In the mail: a tube amp to fit in a briefcase!

[mrpinter]

When I saw a video for this I had to have one. It sounds great in the vids... we'll see when it arrives. I'm thinking it may just be a perfect amp for a small NAMM booth (this gave me an excuse to also order a Weber Blue Dog 15 watt speaker and an empty cab).
The amp is made in China by a Chinese company that's family owned; it's got a 2x12AX7 gain stage and a 12 AU7 tube as the power tube, and as you can see it has a serious looking transformer. They say they use high grade components, like premium German capacitors, etc. Here is a good video of it:

[youtube]5DX1ixKd2I0[/youtube]

 

[dmraco]

Good luck and keep us posted.  I had one of these but it lacked the gain I wanted

[youtube]Xwv9FXOHTWA[/youtube]

perhaps I need to try this:

[youtube]Z4CcFFMvkfo[/youtube]

 

[mrpinter]

Those look pretty interesting as well. They're supposed to sound pretty close to tube amps that they emulate. One of the things I like about the Wang unit is that it IS a tube amp. And if I need more gain I just add a pedal.

 

[JeffBlue]

Those are interesting, but I would prefer the tube amp. I have a Vox Lil' Night Train which also uses a 12AU7 in the output. I was using a 12BH7 for an output tube until I purchased 6SN7 to 12AU7 (octal to noval adapters) Now I am running a pair of NOS 6SL7s and a 6SN7 octal preamp tubes. Sounds really good. I had to use some vitol o-rings on the glass on the tubes to quiet some microphonixs issues and I had to remove the tube retainers, spin the retainer hooks 180 degrees and remove the amp cover.

 

[mrpinter]

Well, the Wangs amp came, and I'm liking it a lot. It's a little short on clean tones, but you can get a pretty good clean by turning the volume down. The volume knob is as much a tone control as it is volume. At low positions it cleans up but also gets really bright and trebly. This largely disappears when it's maxed out. The sound? Fabulous. Like a cranked AC30 or EL84 Matchless amp through hearing protection. BtW, I'm running it through the Weber alnico replacement speaker of my Deluxe Reverb RI. Here is a pic of it powered up:

 

[mrpinter]

I've had this little amp for a while now, and I took it to my guitar/amp tech to see what he could do to improve it (not that it really needed improving, but why not). He fooled with it for a while and ended up just replacing the tubes with some better ones. I'm not even sure which ones he used, but I think one is a NOS of some kind and one is a Tube Amp Doctor (TAD) model. One of the positions didn't sound any better with the premium tubes, so the stock Chinese one was left in there.  Retubing really brought some better tones out of this thing. I'm using this at home lately as much as I am my heavily modded Deluxe Reverb. It's a different animal, of course, and couldn't ever replace a full size amp like the Deluxe, but for practice and just having fun it's terrific.

 

[mayfly]

It's an interesting gizmo for sure!  From what I can tell from the photos, there is no output transformer.  Is that true?  If that's the case I wonder how they deal with the output impedance mis-match  :icon_scratch:

 

[mrpinter]

I'm a dummy when it comes to the technical stuff with amps, but does this answer any questions?

 

[mayfly]

Yep - there is an output transformer.  Must be inside the case.

It's a pretty straight forward tube amp actually.  No surprises there.

 

[Cagey]

It's an interesting gizmo for sure!  From what I can tell from the photos, there is no output transformer.  Is that true?  If that's the case I wonder how they deal with the output impedance mis-match  :icon_scratch:

I found a shot of its guts...

It's only a 1 watt amp, so the output transformer doesn't need to be a monster.

 

[mrpinter]

I know it's rated at one watt, but the thing is louder than you'd think with that rating. For example, it's louder than the Hotone Nano Legacy Purple Wind that I bought to use for a headphone amp - and the Hotone is rated at five watts. So go figure.

 

[Cagey]

I don't doubt it. Wattage ratings are often no indication of potential sound pressure levels. Speaker efficiency, harmonic content, cabinet design, etc. all enter in it. I had a little 5 watt tube amp I could plug into a closed 412 cabinet that would drive it to surprising volumes, while a 400 watt solid state unit wouldn't touch what my 50 watt Marshall head could push out of that same cabinet. I also at one time had an open-back 50 watt Ampeg 212 combo that would damn near make your ears bleed, unless you took it outdoors. Then, it just sorta disappeared in the mix.