Mini Marshall head build

Hey folks, been pretty busy with work so haven't posted for ages. Still three guitars halfway built and showing no signs of progressing! Just thought I'd share a little project I did on the weekend...

I grabbed a Marshall MG15CD for $30 last week. I then did a couple of mods to it (changing a resistor to make the gain a bit more subtle, as well as changing the two LED diodes to blue ones - what apparently makes the gain smoother too! Who knew?!). It actually sounds pretty good now - the clean channel was always okay, but the drive channel is also cool now too as it's pretty full-on out of the box.

Then it was some cutting, gluing, fiddling, head scratching etc etc and what once was this...

Attachment 26037

Is now this!

Attachment 26038

There's a part of me that wants to build a 4 x 5" quad box to go with it!

very cool chuck !

Nice work... Looks like it never was anything else...

Very neat :)

Just like a bought one.

Very cool, different coloured Leds need different amounts of voltage to turn them on, red Leds typically need around 1.2V or so, on the other hand blue leds need around 3V, so if they are used in a pair of back-to-back clipper diodes (it's a method used a lot in solid-state guitar amps to generate overdrive or distortion), then the clipping is going to be relatively soft, here's an oscilloscope screenshot showing what Led clipping does to a signal:

Attachment 26039


Notice how the signal-waveform is relatively smooth?

$30 bucks for that is almost stealing isn't it?

Looks great. Not sure where you find suitable 5" speakers for a quad box?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DrNomis_44

Very cool, different coloured Leds need different amounts of voltage to turn them on, red Leds typically need around 1.2V or so, on the other hand blue leds need around 3V, so if they are used in a pair of back-to-back clipper diodes (it's a method used a lot in solid-state guitar amps to generate overdrive or distortion), then the clipping is going to be relatively soft, here's an oscilloscope screenshot showing what Led clipping does to a signal:

Notice how the signal-waveform is relatively smooth?

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Thanks Doc - that's really interesting and good to know.