
The subject amp and the speaker cabinet used for recording Tone Samples.

PSK board mounted at power supply end of chassis. Note four
board-mounted pots for
individual tube bias and four 1-ohm bias sensing cathode resistors.
Power Scale pot is at lower left, mounted where Presence used to
be. MOSFET is mounted to heatsink
below fuse holders.

Another shot of the board.

Fan mounted in filter cap hole. Heat sink is just below.

Heat sink for MOSFET. Note nicely braided wire; my wife helped me
with that.

Close-up of heat sink. There's more clearance between the heat sink
bolt and the fuse holder than there appears.

Now this would be hokey if it weren't so clever. This is the fan power
supply. It's the guts of one of those "universal" wall-wart adaptors
that can switch between 3, 6, 9 and 12VDC. I have it set so the fan is
running below its rated voltage so it's quiet but still moves air. The white stuff on the chassis is what's left of sticky-back
cable ties installed by a previous owner for a since-removed mod. |
Overview
First let me say that this was not a
simple weekend project!
Installing this kit required that I fully understood my amp's power supply
design, knew my way around the amp's guts, was able to really read a schematic
and board layout, and had good electronics construction habits. If you've never been inside an amp before, don't try this
at home!
Also to be considered was that the kit
would add two new controls
to the amp -
Power Scale and Drive Compensation. For me, this meant moving
Presence and Bass to the rear
panel so I could have the PSK controls on the front of the amp. If it were just one control,
I would put
Presence in one speaker jack hole, but since there were two, I would have had to
- gulp - drill. In my case, there were already holes
in the rear of the chassis from a previous owner's effects loop, which I had removed. Drilling would
not be acceptable on a vintage amp!
The Kit
The Power Scaling Kit (PSK-1, US$148) came
as parts in Ziplok bags plus several pages of photocopied hand-written instructions.
Parts included a MOSFET, a couple of small transistors, several diodes, resistors and
capacitors, four small bias pots and a bigger 2w pot for the Power Scale control (my kit was an
early one, and did not include a Drive Compensation control - more on
that below).
I also bought a Circuit Card Kit (CCK,
US$42) for making up the eyelet board. The CCK included enough board material and
eyelets to make an additional board to replace the amp's stock printed circuit board, which I did after
I had completed the PSK.
Construction
A board layout was provided in the
PSK instructions, but I came up with my own because I wanted to mount the four bias pots and
cathode (bias sensing) resistors on the board. I also elected to put the
rectification on the board. I came up with a good layout on a 3"x6" board which fit at the power
transformer end of the chassis, mounted on short standoffs.
I drilled the board, installed the eyelets
and soldered in the parts. I then installed the board in the amp,
connected it to the power supply and output section and mounted the Power Scale
pot. I tested voltages without tubes, made some tweaks to get the bias
voltage in the right range, and I was ready to go.
I put in my tubes and fired 'er up.
Set bias, no problem. I found that Power Scale adjusts B+ from
about 450VDC down to less than 20(!). B+ was 465 stock, so there is some
loss in the regulator circuit, which I anticipated, and is not a problem for me,
though it reduces maximum power somewhat.
Bias voltage tracks with B+. The
four bias
controls have a very wide range, much more than a typical bias adjustment pot, so any tubes can be
installed and biased right up without changing any
resistors. Because of the four individual controls, non-matched
sets or even different tube types can be used, according to London Power.
At this point, I ran into two problems.
Problem #1: Increased
Power Amp Sensitivity
I had expected that as I turned down the Power Scale
control, the output signal would basically shrink, but not otherwise change. So, if I was playing with a certain
amount of distortion, when I turned down Power Scale, I would still have the same amount of distortion,
only quieter.
Not so. As Power Scale is turned down,
the amount of signal required to drive the power section is reduced, too.
Without the Drive Compensation control, distortion increases dramatically as the power amp's
clipping point moves downward, until even the smallest signal drives the amp
into clipping. You can imagine what this sounds like. As you
turn down Power Scale, the amp's maximum power goes down, but it also gets much more
distorted, and when you stop playing, the noise isn't any quieter.
Remember, we're talking about a non-master-volume amp,
in which
there was no way to reduce the signal being
fed into the power section. Turning
down the amp's volume control helped some, but changed the tone, because the
preamp was no longer being driven hard, so there was no preamp distortion in
the mix.
Of course, this was not the result I
expected. Several emails to Kevin O'Connor resolved the
problem and, I believe, resulted in the Drive Compensation control becoming a stock part of
the kit. Drive Compensation is electronically similar
to a
