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The review deals with each book separately, and recommend buying them in a certain order to grow your knowledge along with your building experience.
Kevin O'Connor of London Power has created a series of books under the title "The Ultimate Tone." These books are truly unique and carefully tailored to the do-it-yourself (DIY) guitar tube amp hobby and boutique amp builder. The books have a homemade "feel" as well … All artwork is made by hand, and the books are photocopy-printed on 8.5? x11? paper and bound with plastic end and the clear plastic covers. There are six books in the series, now with the latest release at the end by spring 2008. You may want to buy the entire series at once and have a modest savings, but I think you should consider buying them one at a time and digest as you go, construction projects along the road. A key point about … you do not necessarily want to buy them in numerical order. I recommend the following sequence:
- The Ultimate Tone Volume 3 – Generations of Tone
- The Ultimate Tone Volume 5 – Tone Capture
- The Ultimate Tone Volume 2 – Systems Approach to Stage Sound Nirvana
- The Ultimate Tone Volume 4 – Advanced techniques for Modern Guitar Amp Design
- The Ultimate Tone – Modify and Custom Building Tube Guitar Amps
- The Ultimate Tone Volume 6 – Timeless Tone Built for the Future Today
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The Ultimate Tone Volume 3 – Generations of Tone
This is the most important book in the series for early tube amplifier builder.
Chapters 2 to 4 lay the foundation for good DIY tube amp construction, fill you in on good electrical connections, grounding techniques, lead dress and other wiring techniques, and mechanical layout, including collection methods such as terminal strips turret and eyelet boards.
The subsequent chapters each select a particular 'iconic' enhancer, each iconic amplifier is a prototypical example of amplifiers in its class, and they are studied in detail with respect to circuit topology, strange sound balance this result, and fatal errors that the product is notorious for. Kevin provides the original diagrams and then show how you can apply the techniques described in previous chapters in order to improve efficiency and reliability of the icon without compromising the tone. The tables are redrawn, the layout is provided and mechanical solutions are designed to make each chapter a complete, self-build-it-yourself amp project.
This process is repeated for several variations of the Champ in Chapter 5 (this chapter greatly influenced my own single-ended amp project), then in quick succession: the bassman, Plexi, 800, Bull Dog, AC-30, Porta Flex, SVT, Bass Master Custom Special, Guitar Mate, Herzog and Laney amplifiers is treated.
If you can only buy one book for your DIY guitar amp hobby I'd heartily recommend this one.
The Ultimate Tone Volume 5 – Tone Capture
Volume 5 picks up where Volume 3 left off with a project-oriented approach and some sophisticated DIY tube amplifier solutions for guitar and bass.
The book opens with a chapter overview vacuum operation called 'tube tone,' followed by a chapter on guitar electronics and pickup characteristics.
The next two chapters are small projects: Sigma effects of coupling and Triple-X amplifier switch.
Chapter 5 & 6 are on transformers … important components, but it made me yawn, sorry.
Beginning with Chapter 7, all the sails are pulled out, and you are in project heaven … Major (200W) Soma 84 (EL84 amp), Standard (London Power Standard Preamp from 1995 coupled to a 50 W amplifier with four power tubes), Doppelsonde (mixing power tube types), AX84 (Talk about the original goal of a very low output power amp), Kelly (50W from 4 6V6s), and several other small scale projects.
A favorite project I did was based on Kevin's development of the Hotbox tube preamp pedal from Matchless in chapter 16 I built this pedal in a true "true point-to-point style "(see terminal strips) in a tube pedal enclosure from Doug Hoffman, to replace a Baxandall tone stack and recast the preamplifier values to be more Dumble-esqe (non-HRM-type).
What would you do to match an amplifier to Yngwie Malmsteen's style? See Chapter 18, 'Swede'.
The Ultimate Tone Volume 2 – Systems Approach to Stage Sound Nirvana
Volume 2 is not project oriented. Most of the book, Chapters 2 to 5, provides power tricks and an overview of power amplifiers, including tube, solid-state and hybrid amps. Chapter 3, the tube amplifiers, has some very practical information about the match and corrections to the Marshall and Fender bias circuit.
