night train mods...

[Ross Grey]

One more clip with gain headed into cut-off territory, which gets a bit more harsh but certainly is not yet metal.

The 'thick' switch is needed for heavy overdrive, and the muddy tone of the 7w setting is great for lower volume high gain practice at home or in the studio. I still need to get some clips of these.

[Snoopy]

Hi guys, just caught this thread on a web search and wanted to join the forum. I'm Chris from Melbourne Australia.

I love my Night Train, from it's cute looks and great sound, plus it doesn't take up too much room in a bedroom. The first day I got it I changed the speaker to a Celestion Blue. I played it for a bit and then thought there is some treble peaking going on there. Like at full volume on the bright channel it's sounding fine, but lower the volume right down and the treble is still busting your ears. So that bright cap I identified on the schematic as the cause and I took the bottom off and snipped it.

I think day two I built an attentuator for it. It's taking the output power from full to 1/15th, so it's 15:1, meaning full power 15-20 watts (clean-dirty) gives out about 1 watt, and on the triode setting about 1/2 watt.

It stayed like that for a long time, but last night I pulled it all appart and changed the cathode bypass caps to be 22uF on the first and second valve stages. It sounds more bass freqency oriented now. It still has all of the top end it ever did of course, but the roll off freqency for the first and second gain stages is much lower so a lot more of the bass is also amplified strongly.

In the last week I tried a Celestion Vintage 30 and a Lorantz 50watt Greenback clone. I swapped back and forth about six times. That's when I decided to revoice the preamp. I just today went and returned the Lorantz, not because it was bad, it was actually really good, but because it didn't sound that much different from the Vintage 30 overdriven it was a little hollower in the mids with great crunch, and the cleans were ok to, better than the Vintage 30.

I am planning on putting a Tone Tubby Alnico Red in it when it arrives. I bought it today on eBay.

I used to have an Epiphone Valve Junior and modded it quite a lot over the time I had it. Changed transformers, caps, speakers so doing the mods on this amp was just no trouble at all. The only difficult bit was getting the pcb out of the amp since it is almost shackled into position by the nest of wiring that sits above it.

Anyway, I wanted to show my appreciation to the original poster and to the follow-up posters on this thread and just say thanks

[Snoopy]

Update, I got the Tone Tubby. I broke it in for 50 hours using 15Vac at 50Hz. It's pretty nice sounding for the Jazzy cleans on a Gibson ES135. Also the lead tones using a Seymour Duncan Twin Tube Classic are good to but the guitar tone controls have nowhere to go now. I was having ice picks with the Lorantz, the Vintage 30 was not so bad in that regard. Also the increased bass response that the amp has after the 22uF cap changes is able to be expressed through this speaker as it has an extended bottom end due to the hemp cone.

[Snoopy]

Yes I've listened to it for a while and made some changes back to the original amp with respect to the 22uF caps. I've made both caps 2.2uF which moves the voicing one octave lower at the first stage compared to stock. Check out this web page for a great cathode bypass cap calculator. http://www.ampbooks.com/home/amplifier- ... capacitor/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[waznew]

i cant believe this thread is still going......

snoopy glad you're having fun with it. to be honest i haven't mucked around with mine is ages..i've kept my one fairly stock...except clippin c27 and new tubes. i tour it all over aus.. great to take on the plane.. i tour with a pretty well known aussie guitar player/singer... it has saved our ass heaps of times.
if you want some help or tips..with modding yours......i'm in melbourne too!! near the airport.

[BonesMachete]

I also live in Melbourne, Brunswick. I have a night train 50. Everyone who plays through it tells me that it is rather weak in volume compared to many other 50 watt heads. I have no idea why this would be. It came with cheap chinese valves which have since been rplaced with electro harmonix 12ax7's and st petersburg el34's. Love the amp but I can't understand why it is lacking in power/volume department compared to many other valve 50 watt head's. Any help would be greatly appreciated.