Master Volume, but as it is being used here, it functions quite differently. Normally, a MV isolates the
preamp from the power amp so you can overdrive the preamp and send some of
the signal to the power amp. Used with the PSK, it compensates for the reduced
drive requirements of the scaled-down power amp, preventing
excessive power amp distortion.
Drive Compensation lets you maintain
the correct mix of preamp and power amp overdrive at any volume level as the
power amp is effectively resized via Power Scale. While it is somewhat of a pain to dial
in two controls, it works quite well. An ideal solution would be to
electronically (or mechanically) track the two controls together with one knob, maintaining a correct amount of drive at
all times.
Problem #2: Excessive Heat
I had a lot of problems with heat. As
I was beginning to test the installed kit, I found the MOSFET would get very
hot - hot enough to burn my finger instantly. The PSK came with
two small aluminum heat sinks
for the MOSFET. Alternatively, the
instructions indicated that the MOSFET could be mounted directly to the
chassis. I was using the heat sinks and did not try the chassis-mounting
idea.
The kit was doing what is was supposed to
do, but the heat became too much, and the MOSFET
blew. Kevin was kind enough to send me a new one, free of charge.
Before I toasted the new one, I knew I had to come up with much more heat dissipation.
I devised a solution involving a small
computer CPU fan and heat sink. The fan sits on top of the chassis
directly over an existing filter capacitor hole (I moved the cap under the
chassis), with the heat sink
directly below. Screws hold
the fan and sink together, sandwiching the chassis between them (see pics). The 12VDC fan is powered by an adjustable-voltage A/C adapter
mounted inside the chassis.
This cooling scheme works quite well, and
I've had no problems with heat since installing it.
UPDATE:
Still not satisfied with the heat
issue, I wanted to try a different approach. I purchased London Power's
Cascode kit ("PSC," apparently no longer listed on the London Power web site).
This kit included another MOSFET, discrete parts and instructions. With
two MOSFETs to share the load, heat is greatly reduced.
I mounted both MOSFETS to the end
of the steel chassis with mica insulators and heat sink goop. I removed
the fan and fan power supply, and I put he cap back in the hole where it
belongs.
The MOSFETS and chassis get nice
and warm, but never as hot as before. I've gigged with the amp several
times, rehearsed with it a lot, and I've never had a problem with the PSK+PSC.
What to Scale?
The PSK's instructions tell you that it is
possible to scale just the power tubes (leaving the preamp section to run on
normal voltages), or to scale the whole amp.
I found that scaling the whole amp (power amp
and preamp) changes the sound and feel of the preamp as the bias on the 12AX7s change, and gain is reduced significantly.
This clearly wouldn't do.
Scaling the power tubes alone was
definitely the way to go, but there is one flaw in the suggested approach.
Drive Compensation is designed to go after the phase inverter (PI). The negative feedback (NFB) loop returns to the
input
of the PI, before the Drive Compensation
control.
So, with lower settings of Drive Compensation, less NFB is making it back
to the PI and
power amp, resulting in the amp's overall gain - and graininess - increasing,
and the
Presence control becoming less
effective.
I solved this problem by moving Drive
Compensation to before the PI, as in a traditional Master Volume after
the tone stack. This way, the NFB loop signal is
not reduced by Drive Compensation, the open loop gain of the amp is unchanged, and
Presence works normally.
Operation and Tone
So, how does it sound? I think it sounds like the same amp, only quieter. I own a Marshall Power Brake, a THD Hot Plate
and a couple of home-brew resistance-only attenuators. At any given Power Scale setting, the amp sounds much more natural than it
ever did at the equivalent volume with any attenuator.
The great thing about the PSK is this: I can now
actually enjoy the cranked tone of my amp. I rarely - and I do mean rarely - had the opportunity to crack
my 100w Marshall wide open without an attenuator, so the tone to which I was accustomed was
what came out of an attenuator, not the true tone of the amp. With the PSK,
there's nothing between the amp and the speaker to change the tone.
Now, we can't ignore issues like speakers
not being pushed as hard, the non-linear response of the human ear, lack of
acoustical feedback to the guitar, and whatever else you want to throw into the
mix. Ultimately, a quiet amp will never sound the same as a loud amp.
But I think the PSK does a good job of doing exactly what
it is designed to do - let the player scale the amp to the situation, while
maintaining its true tone.
Conclusions
London Power's approach to the
problem of too much volume is truly innovative. But it is not a perfect
solution. It requires significant modification to the amp, including
chassis drilling; it's a lot of work to install, and it should only be done by a
qualified amp tech or a very experienced hobbyist; it cannot be moved from one
amp to another as attenuators can; it should not be installed in a vintage or
otherwise expensive amp.
