My friend gigs heavy in the summer, playing pedal or lap steel & guitar. Equally adept on both. He prefers Fender amps, has about 10 different amps and sends them to me in St. Louis for all repairs and set ups. He has often left me artistic freedom, gives me his desires, we chat and I design. he also has pedals and most of his pickups from me.
He requested the ability to have two inputs that can be used simultaneously (guitar and steel), with the steel side more midrange, a 20w amp with a high headroom, sweet clean channel and a dirt channel that blooms (foot switchable). Both channels having shared reverb and separate tone. He had this Virbrolux chassis and cabinet as the starting point. Even though this is 2x10", he wanted a sound more akin to an EVM-12L. So I am going for two of the 1980's Pyle 10" 100w speakers, which Derek Trucks favors. The transformers are being custom built to my specs by Musicalpowersupplies in Tennessee.
For those who are tech oriented, this will some of my new and old innovations: soft (subtle) limiter / high headroom FET buffer / mixer on the input, separating the steel and the guitar inputs (so the controls and pickups of both instruments don't interfere with each other). A separate B+ power for each of the 2 channels. Solid-state, fast acting rectification with large caps to make the amp responsive and articulate. KT-66 power tubes and cascading preamps based on my AMI Lil Giant. Silent channel switching.
Definitely channeling Leo Fender and Howard Dumble on this one.
A very expensive build, to which I already have two other players who desperately want one. I'll try and keep updating here for progress.
