Before I bought the kit, I read the posts on this forum to get the broad picture of what people thought of it. Some liked it some didn't which is fair, we can't love them all can we? I posted some questions about the kit and Niekeel (who was somewhat dis-satisfied with his build) among others replied saying that soundwise one should go by these steps, (+1 by George):
Best value was (in order)
1) Mullards or good NOS preamp valves
2) Good transformers
3) PTP board
Anyhow, I decided to buy the PTP board and a new set of Mullards 12ax7 and a set of Gold Lions KT-66. Kept the stock Drake transformer so I can't comment whether that makes a big difference or not.
I only have a few hours of play on my amp so far, but let me tell you, this baby sings f ****** big time, it sings in a way that is so far off the stock amp that it is unbelievable, the sound is soo far of what the the stock amp ever was able to!
I run it mis-matched with the ohm selector on 8 ohms, with a load of two 8 ohm Greenbacks in parallel.
KT-66's biased at 41 mA.
Chanel one and two bridged.
I got the chance to dime my amp today, and let me tell you, if you like to play old Rock 'n Roll like the Black Crowes, Little Feat, early AC/DC, early Wilco, early Aerosmith, Rolling Stones, Greateful Dead, Clapton with Bonnie and Delaney Bramlet, The Band and what have you's, this amp handles that kind of music without any problems. Plug the guitar right into the amp, crank the baby up and you'll get pure old school Rock and Roll sounds out of it!
I did read somewhere that the PTP BBRi was very pedal friendly, but mine wasn't honestly. It didn't like my Fulltone Fulldrive II Custom Shop at all, but if you are able to crank the volume up you'll get the same sounds directly from the amp so why bother.
I don't regret for one second that I swapped the original board out for a handwired one, and if I was able to pull that kind of handcraft that off, anyone can do it!
I don't know if the way I percieve the sound now is a product of my imagination, or if I have forgotten how it sounded stock way back when, but honestly I don't care. I love the amp now, and it feels good knowing that I did the handcraft on this baby (with a little help from my friends and neighbours here on the forum of course, without you people I wouldn't been able to complete this build).
I guess that the tremolo is a big issue when it boils down to this amp. I'd say even if not perfect, optimized it is a vast improvement over the stock tremolo. I only use tremolo for one song and one song only, Hotel Illness by the Crowes so I am really not that concerned honestly, but if you are going to use the tremolo for G to C changes all the time, it works perfectly!
The amp isn't particulary loud but the tube saturation that comes along the volume is more than welcome!!
So, if you are looking into modding your BBRi, I can only highly recommend the Metro PTP kit, it did it for me, and if you play the same kind if music as I do, I'd say you can't go wrong.
Metroamp is the shit, let me tell you, and if you wanna run into some good people Metroamp is the place to start!!!!
Now I only got to figure out what I want to build next time around
I've got a Fender Blues Deluxe ReIssue laying around so if you have any suggestions let me know. I've got spirit but not a lot of money so if I could use a lot of parts off that amp I'd be more than happy Thanks and Peace,
/Fredrik