London Power Amplifiers

[Voxbox]

Hi all,

I've been reading Kevin O'Connors' TUT series recently and it dawned on me that I've never known of anyone who plays one of his amps, or an amp modified by London Power.

Has anyone any experience of a London Power Amp?
It seems odd that they aren't more widely known!

Cheers

[HotBluePlates]

They're expensive, and unless you live in Canada, will cost a lot to ship.

[phsyconoodler]

Call him on the phone sometime and you'll find out why.
 

[Rich]

He's lived in my area for awhile but I've never run into him.  The mail address is a PO box at a shopping plaza.

A friend broke down in front of his place, rural area, and O'Connor came to his rescue. Apparently he moved here because farm land is cheap compared to Southern Ontario and the family is into organics farming.

Now that you guys have taught me a bit about amps, maybe I should contact him again.

Better yet maybe I should 'break down' in front of his place; he gave my friend a free copy of TUT.

http://www.londonpower.com

[LooseChange]

Kevin is a good guy. He's just a bit eccentric. I learned a ton of stuff from his books. I built the "Standard" from TUT5. It has a lot of his circuits and was designed around one of his early amps. I use it when I play with my band. It's a great amp.

[Leevi]

I met Kevin in Helsinki tube amp workshop in 2004.
He held some tube amplifier lectures and of course sold his books.
/Leevi

[Cups]

Would love to own one of his amps. I'm sure a lot of you would disagree but the insides of his amps are the bees knees in my opinion.
Check out these pictures: http://www.londonpower.com/inside-lp-amps/inside.htm

[Leevi]

They are certainly good amps but I like more the vintage style like
point-to-point wiring, simple circuit and long-lasting materials.
/Leevi

[Fresh_Start]

Would love to own one of his amps. I'm sure a lot of you would disagree but the insides of his amps are the bees knees in my opinion.
Check out these pictures: http://www.londonpower.com/inside-lp-amps/inside.htm

OK, I'll bite.  What do you do if someone brings this thing in and says "there was a little smoke coming from somewhere in the middle and then a scratchy squeal..."?



I'm VERY impressed with the circuit density and 3-dimensional circuitry but Lord help you if it ever needs to be serviced!

Cheers,

Chip

[PRR]

> Lord help you if it ever needs to be serviced!

Looks like you take the jack nuts off, the whole assembly can be flopped into the open. The sub-cards unplug from the mainboard. The four cards have distinct functions: the complaint tells which one needs eyeballing. You can remove it for a look, or remove the others so you can probe it while powered-up.

I agree it is "too tight". Also un-Vintage. But unlike MANY other amps (with names you know), this one is highly servicable.

[Voxbox]

yep, extender boards or cables would servicing dead easy.

[Champ_49]

I know this is an old thread.  But I just finished installing several of his kits into my existing  amp.
This is not his actual amp like the studio 10 but I am VERY happy with the kits.
Actually its the best amp I own and now I'm thinking of selling my most prized amps. Even my soldano slo.

I can only imagine his actual studio 10 and there are many others are really well made amps and probably sound phenomenal. I just installed several of his kits and for a high gain amp there is very minimal noise issues. 
The kits installed are:

1) The sv1 (power scaling)
2) the rbx (raw bias supply)
3) the bfx (fx loop)
4) bmk2 (bias mod)

In a nutshell my amp can take any power tubes that have 8 pins making sure they are biased properly. Kevin is a great guy and was VERY helpful.
The amp also has ppwer scaling  which incorporates the bias kit mod which is designed for use with all different power tubes. Basically there is no tube you can't use. Can even take 6V6s, KT88s to 6L6GCs. 
This is my dream amp with all the pinch harmonics  I can handle.  Great tone.  Never going back to that vintage amp thing again.  Had a few vintage amps but pretty much sold them all. 
So all in all if the kits worked out this well I can only imagine how his actual amps would be.

There are also many big name amp manufactures that use his technology with a license. And now that I installed the kits I can see why.  It boggles my mind that Kevin is not well known but I think he's not the money hungry guy.  He's just really passionate about what he does.

Anything you could get from London power I'd trust . 

I'm glad I found his books. Only wish I found them sooner.

[nanonino]

London Power amp user. Been so for 12 years, when I bought a Studio 50W amp and a Sustainor pre-amp. I was dumb enough to sell those but then I found
another Studio, this a 10 watt, with a big heavy cabinet KO made for them. This 10 watter with the loud as hell speaker cab is great on gigs..like I say ..pretty freaking loud. 

[Champ_49]

London Power amp user. Been so for 12 years, when I bought a Studio 50W amp and a Sustainor pre-amp. I was dumb enough to sell those but then I found
another Studio, this a 10 watt, with a big heavy cabinet KO made for them. This 10 watter with the loud as hell speaker cab is great on gigs..like I say ..pretty freaking loud.

That's cool.  I've never heard his amps in person either. I don't believe he has any of his amps on youtube.  I had a conversation with Kevin about his studio amp and he did mention that it had ALOT of functions. So I guess when some players find a setting they are happy with they just keep the knobs there. Then they think to buy another amp with less functions and ask why do they need an amp with that many functions. Only then they realize that they can't get the tone they originally got from the studio amp. And then regret selling  it. 
Glad you managed to get hold of a 10W.
The power scaling is awesome and galactic grounding is what I will use from now on in future builds.   He has ALOT of other kits on his site.  I chose to implement some of his most popular ones.  The bmk2 (bias mod), SV1, rbx and bfx. Can't say I'd be more pleased with anything else.

Before I focused too much on making it look neat (which is  important too so you can troubleshoot easier) but what is most important is how and where you hook it up. Where to filter out unwanted noise, adding additional amd separate filtering etc.
My amp noe doesn't look the neatest but it sure sounds good and has low noise issues. My first stock jcm800 build (which I ended up taking a part and rebuilding believe it or not several times) had some noise issues.  Now I've really built my dream amp.