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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2012 4:47 pm
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jpkallio wrote:
The 15 inch speaker has great bottom end. I know many people swapped it for the Eminence 1518, which sounds interesting. But the extra 10db that billm mentioned in his video... 10db is a lot! Yes it is! I measured 6-7 db more w/ mine. Also I am bit worried that it might take away from the quirkiness of this amp. It does in fact take away the 'quirkiness'. If you want to retain that, don't make the switch.
J.P.

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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2012 11:48 pm
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IM4Tone wrote:
jpkallio wrote:
The 15 inch speaker has great bottom end. I know many people swapped it for the Eminence 1518, which sounds interesting. But the extra 10db that billm mentioned in his video... 10db is a lot! Yes it is! I measured 6-7 db more w/ mine. Also I am bit worried that it might take away from the quirkiness of this amp. It does in fact take away the 'quirkiness'. If you want to retain that, don't make the switch.
J.P.

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Thanks IM4Tone! Sounds like I'll be sticking to the stock speaker :-)
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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 10:09 am
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I keep looking at these amps, thought i would find a little more chattering here on this one.

Sounds like maybe its set up pretty well right out of the box ? speakers, tubes etc.....

anyone try the usual 5751 in the preamp to see what it does to the tone and OD ?

It sure looks cool !
Sound demos over the internet don't impress me much and I have yet to plug one in so.....

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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 12:26 pm
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blues bondsman wrote:
I keep looking at these amps, thought i would find a little more chattering here on this one.

Sounds like maybe its set up pretty well right out of the box ? speakers, tubes etc.....

anyone try the usual 5751 in the preamp to see what it does to the tone and OD ?

It sure looks cool !
Sound demos over the internet don't impress me much and I have yet to plug one in so.....

Actually there's quite a bit of chatter on the internet on this amp.

Besides doing a search here, there are some threads on 'The Gear Page' site, and more about mods by electronics enthusiasts (more than I wanted to know) here: http://gretschpages.com/forum/other-amp ... 433/page1/

There are a lot of complaints about power tube rattle and I have a little of it also (on the "D" note). It's not so bad that I've changed the power tubes as yet.

I have the 5751 in mine, the pot replacing the brt/dk switch, and an Eminence 1518. It's hard for me to tell how much change to attribute to the 5751 since I made all of the changes at once rather than one at a time. It has the right amount of 'growl' for me, and I use a Seymour Duncan Twin tube pedal for two different amounts of drive. It takes pedals well. I put the 5751 in because I had it on hand and I liked the collective sound of it w/ the Eminence Legend 1518 on YouTube demos.

I agree in part with your statement about YouTube demos, but if you sort through them, there are some good ones. The only problem is that you can't sense volume do to recording equipment.

I like this amp for Blues, Surf and Rockabilly once you add a reverb pedal (such as Boss RV-5). Hard to beat for $299 and if you keep looking for music store deals and promos, you can do better. Got mine for $240.

Highly recommend it for the price point.

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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 9:03 pm
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I have a shot at a used one for 225 right now

Just wondering how much I'll use it ? Is it gonna be close to a DRRI as far as how loud it can get ?

I'll pick it up tomorrow and give it a go.

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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 12:41 am
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blues bondsman wrote:
I have a shot at a used one for 225 right now

Just wondering how much I'll use it ? Is it gonna be close to a DRRI as far as how loud it can get ?

I'll pick it up tomorrow and give it a go.

With the stock speaker, probably not. With the higher efficiency Eminence Legend 1518, It'll be close. I use mine w/ the volume knob around 9 to 10 o'clock for gigs in a 3 pc. group. With my Super Sonic 22 (22 watts and similar clean channel to the DRRI), I'm also playing in the 9 o'clock range FWIW.

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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2012 3:47 pm
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Well I picked one up today, got it for 210 after negotiating a bit.
The guy had never mentioned that he had replaced all of the original tubes and so now I have no idea how much the stock tubes affected the sound.
He put in a pair of EH 6V6's and two ruby 12AX7's
I have some sweet RCA's to try in it ! 8)

I'm loving the tremolo and the overall vibe is good, I'm betting a speaker with some bigger shoulders would get me where I want to be with this amp, a bit flabby at higher volumes.

