Amp Chan Vs. Pedal

[Here Lies The Fire]

How different are gain stages on board a tube amp and something just built into a pedal...

I was wondering if I could build a 2nd chan into my Jet City 20 Head that easy.
(Also thinking about just getting that Verellen Clean Mod and only running pedals.)

SO! Similarities/Differences.

[nieh]

I've been thinking about getting on of these kits for my Jet City.

http://cgi.ebay.com/BITMO-SUFRA-JET-CIT ... 20af7ace78

Has 2 switchable mods and its pretty damn cheap.

[eatyourguitar]

well if your talking about taking one of mike soldano's well designed circuits and adding off board stuff, your starting to compromise the original somewhat. part of the reason a cheap amp like jet city sounds so good is the pcb design and the layout of the components. I would advise against it. even if you do it. you have to consider where to mount the second preamp tube. and the off board PCB. thats if you have room in there. your better off making a small 2 channel amp from a kit. then everything is on one pcb and you dont have to design or mod anything. unless your an experienced amp builder, dont bother with designing mods that complicated.

[Here Lies The Fire]

I see... thanks for the advice. How different are pedals and amps fundamentally though?

[eatyourguitar]

one of them has tubes in it. tubes /=/ no tubes. thats why people try so hard to make the pedals sound like the tubes. some people make pedals with tubes in them. if you have a tube amp and you want to add a channel then you want to add a tube. that means you need to supply the right power for the heater, grid, screen etc. so you have some high voltage DC anywhere from 90v up to 240v mixing and mingling with low voltage AC. trying to get everything quiet enough to be a guitar amp is a challenge that some people spend their whole lives chasing.

[McSpunckle]

You could build the equivalent of a pedal into the input and kinda treat it like a second channel. That's pretty simple. But at that point, you could just use a pedal.

Amp circuits are actually not that difficult to understand. Even tube amps (really, solid state amps are more complex). They're about the same as transistor circuits. Where it gets different, though, is that you're working at a much higher voltage, with much higher current, with much longer wires. Because of this, the layout is far more important than with pedals. Especially in respect to grounding. All the "reference" grounds really need to connect to one place, and you need to be careful with your wiring. Moreover, with pedals you can design a circuit terribly, and often that's why they sound so cool, and have no danger of the circuit burning itself out. With an amp, you're running this parts much hotter. So a poorly designed circuit could easily burn up, catch fire, eat tubes like pancakes (or waffles, pending your preference-- I prefer waffles), etc.

I would recommend playing with some cheap, low wattage design first. Or dive in head first. Whatever. Just be careful that you don't get shocked.

[Dandolin]