shaun wrote:Gene, just curious as to why you are changing the OT.
Has the original died, or does it improve the amps tone?
Shaun,
Original transformer is still Ok, I was simply hoping to improve the clarity a tiny bit. I realize that you can only get "so much" of a shine on a turd, no matter how much you polish it, but besides adding 4 ohm capability to the existing 8 & 16 ohm taps, it did improve the clarity (not clean-ness) a little as wel as slightly improving headroom. FWIW, I run this amp through a 4x12 greenback cab. In stock form the distortion (amp mostly cranked) was a tad muffled, fuzzy and muted. With the new transformer, the distortion is a tad clearer and especially the bottom end has changed from being simply a muffled "woofiness" when the bass is turned up too far and now you can clearly hear the bottom end distort if the bass is turned up too far. Overall, better definition and this transformer runs considerably cooler. I'm not sure that there is enough improvement to warrant the big $$$ of a Mercury upgrade and am not certain that a Classictone would give the same improvement, but I just happened to have this fairly massive custom Heyboer on hand, with the right specs, so it was worth a try. I will likely try adding a choke as an experiment, once I determine the correct values for it. FYI, I have been pounding the crap out of this amp, on a daily basis for a year and a half and it's like a TIMEX, "takes a lickin' & keeps on tickin'!" In answer to your last question, it did not truly "change" the tone, per se, but improved the clarity of the tone, if that makes any sense!
Thanx 4 Your Interest,
Gene