lines up with the indent in the white outline on the pc board.

For convenience of installation, I replaced the original C4 with a axial lead cap of the same value. It's the large blue cap in the photo below. The negative side of the cap connects to the switch and the positive side is connected to the high side of the pc board connection for C4. The negative lead of the cap holds it pretty well in place but there's a dab of silicone underneath just for good measure.



This switch functions kind of like a staged clean master volume. If you're interested in getting distortion out of your preamp circuit, this mod could be rearranged to serve as a sort of dirty master volume instead. If you're interested let me know and I'll post the details.

Fender Champ - comparing the 5F1 and 5E1 circuits

In modding their Champion 600's, some people are trying to get closer to earlier versions of the Fender Champ circuit, the 5E1 and 5F1. This post is to clarify the differences between those two early circuits. There are two significant ones.

The first is the missing cathode bypass capacitor in the 5F1. Eliminating this cap reduces the first stage gain. Reducing the value instead of eliminating it completely will give a bit of a treble boost (see my earlier post "Champion 600 cathode bypass mod" for a chart showing how different capacitor values will effect the response).


Secondly, in the 5F1 champ the choke has been eliminated and a screen supply node consisting of a capacitor and resistor has been added. This saved Fender some cash, as a choke is a good bit more expensive than a cap and a resistor. In a Class A amp a choke doesn't contribute to sag they way it does in a Class AB amp, but the change still has an effect. The screen supply resistor in the 5F1 drops the voltage for the screen below that of the plate. Since the screen voltage actually has more effect on plate current than plate voltage, this changes the character of the output section. If you really want to hear if the choke makes a difference between the two circuits you need to put the choke in series with the screen supply resistor, not eliminate the resistor completely.

Fender Champion 600 cathode bypass mod

This post is from the series of mods I've done to this Champion 600. I'm finally getting down to changing the circuit a bit. My main goal is to clean the amp up a bit, especially in the low end. It's probably going to require a speaker replacement eventually, but I'm starting with the cathode bypass caps.

With most 12AX7 circuits, smaller bypass cap values will reduce the low end response by a bit less than 6dB. The frequency at which the response is down by 3dB is, logically, the "3dB down point" or the "knee frequency". Changing cathode bypass caps can be a bit more subtle than changing coupling caps since the low end response is never reduced more than 6dB - only the knee frequency is changed.

There are two cathode bypass caps in the preamp section of the Champion 600. Either or both of them can be changed out to shape the frequency response of the amp.

Here they're indicated on the pc board layout - C3 is for the first stage and C10 is for the second:





A standard tuned 6 string guitar isn't going to produce anything below 80Hz and even the low frequencies it does produce aren't going to reproduce well though the Champion 600's speaker. Below is a chart with values calculated for the 3dB down point with a series of common cap values. Note the stock value of 22uF has a -3dB point of 9Hz. I'm going to start with a 1.5uF in the first stage and a .68uF in the second and work from there.

If electrolytic caps are used (and they probably will be for the larger values unless you've got deep pockets) it's very important to maintain the polarity of the cap or it will explode under use.




This amp came to me with a printed copy of the Frondelli Mod . The mod itself is fine, but a number of the changes detailed there do the opposite of what this amp owner is looking for. He's looking for a cleaner sound with more low end headroom. Even though Frondelli is limiting the low end somewhat, he is also increasing gain for a more saturated sound. If that's what you're interested in, though, you can tweak the bypass cap value to your taste there as well. The blue resistors in the diagram below indicate the ones changed for the 1st stage in the Frondelli mod (R8 and R2). The bypass cap associated with that stage (C3) is indicated in orange.


Jon Frondelli recommends a .68 uF cap here, but you're free to change it to taste. Below is a chart showing calculated -3dB values adjusted for the new plate and cathode resistor values in the Frondelli mod.



If you're interested in how these values are calculated, drop me an email - or visit Randall Aiken's site.