Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

FuseG4

Our Neighbor Totoro
And it's a nifty sound. Amp sounds hotter, cluckier, chimier, (are those words? "more chimey", haha) livelier. The interaction with the speaker is quite interesting, it's like playing a valvestate amp with the "tube dynamics" button off, then that change in tone you hear with it on, removing NFB in my amp is not unlike hitting that button.
I recommend it as it's such an easy mod with a drastic effect on the sound of the whole amp, and a rather musical one. I just clipped the NFB wire for now but I will eventually wire it to a switch when I figure out the best way to install a switch. Maybe in the extension speaker hole, which I never use. Would like to leave the amp looking as stock as possible in case I ditch it one day lol

Can I do a on-off-on SPDT toggle switch wired like this? I havent had my coffee yet, this will give
me half feedback/no fb/stock fb?



original nfb wire to 820Ω R
nfb Wire from speaker jack
680Ω R to original nfb wire for 1.5KΩ

FWIW I also tried my JJ 6v6s biased as hot as my amp would allow, (29.3 mA @ 413V) and severed the power supply to pin 4 of the 6v6 and tied pin 4 to pin 3. The result was mixed, the amp was certainly quieter (lower noise floor), and bright but not as rich for sure. The bass was really saggy, almost like a very smooth clipping going on with just the bass freqs, kinda blurring and creaming out the attack. Could be useful for low volume clean recording. In stock form, the amp has a little hiss that no one on stage would care about but at idle you can certainly hear that it's on. In triode mode the hiss was almost totally gone. Anyways it's as "vintage" of a sound as I've heard from jj 6v6s, they normally sound to me very big and have a weird midrange but this made them warmer and softer. Maybe too much though.

I'll be looking for ways to reduce the noise floor without triode mode cuz I don't feel that's worth leaving that way or putting on a switch.

As far as noise floor I want to do metal film plate resistor on v1a and b as it's the first stages of both channels and the post tone stack of the vintage channel, and higher wattage carbon comp resistors on v2 a and b where I'm pretty sure theres most of the preamp gain happening, and higher wattage carbon comps on the PI tail and load resitors for mojo.
V4a is the reverb recovery stage and on silverface deluxes to reduce reverb noise they put a small bypass cap on the 220k grid leak to get rid of reverb hiss. Most of my amps noise is when the reverb is up.

Reallllly wanna do these mods but nervous about working on the crowded PCB. Plus I have to go source all this crap anyways.


Anyways thoughts/comments?
 
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Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

One of the obvious answers to all this is of course to try low noise tubes but I'm waiting till I have enough money for low noise tubes and do a full retube
 
Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

Is that mod one of the things that differentiate the 65DRRI and the 68?


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Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

i used the ground switch on my old dr as a nfb on/off switch. its a cool option to have
 
Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

nfb is cool to experiment with.
A simple cheap and effective way to reduce noise is to use carbon film rather than metal film resistors early in your signal path. They are a nice balance between the vintage resistor sound and the too much hifi sound of metal. Still, uve never found noise to be a problem once you are standing next to a drummer and tbh i kinda like it.
 
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Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

I wish the supersonic had a ground switch I could repurpose!

And yeah the noise only messes with me when I'm chilling in a small room with the amp really clean. I believe the amp uses carbon film 1/4w for most resistors so that's nice, and metal oxide 1w in the plates I think.
So carbon film 1w would be a little quieter?

I wanna make a good plan before going back into the amp to solder and hopefully only ever have to take the main PCB out once or twice

I had a Blackheart bh5 amp that had thick board and huge thick traces. The DSL 50 made in England had what I thought was decent pcb,
But the supersonic worries me, i will be getting a decent desolder pump and try to be careful

If the traces lift I can always just gut the innards and reuse the chassis, xformers, tubes and stuff and learn to wire a new board with something ab763 inspired lol.
 
Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

Anyways also for speakers did anyone ever try the eminence Reignmaker in a deluxe style amp?

First, a bit of British vibe would probably be the best bet for good clean and drive sounds, and,

I've concluded I do not care at all for my Weber load dump attenuator. It works, it just kills all the good stuff along with the volume. I'm sure there are good attenuators out there with stuff to make up for tone suck but this is a bare bones affair and not for me. But if the FDM speaker is just a bit more transparent and reactive it would be acceptable for sure
 
Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

Is that mod one of the things that differentiate the 65DRRI and the 68?


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Yes, they use half the negative feedback in the 68, they use a 1.5k resistor. They should have made it switchable on the back of the amp.
 
Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

first thing I do when I get an amp with a NFB loop is to disconnect it, it does no good and messes with the natural overdrive smooth build. Like getting a new Harley, ya gotta pull those stock pipes and put in the real deal.
 
Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

I finally got to mess with my burn channel a little after getting home from work, the looser onset of distortion is quite evident even with the master volume low, and I really like it. The cleans when the guitar is backed off are not as clean but in exchange you don't have to hit the strings so hard to get the goods and makes the quality of the distortion so much more breathy and natural.

I wish I could wire it so that I could have NFB on the clean channel and none on the burn channel, and have the NFB change as I footswitch, but I don't think this is possible. This is where I bet the "half negative feedback" setting will be handy.
 
Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

I wish I could wire it so that I could have NFB on the clean channel and none on the burn channel, and have the NFB change as I footswitch, but I don't think this is possible. This is where I bet the "half negative feedback" setting will be handy.
Relays..
 
Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

i used the ground switch on my old dr as a nfb on/off switch. its a cool option to have

I had the three position version done on my old Princeton Reverb. If I’m playing with amp in a box pedals I keep it stock, if I can let it rip I’ll turn off the feedback and just use a FD2 as a boost and that’s enough.
 
Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

I am eager to get this mod on a switch cuz I still wanna play with it, but for now I have reinstated the stock NFB

at a certain volume and gain, it would give a certain buzzing/fizzing/ringing with the notes F# and G in the upper fretboard, I had never found the amp to do this before. If I bend the note up enough it would stop, release and it came back. It happened worse on burn channel. Put NFB back in, sound is gone?
I'm not sure what the cause of that could be? NFB applies to the power section right, so a lack of NFB is making the amp sensitive to some particular frequency?
But it reminds me of going to the doctor, like
"tube amp repair guy, my amp makes noises when I play this note".
"Well don't play that note then" lol

edit: think its my cheap v1 tube rattling

And as far as doing NFB through relays for each channel, that's over my head, already the fat switch component changes and channel switching are done with relays, I feel like something is possible here, but even thinking about trying to figure it out myself is like... no way, lol a global switch is fine
 
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Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

My "Marshall's" negative feedback is switched. But no feedback isn't one of the options. It's 27K, 47k (actually 51k), 100k. One resistor is on the board and two are on a SPDT on-off-on mini toggle.
 
Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

I got the amp a little quieter, I swapped v1 and v4 tubes, the one in v1 was chinese and sounded more lively than the other 2 12ax7 I have but it's also noisier. v1 is now the stock v1 tube, it's a 12ax7wc, quiet but boring sound. Saving money still for a full retube ^_^

Also I moved the heater wires for all the tubes a little so at the very least they are further away from the signal wires than before. I dunno much about lead dress but it looks sloppy in there to me. There's a LOT of wire in this amp. Some day I may go in and redo some of it but it looks like a real pain!

Also, I turned my reverb tank around so the transducer is further away from the PT. I removed the cardboard from the reverb bag as the piece they used was almost bigger than the bottom of the cab lol, tucked the pan in the bag tightly with some of the bag folded back under the tank for a tiny bit of cushioning, routed the reverb rca cable away from the power supply, and screwed the bag down tight.

Also for the power tube rattle I took the tube retainer bear traps off and wrapped a little electrical tape around the part that digs in so they'd grip the tube with a bit of a wider surface and not a knife point, and put a tiny bit of electrical tape between the tube base and the socket base, outside the pins to slightly cushion the bases, and put the bear traps back on.

This all worked decently, amp hiss is a little quieter, reverb hiss is a lot quieter, no tube rattle!
 
Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

Something's gone awry
The amp hummed REALLY loud when I started it up tonight, guitar signal comes barely through, very weak and very distorted.

Spent a while looking at everything, i see a ribbon cable that looks like it snagged on something and exposed part of a wire. I also know that I've been both poking around in the amp recently, chances are I touched something inadvertently
Gonna put it away until I find a tech and let them look at it, I know a guy in Salt lake City who is good, but that's quite a trip. I'm sure there's someone in vegas. There's a guy in my city in southern utah that advertises amp repair, but the shop he works in is that of a guy who cut a really ugly bone nut for me one time, I never went back.

kinda bummed, amp was sounding killer this morning.
I have 2 practice amps I haven't used in forever, guess I will be reacquainting myself with those for a minute
 
Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

I have 5f1 tweed champ clone and used it with a 1 meg resistor as NFB off. This allows some odd frequencies to cancel to the power tubes. The stock 22k NFB was not clean enough for me, but the off NFB too raspy at higher levels. So i settled with the 1meg for low volumes and 7k for a cleaner sound at higher levels.
 
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Re: Tried no negative feedback mod on Supersonic 22 last night

Something's gone awry
The amp hummed REALLY loud when I started it up tonight, guitar signal comes barely through, very weak and very distorted.

Spent a while looking at everything, i see a ribbon cable that looks like it snagged on something and exposed part of a wire. I also know that I've been both poking around in the amp recently, chances are I touched something inadvertently
Gonna put it away until I find a tech and let them look at it, I know a guy in Salt lake City who is good, but that's quite a trip. I'm sure there's someone in vegas. There's a guy in my city in southern utah that advertises amp repair, but the shop he works in is that of a guy who cut a really ugly bone nut for me one time, I never went back.

kinda bummed, amp was sounding killer this morning.
I have 2 practice amps I haven't used in forever, guess I will be reacquainting myself with those for a minute

Fixed my own amp after a killed my own amp lol. 12at7 pin got bent a little and a it was barely touching the plate and heater connects I think. Redid al the solder joints on the PI tube socket and twisted the heaters away from the signal wires. Amp sounds great again!
May God help me when putting it back together.

I didn't know if the ribbon cable would be ok, I hope so. I flowed a little solder very carefully into the the part where the wire was exposed but not broken, taped it off, and laid it back down.

Lesson is, 1. be prepared to eff something up. and if you do and it's 11pm,
2. get some sleep and try again in the morning when you're not tired!
 
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