Low power Musing 40 with parallel/cascade idea

[dwinstonwood]

Thank you!

[dwinstonwood]

I had some laserable acrylic left over from my AC15, so I guess this one's going to have a blue faceplate, too. Here's a mockup drawing.

I've been playing it through the Celestion Creamback that's mounted in my AC15 cabinet. I haven't played it enough to really dial it in yet. But, it's a cool amp!

[dwinstonwood]

So, I'm getting ready to order a Marshal head cabinet for this build (I have to budget and save for stuff).

It occurred to me that I should have used an OPT with multiple speaker Ohm secondary taps to allow for various speaker cabs other than 8 Ohm.

My current Deluxe Reverb OPT reflects 6,600 Ohms to the primary with an 8 Ohm speaker load.

It sounds really good as is, but I'm wondering if I might get less clean and less headroom if I went with an 8,500 Ohm 5E3 OPT (with multiple speaker taps) instead.

Contrary to logic and the interests of most gigging guitarists, I actually want the amp to distort sooner at the same volume.

Would the 5E3 OPT make a noticable difference at the same volume level in that regard?

Thanks. All advice and suggestions welcome.

[Glenn]

Hi dwinstonwood. I had that exact same OT, it was a 6.6k 20 watt, with only the 8ohms tap on my Princeton reverb. I replaced it with a 18 watt 8.4k OT with multiple taps and even though I still am using the 8ohm the amp has more grunt now.
Good luck...Glenn

[dwinstonwood]

Thanks Glenn! That's what I was suspecting. Good to know. I'll look at one of those 18w OPT's. You can never have too many transformers. 

It looks like the Hammond 1750PA is a good, inexpensive choice:
https://www.hammfg.com/part/1750PA

[Glenn]

Yes, that’s the one I used... I still have one left that I might use on a 6y6 Express I’m interested in.

How do you like the 6l6 bassman, you and Sluckey designed?
I’m interested in that too. Does it break up before the cops come to the door?
Thanks...

[dwinstonwood]

Glenn, the Musing 40, as I called it, has beautiful clean tones, but it's really way too loud for the townhouse I live in. I can get it into overdrive with the gain pot, but just for a few minutes at a time. I couldn't get away with playing it that loud for extended periods.
Now, I'm using a WGS 12C/S which is a warm speaker with a very smooth top end. High notes are really clear, but without being so bright that it hurts (I ended up leaving off the Bright switch). The filtering (coupling cap choices) seems very balanced through the whole frequency range. It would probably be a good Jazz amp. I think it would really shine with a big archtop.

[Glenn]

Thanks for the explanation, cheers.