My P-90 Gibby drives it pretty fast with no pedals, my strat with the custom shop 54's sounds excellent through it.

Here she is
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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2012 6:38 pm
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blues bondsman,
If you're going to swap speakers, I highly recommend the Eminence Legend 1518.

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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2012 8:43 pm
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I saw Bill M making a video on these talkin about that speaker.

However, I put a GE 5751 in V-1 a nice GE 12AX7 in V-2 and a nice pair of sylvania green lable silver top 6V6gt's in the power section, like a whole new amp !!!
Tightened it up a bit and gave it an entirely new sound !

I had a sweet 15 from an old Hammond organ, big voice coil and huge magnet, sadly its a 4 ohm speaker :(

Now I'm not sure it needs the change, I do think the Bill M mod for the bright switch to a pot is an excellent idea !

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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2012 7:38 am
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Looks like from what I've seen the tone pot has the greatest potential for improvement and looks pretty simple.

I found one guy on another forum that just made the switch hole bigger, installed a 500K pot and put a couple of plastic rivets in the old switch screw holes and it looked pretty nice and he was able to just use the original wiring too 8)

I'm gonna hang onto this amp and do a little modding, been a while since I've had something fun to tinker with.

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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2012 6:09 pm
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blues bondsman wrote:
Looks like from what I've seen the tone pot has the greatest potential for improvement and looks pretty simple.

I found one guy on another forum that just made the switch hole bigger, installed a 500K pot and put a couple of plastic rivets in the old switch screw holes and it looked pretty nice and he was able to just use the original wiring too 8)

I'm gonna hang onto this amp and do a little modding, been a while since I've had something fun to tinker with.

The tone pot mod is very simple. Make sure that you unsolder the three wires to the switch, DON'T snip them. You need every fraction of an inch to connect to the pot.

As an alternative to the plastic rivets, I read somewhere that someone used a fender washer which was large enough in dia. to cover the two screw holes from the switch. If painted the same gray as the panel face, it might look good.

As for your 4 ohm speaker...I never tried anything like this, but I wonder what it would sound like with a 4 ohm resistor wired in series w/ the speaker. Just a thought and probably inexpensive to try. Maybe some of the readers could comment on the feasibility of this?

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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 3:27 am
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IM4Tone wrote:
As for your 4 ohm speaker...I never tried anything like this, but I wonder what it would sound like with a 4 ohm resistor wired in series w/ the speaker. Just a thought and probably inexpensive to try. Maybe some of the readers could comment on the feasibility of this?


Don't bother. You would be dissipating half the amp's power as heat in the resistor. Did I say "Dissipating"? Make that wasting.

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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 7:30 pm
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bluesky636 wrote:
IM4Tone wrote:
As for your 4 ohm speaker...I never tried anything like this, but I wonder what it would sound like with a 4 ohm resistor wired in series w/ the speaker. Just a thought and probably inexpensive to try. Maybe some of the readers could comment on the feasibility of this?


Don't bother. You would be dissipating half the amp's power as heat in the resistor. Did I say "Dissipating"? Make that wasting.

So major attenuation....what would you predict as far as effect on tone? I found a 20 watt 4 ohm resistor for <$1. Just curious.

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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 7:41 pm
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It would probably suck.

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Post subject: Re: Any Excelsior owners here yet?
Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 7:11 am
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No worries fellas I'll use that 4ohm for a single 15 cab (to be built later) for my bandmaster head.

Good tubes made a HUGE !!! difference in the tone of this beast, lucky for me I have a box full of old USA 6V6Gt's and enough 12AX7 variations to taste test for a month.

Soon as I get info on wiring a tone pot, I'll dig in, I'm betting the tubes and a bit more dialing in the tone will turn this rough into diamond !
Sounds pretty good right now !

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