Tag Archives: Cream JTA-45

Tube Screamers rock!

Ever since I got my JTM-45 clone in summer 2015, I thought perhaps the Tube Screamer from Ibanez would be a nice addition, but I somehow hadn’t been motivated enough to buy one… until last week. I ordered a clone, The Screamer from Das MusikDing.

I had assembled a couple of kits from that shop before, but when I started soldering the Screamer, I was surprised about a small, but very convenient improvement over prior kits: Along with the various parts, a small PCB is being delivered. You solder the nine lugs of the footswitch to it and connect it to the input, output, LED and – of course – the main PCB. This completely removes the burden of spending an hour soldering various wires to the footswitch. Thumbs up, MusikDing! I also modified the circuit a little, making two resistores switchable, so you can choose between a TS808 and TS9 voicing.

After finishing assembling the kit, it instantly worked (Yay! Getting better at that. ;)) and as I cannot make much noise in my flat, I test-drove it using some impulse response and load box behind my amp. It sounded awesome! But that assessment turned into “Holy f*ck, this sounds frigging marvelous!”, when I used it at my friend’s rehearsal room. Especially on the TS9 setting. It’s exactly the overdrive pedal I’ve been looking for. It adds warmth, but also some grainy, crunchy cream topping. It works perfectly in front of other overdrives to create everlasting sustainy distortion sounds. Here’s a small blues jam from our last Klanghöhle Session. Usage of the TS starts at about 02:05.

Drums/Engineering: The C.L.A.
Guitar/Bass: Bollie

Enjoy. 🙂

The Howling JTM-45

Ever had the problem of your JTM-45 suddenly starting to howl? You changed all valves, suspecting it to be a case of “microphonia” and that problem is still there?

Well, that happened to me. Actually, my JTM-45 is a Cream JTA-45 from http://www.twinsound.de, a professionally built, hand-wired clone, but that doesn’t matter in that particular case. Since the amp had just been bought, I instantly contacted the maker and he would send me a couple of replacement valves to rule out a micro-phonic valve. It first appeared that the issue was gone. Until I was just in the middle of our bi-weekly jam session, hitting the first D on the A string and my amp would start to oscillate like mad. I thought, “Oh no, not again!” and then we tried to reproduce it. We even used a chop stick and tapped against the valves to hear if they’re the cause. No, they were ok. Until I accidentally hit the presence knob and it made a loud popping noise. I repeated doing that until it started howling again. What the heck? A micro-phonic presence knob? I’ve never heard of that before. 🙂

Well, back at home I wrote the amp maker about that issue, and it became clear, that I would have to send it in. It would have meant weeks without my beloved JTA. So I decided to do something, I wouldn’t really recommend anyone, who wants to keep their warranty: I opened the amp, put it into a little self-build frame and used the chop stick to tap against the back of the presence pot and the connected capacitor, while the amp was switched on. There was it again: That loud popping noise. So I measured the resistance of the pot and ordered a replacement for the both, the presence pot and the capacitor. I suspected the pot’s lug connected to GND being partly broken, as it kind of made sense to me, that GND being an “unreliable reference point” in that part of the circuit might cause the power amp to go nuts. 😉

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Once I received the parts, I replaced pot and cap and gave it a loud test run. I also tapped against it and everything was eventually working as expected. To sum it up: I’ve spent EUR 2.50 and 20 minutes of work and testing to fix it, instead of having to send in the amp to a workshop, costing the amp maker probably a hundred times more money.

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Nevertheless, I don’t want to encourage you to void your warranty nor to risk your life, as we’re talking about high voltage circuits! During my apprenticeship, I learned how to deal with them. I’m just posting this here, because when I was facing the issue, I had a hard time finding information from people, who might have suffered from similar problems. So I’m hoping it might be of some help. 🙂

I’m so happy about all the geek manufacturers out there, still hand-wiring amps. They are so damn service-friendly. 🙂

Klanghöhle Session vom 08.12.2015 – Get Fonky

Drums: the CLA
Git/Bass: Rajan

Dieses Mal den Guiding Bass-Track in Ableton gebaut, dazu Gitarre und Drums eingespielt, anschließend den Bass noch einmal ge-overdub-t. Unsere erste Session mit meinem neuen Celestion Vintage 30.

Here we go: