Metropoulos Forum

All said and done, in the end, the kit spec is where it is at. Cabs, transparent loads and totally basic analogue effects gets you the rest of the way. Forget the mod 5, slaving, cascading, ppimv, and all the other crutches that doom one to an 80's guitar black hole. If you want to feel the wheels gripping the road, simplicity is golden.

+1. Don't even put a PPIMV in the circuit. Just build to spec and turn it up. Sooooo much tone and gain on tap.

And thanks to this whole forum for the build knowledge. Folks like Night Owl, vanhalen5150, wrea398, Strat78, Tone Slinger, etc. who participate so selflessly help everyone else tremendously.

That reminds me... I need to make clips of my 12xxx after taking it back to bone stock.

Now I wanna rip off my ppimv too and buy an attenuator..!

julkke wrote:Now I wanna rip off my ppimv too and buy an attenuator..!

you mean..."build an attenuator"

I just finished building a load/line out box yesterday. I over-complicated my design - one switch to add in/take out a 16-ohm load, a pot to control the line out level, and another switch to toggle between two different maximum output ranges. Parts ran about $100. Ran my 12xxx fully dimed into my box, then into a 50w plexi, then to a greenback cab. I didn't fully reconfigure my signal path (pedals, noise reduction, etc) - just left most of it bypassed to give it a whirl.

Just wanted to see how the slaving/re-amping thing felt and sounded in general to see if it was something to spend time on. It felt great, better than the 12xxx alone at lower volume levels. Sounded good, but I need to reconfigure my whole setup to work correctly with it. Sound was similar to using my LAR/MAR MV on the 12xxx alone, but seems to have the potential to be better than that once I reconfigure my setup properly.

I have an attenuator (Gibson-branded Hot Plate) that can act as a load, so I'm playing with that option, too. It sounds OK with my 12xxx, but I use the MV instead. I'd also like to run it through a clean power amp instead of the plexi. I can compare the attenuated (Hot Plate) setup with the slaved one and the MV one, but obviously can't A/B those - and it's a bit of a chore to reroute everything each time. I'd also like to route it through some of my other amps and cabs - lots of other lower-volume tone options!

I think where it'll likely end up is that it will sound very similar to the 12xxx dimed by itself, but at family and neighbor friendly volumes, probably better than with my MV rolled back. It will feel much more responsive than the 12xxx at low volume. Work and stuff is taking all my time right now, so it's going to be a long time before I can go do this properly. Cost is about like trying a new pedal, assuming you already have the second amp, and the circuit is trivial. I think it will be worth it. I need to try some different pots and resistor values to hit the sweet spot in the design, though. The pot and resistor values I tried based on reading through the umpteen slaving threads here in the forum didn't work very well for me. I made a quick change to get me in the ballpark, but need to do some further experiments to tweak it the way I want it.

Does anyone know where I can find these build instructions? It appears they were lost when the forum crashed. Just when I was gathering intel to do a 68 build too!!! Any help would be appreciated!!!

It has been a long time... But I still have my docs. I began to add some additional sections to the original build instructions for some of the mods I tried, but it looks like I didn't complete those sections when I set the doc aside. Other than that, the doc should still be good. The pics are separate from the doc due to overall size, so it may take a couple of posts for me to get it all back up.

Good to see people are still building these. I still have mine, of course, but haven't opened it up in years.

Good luck!!!

Hmmmm....

I don't see a way to attach files to posts now. What am I missing?

I'm trying to gather all my old pics and files as well to fill in where the uploads were lost. I think George is still working out getting the site fully functional, but there is talk of perhaps not hosting files on the site itself lest opening the door to more malware. Again, Night Owl, your instructions were a life saver for many of us!

Wow. That sucks.

I think I saved a lot as well. There was something to be learned in all the builds here, especially the mistakes people made was a big help to many. "Don't do this."

Here is what I have... not sure if it is the latest or not:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/uj79s ... ghtOwl.zip

Hi - It has been a while... :^)

Seems like I can add attachments now, so I'll upload the 12xxx build journal and pictures again. I believe these were the latest versions I posted long ago. I can only add 3 attachments per post, so here they come. Enjoy!

more pics...

more pics... note there are none for Step 6

more pics...