I like the 1st and last chapters of Volume 2 of the best. The first chapter is a brief discussion of sound stages and how you can put your gear on stage for the best audience / band experience. The last, Chapter 6 called "Pillars of Tone" and in this chapter the major contributors note on block-level of a guitar tube amplifier system design are discussed one by one and Kevin gives some very valuable insight into the whole tone shaping preamp / amplifier.
The Ultimate Tone Volume 4 – Advanced techniques for Modern Guitar Amp Design
This is the book you want to buy if you feel the need to become deeply involved with power scaling technology, Kevin has developed. Power Scaling, invented and trademarked by Kevin, is the way you can get aspects of power amp distortion (as opposed to the preamp distortion) into your tone at bedroom volume. Volume 4 is no DIY project, but explores the issues, including dimming, power scaling (both down and up), case and power management can be addressed by modern guitar tube amplifier designers.
That said, the second-to-last chapter of Volume 4 can be important for a wider group of enthusiast builders … design philosophy. This chapter gives Kevin a hierarchical design process that could be used to make critical decisions about how you approach your next project.
The Ultimate Tone – Modify and Custom Building Tube Guitar Amps
There are no volume numbers in the title of this book, it was 1st. Personally I bought it for completeness. I specifically wanted to have the "perfect effects loop 'data, although the loop itself is incorporated into a project in Volume 5th TUT also has some excellent material on reverbs and signal switching methods that are not explained in other volumes. The first half introduces TUT / overviews tube amplifier systems, power supplies & reasons, then focuses on the preamplifier and power amplifier changes to commercial amps (eg Marshall / Fender) … if you're completely new to tube electronics you may want to buy this 1: a volume at the same time as the 3rd Volume
The Ultimate Tone Volume 6 – Timeless Tone Built for the Future Today
In many ways, Volume 6 a continuation and extension of the material in Volume 4 when Power Scaling is introduced. In Volume 6 of a new 'direct control' version of Powerscaling, displays were introduced in Vol 4, but flushed with large circuits and is used for 'case' and to maintain control, and in Vol 6th The new scaling circuit has many advantages of a DIY builder like greater noise immunity and lower sensitivity to layout, etc.
I have used the new DC Power Scaling of a Trainwreck clone project and was really impressed with the improvement in the 'playability' at lower volumes … The unchanged Trainwreck Express circuit is simply too high to domestic use, needing to be cranked to the sweet tones, it is known for.
One chapter of Volume 6 is dedicated to Dumble amplifiers … something, I was really looking forward to as many of my hobby projects focus on these circuits. I found this short chapter to be a good introduction to the general structure of Dumble amps, written from the viewpoint of evolution from the early modified model amps that Alexander Dumble started doing, but I felt the chapter fell short of discussing some of the more important features of recent Dumble models.
Volume 6 are also plenty of other material in it, including a great tutorial on designing really high output power amplifiers and a large chapter on the high gain amplifier design with real-world circuits and detailed references.
In Summary …
Kevin's books have a very empirical approach. He encourages you to allocate convention in some cases and not be afraid to try combinations of pipes or even drag pipes and in any case clearly explains why it is ok, and identify any reasons why it would be ok All the examples in the books is very practical, and he certainly has the DIYer in mind as he writes.
Kevin's body of work is truly encyclopedic in nature, and given that a feature missing from his books, any kind of indexing … this is exacerbated by the fact that Kevin always refer to previous writings, rather than repeating itself in a new volume, and it is very difficult to pinpoint reference, even with the second book in his hand. Perhaps the search engine technology that could just as Google's ability to search protected content to be exploited in this case and give a sort of 'auto-index' on the network of all Kevin's books, without actually giving away the book itself. Or better yet, how about an e-book format of Kevin's entire collection of books TUT … I think all the e-book readers include search capabilities … and Kevin's hand-drawn schematics would probably be sufficient and very readable on e-paper displays these devices function.
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