Too easy to build one just like it (with a better chassis) and not spend that kind of dough. I never bought into the Fischer magic ear thing either.
It's one of those amps, like Dumble, that you've heard about but probably never seen. In fact, I know I've seen/heard more Dumbles on stage or on recording that I have Trainwrecks.
And since you only know what you know because others have written about it, you're free to imagine it being as wonderful as you'd like.
Ready for the (maybe) secret?
I was looking at a schematic for the Express, and noticed a resistor/cap combo that the drafter marked as the point where the amp was voiced. It was a coupling cap and a resistor to ground between stages 2 and 3. The resistor was awfully small for a grid reference, generally 56k in most schematics floating around.
It occurred to me that this is a heavy load for the previous stage, and rotates the a.c. loadline to be more vertical. That really means that if you apply a big enough input, the previous stage runs out of steam and distorts with a relatively small output swing compared to a larger reference resistor (like 470k-1M).
My guess is that if you tune the amp right, you can get the output tubes, phase inverter and some of the preamp stages to break up about the same time, leading to good touch sensitivity. Regardless, without newer complications like power scalling/VVR, that window of touch senstivity will still be at a single (loud) volume level.
Anyway, these things resold around $10k back around the mid-90's. My guess is that Ken sold them for quite a bit less than that, and what the buyer mostly paid for was personal voicing and interaction with the builder.
Topic: Trainwreck anyone ?? (Read 17396 times)