badbluesplayer Posted July 21, 2012 Share Posted July 21, 2012 Mercury Magnetics makes a kit to upgrade the Tiny Terror. It includes replacement transformers, a new choke and some components to upgrade the PCB circuitry. I figured it was a good project for me and it worked out fine, with a little trace fixing and head scratching. It sounds really awesome. Here's some photos. Stock: Empty with new holes for trannies and choke - there's no choke in the stock amp so you have to drill some more holes. Before the new components were installed: New stuff installed on board. Note the Pentode/Triode mode switch installed in the back of the chassis. Triode sounds cool too! The choke is wired into the board to replace one of the resistors - the two black wires at the right rear of the board: Oops - I switched the tone knob with one of the volume knobs: Looks good, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thundergod Posted July 21, 2012 Share Posted July 21, 2012 Interesting. I like the tiny terror but would mod it anyway as it's not something that can't be undone and I figure it shouldn't be very expensive... how much did you invest? (time, money) and what previous experience did you have doing amp mods? (do you consider this is something anyone can do or should people have at least some experience with doing electronics stuff?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surfpup Posted July 21, 2012 Share Posted July 21, 2012 Nice! That's some quality (and expensive iron). Sound better? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badbluesplayer Posted July 23, 2012 Author Share Posted July 23, 2012 Interesting. I like the tiny terror but would mod it anyway as it's not something that can't be undone and I figure it shouldn't be very expensive... how much did you invest? (time, money) and what previous experience did you have doing amp mods? (do you consider this is something anyone can do or should people have at least some experience with doing electronics stuff?) It costs $325 for the kit and it took me a day to do it. The MM transformers are expensive, but not too far out of line with others. If I knew what to buy and how to do it, I could have saved some money buying more generic transformers and buying the parts somewhere else. The thing about the kit is that it includes stuff to upgrade the board. I had no clue what was needed there, so I decided to buy the kit. You pretty much need to be able to work with electronics to do it. I had to unsolder the stuff, drill holes, fix some traces, solder stuff back in there and then figure out what I messed up. You need to be able to test continuity and check resistances here and there to figure out where if all the connections are good. I had to fix two connections that weren't right when I first made them. It took some head scratching to figure it out. I had to do a couple of things on the backside of the board too. Anyway, it was fun and I'm learning some more things about amps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badbluesplayer Posted July 23, 2012 Author Share Posted July 23, 2012 Nice! That's some quality (and expensive iron). Sound better? Pretty expensive. But it does sound better than any other el84 amp I've played through. It's new territory for me, and I'm still trying to find the sweet spot with the amp. It really growls with the ES339. Really woody on the low end and brassy/glassy on the top end. Played the Strat for an hour or so and the Tele for a second. Haven't figured them out yet, but man, the Gibson sounds great!! I've tried to record some clips but I haven't found the right combination of mic placement and whatever to get a great recording yet. I wondered whether it was worth it to take a $600 amp and put another $300 into it. I'm happy with it. I also like to mess with stuff, so it was a fun project for me. Maybe I can make a clone now that I have the schematics. That'd be fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Searcy Posted July 24, 2012 Share Posted July 24, 2012 Cool project. One of these days I'm going to have to mess around with some transformers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twiz Posted July 24, 2012 Share Posted July 24, 2012 That turned out really cool. Awesome job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badbluesplayer Posted August 4, 2012 Author Share Posted August 4, 2012 With my new speaker cabinet - audio is from the camera - pretty midrangey for a telecaster! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COKbM_enG8s Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surfpup Posted August 4, 2012 Share Posted August 4, 2012 Definitely sounding nice. Very smoooooove. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slavestate Posted August 4, 2012 Share Posted August 4, 2012 Very awesome video. You fellas sound great. And the doggie doesn't seem to be bothered either! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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