There are many ways that people try to get
good power tube tone at lower volumes, from the simple ("get a Hot Plate") to
the cumbersome (multi-amp slaved rigs, isolation cabs) to the expensive (a different
amp for every possible venue). The PSK is, in my opinion, a very effective but not
very practical solution. I would never install one in a vintage amp, nor would I put one in every non-collectable amp I own
because of the sheer amount of work involved.
Having said that, I am delighted with the
performance and tone of the amp with the PSK. You might not expect a 100 watt
Marshall running on one-tenth its normal voltage to sound anything like its
normal self, but it does.
The PSK has a few other advantages over
attenuators. It is infinitely adjustable - as
apposed to 3 or 4dB steps - and it's contained within the amp itself,
making it easy to transport. What's more, the four individual bias
adjustment pots and the wide range of bias voltage available are a vast
improvement over the stock bias circuit.
With its radical power supply hidden under
the hood, this amp is not exactly a faithful replica of a vintage design, at
least not in the power supply department. Yet it arguably does a better
job of producing the tone of a vintage 100 watt Marshall at reasonable volume
levels than it ever did as a stock amp in combination with an attenuator.
But don't take my word for it.
Check out the Tone Samples (below) and judge for yourself
The Bottom Line - Comparison
to Attenuators
The Tone Samples in the table below were recorded in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of
the PSK compared to two popular attenuators. I chose the THD Hot Plate and
Marshall Power Brake for very specific reasons: they are the two most widely
used attenuators on the market, and... that's what I happen to own.
My goal here is not to convince you
that the PSK is superior to any particular attenuator. My purpose is
simply to provide objective data from which you are free to draw
your own conclusions.
These sound clips were recorded by me in a make-shift
project studio in my rehearsal facility, not in a anechoic chamber under
laboratory conditions. However, they were all recorded in the same space,
in the same way, on the same day, with the same equipment, so they do offer a solid basis for fair
comparison.
Each Tone Sample consists of a simple riff,
played twice, with lots of ringing open strings and not too much gain. There's enough distortion
to give it good harmonic content, but not so much that the sound of the guitar
is obliterated.
Tone Sample Table
Actual SPL1 |
PSK Voltage2 |
THD
Hot Plate3
Bright & Deep On |
THD
Hot Plate3
Bright & Deep Off |
Marshall
Power Brake3 |
123dB(A) |
Stock
tone, Power Scale and Drive Compensation on 10, no
attenuator
 |
121 |
380VDC
   |
-4dB
   |
-
  |
-
  |
119 |
250
   |
-8
   |
-4dB
   |
-3dB
   |
114 |
160    |
-12
   |
-8
   |
-9
   |
110 |
97    |
-16
   |
-12
   |
-12
   |
106 |
60    |
-16/84
   |
-16
   |
-15
   |
101 |
34    |
-16/54
   |
-16/74
   |
-21
   |
92 |
17    |
-16/24
   |
-16/2.54
   |
-30
   |
Notes:
1 Maximum Sound Pressure Level in decibels at 1 meter, A-weighted. Measurement taken on
a Radio Shack model 330-2050 SPL Meter.
2 B+ Plate Voltage in Volts DC, measured at idle (no signal). Reading taken at output of PSK
(1st filter cap/input side of choke). Tone Samples in this column
were recorded with no attenuator.
3Attenuator dial setting, in decibels below full volume.
Because of variations between attenuators, and in the case of the Hot
Plate, variation between tone switch settings, and because what a
manufacturer calls 3 or 4 dB is approximate, this figure may not
correspond to the actual dB reduction. Tone Samples in
these columns were recorded with Power Scale and Drive Compensation
controls on 10. For the Hot Plate, the bulb switch was off.
4The second figure is the setting of the Hot
Plate's fine adjustment control, on a scale of 0 to 10. |
How to Read - and Listen to
- the Tone Sample Table
In order to make fair comparisons, we
have to hear each device at the same volume as the others, hence the reference to actual
sound pressure level (SPL). Each yellow "Play" button plays an audio
recording (mp3 file). To compare one device to another, listen to all of
the Tone Samples in a given row.
To hear how a particular device sounds
at different volume levels, start with the "Stock Tone" recording a
the top, then listen to each of the samples in any one column, moving down the
column to hear how the tone changes - or doesn't change - as actual volume is
dialed down.
Please note that all Tone Samples are equal volume when played
back through your speakers or headphones; for each
recording, the input level of
the mic preamp was adjusted to obtain a suitable recording.
Recording Notes
For these recordings, a Gibson Les Paul was plugged into the
Marshall's Channel I
high input only, no bridging. Guitar Volume and Tone were
set to 10. Amp
control settings were as follows: Presence - 0, Bass - 5, Middle - 5,
Treble - 5,
Volume I - 6, Volume II - 0. The speaker cabinet was a Marshall reissue
4x12 slant with Celestion Vintage 30 speakers. Mic was Shure SM57.
Pic pre was a JOEMEEK VC3Q (minimal compression, EQ bypassed). Recorded on
a Roland VS-840GX, with a little bit of onboard reverb added.
©2003 Bruce Edward Clement
|