A Boosted 2204... (Fryette content)

FourT6and2

FourT6and2

Well-known member
...is awesome. Just saying ;)

Fortin Grind —> vertical input 2204 —> Fryette PS-2A —> Bogner 4x12 w/G12H-75s

What a great sound. Open, uncompressed, and angry. The Power Station really adds a ton of aggression and low-end punch if you dial it right and use it as a second power amp instead of an attenuator. I will probably never use an amp without it again. But I don't really use it to attenuate. It's a great way to add a loop post-amp for time-based FX and to add modern punch to amps that either don't have Depth/Resonance controls or simply need a boost in the lows. The thing is probably the best piece of gear I've come across in decades.
 
I modded a jet city jca50’s crunch channel and power amp to 2204 specs but with 6L6’s (including removing the stupid pre tonestack loop), and boosting it is super fun. SD1 I think is my favorite boost for it. SD1 with mxr micro amp when I want even more. Surprising how heavy it can get.

I don’t think I’ve tried my grind clone with it, I will have to try.
 
FourT6and2 said:
...is awesome. Just saying ;)

Fortin Grind —> vertical input 2204 —> Fryette PS-2A —> Bogner 4x12 w/G12H-75s

What a great sound. Open, uncompressed, and angry. The Power Station really adds a ton of aggression and low-end punch if you dial it right and use it as a second power amp instead of an attenuator. I will probably never use an amp without it again. But I don't really use it to attenuate. It's a great way to add a loop post-amp for time-based FX and to add modern punch to amps that either don't have Depth/Resonance controls or simply need a boost in the lows. The thing is probably the best piece of gear I've come across in decades.
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bought 100 last year, and was super impressed as well. Like you, I use it sparingly, as I like to move some air still. There are amps like the SLO and Budda though, that I really prefer with some juice, so it helps a lot.
 
I agree about the 2203. Just because it has a MV I think the cranked (or damn close) tone gets forgotten. Once you really open them up they are amazing. One of my favorite amps is a 2204 with an extra tube stage goosing the stock-ish circuit. It's essentially a "one wire mod' type gain stage. So 1M series/68k to ground type of gain dump.

EDIT: still run that amp very cranked and load boxed but maybe only 6-7 on the MV.
 
Bad Brain said:
Is it not true that there was no circuit change from vertical to horizontal with the 2204?
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I actually don't know for sure. I always see people mention the vertical input as being better. I do know the horizontal input amps have PCB-mounted pots. Not a bad thing in and of itself. But I can't use these amps for the mods I do because I need access to the pot lugs.
 
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mnemonic said:
Jason of headfirst has a good video on his YouTube channel going through the filtering and voltage changes, including clips.

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Watching now. It's interesting he didn't know what a "hot shield" was when he made this video. He said he'd never seen such a thing before. But it's a fairly common method of shielding grid wires while at the same time shaving off highs due to Miller capacitance interaction. Kind of a silly method, though. It's better to simply use a shielded grid wire, ground the shield at the other end (jack side), and then use an actual capacitor to create a low-pass filter that you can specifically tune. There's no way to easily measure the Miller capacitance of the tube and then calculate the low-pass filter's cutoff to know exactly how much high-end you're killing. You're also putting high voltage on the shield of that wire, which goes directly to your guitar... Bad.

But looks like the pot-mounted PCB, horizontal input versions of these amps had a missing interstage decoupling resistor on the B+ rail, which means the phase inverter and the cathode follower are sharing the same filtering and B+ node (bad). Some Ceriatone amps like the Yeti and Chupacabra also do this. I think because the Jose mods they copied were done to horizontal input Marshalls, so they just carried over the design flaws.

High preamp voltages aren't a bad thing IMO. But ideally, you should have every stage on it's own decoupled node. This reduces AC ripple, reduces stage-to-stage crosstalk/noise, reduces RF/EMI interference, and keeps things nice and tight. But it also can come down to sound/feel. After all, guitar amps like these aren't meant to operate "correctly". They're meant to produce tonal qualities like distortion and harmonics and noise that might be antithetical to "correct" electrical design.

That said... Marshall were idiots and did a lot of stupid things, even when taking into account these are guitar amps meant to be dirty/distortion machines.
 
RedPlated said:
The filtering setup changed. It’s a weird way they did it. The last one I worked on, I had to completely redo all the filter nodes. Voltages were all awry due to the change in layout.
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One other thing to mention are the higher voltage PTs in the 82/83 2204s. Every one I've had, the unloaded PV is over 500v.
 
Racerxrated said:
One other thing to mention are the higher voltage PTs in the 82/83 2204s. Every one I've had, the unloaded PV is over 500v.
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Are these vertical input models you're talking about? I've only ever seen reports of these having very low voltages. The '81 2204 I just looked at has the 1202-342/1 PT and has a Vp of 398v. The 2203 I have on my bench (early model as well) has ~400v too. I though they got higher voltages as the years went on?
 
Racerxrated said:
One other thing to mention are the higher voltage PTs in the 82/83 2204s. Every one I've had, the unloaded PV is over 500v.
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Not my experience. Maybe 1 out of 15 or 20 have high voltages from the ones I’ve had here.

I have two 2204’s of my own. 82/83. One is a high voltage amp. I think it’s a 3 series PT.

The 1 and 2 series PT are much more common. Usually around 390vdc.

I actually like the low voltage amps. They sound killer. Sometimes even better. Some of the best 2204’s I’ve heard are lower PV.
 
From what I've read, it seems the voltage changed partway through '82. @RedPlated and @FourT6and2, do you happen to know what part of the year the ones you looked at were from? My 4104 is a lower (little over 400V at idle) one, from February '82 if I recall. People with later '82 specimens seem to mostly report higher voltages, at least on the forum threads I've seen.

Edit: @Racerxrated do you know the dates on yours? Think I might have asked that a while ago already.
 
7704A said:
From what I've read, it seems the voltage changed partway through '82. @RedPlated and @FourT6and2, do you happen to know what part of the year the ones you looked at were from? My 4104 is a lower (little over 400V at idle) one, from February '82 if I recall. People with later '82 specimens seem to mostly report higher voltages, at least on the forum threads I've seen.

Edit: @Racerxrated do you know the dates on yours? Think I might have asked that a while ago already.
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I've seen them all over the place, too, but never noticed or thought about the pattern.
 
Both my 83 2204’s are around 480 with tubes. I’ve always understood it to be high PV starting sometime in 82 for the 2204.

These amps don’t have monstrous low end, nor do they have much gain. But they are the perfect middle ground between vintage and modern to my ear. Can push them in either direction depending on settings and pedals etc. And holy shit do they sit perfectly in a live mix. Just raw attitude
 
FourT6and2 said:
...is awesome. Just saying ;)

Fortin Grind —> vertical input 2204 —> Fryette PS-2A —> Bogner 4x12 w/G12H-75s

What a great sound. Open, uncompressed, and angry. The Power Station really adds a ton of aggression and low-end punch if you dial it right and use it as a second power amp instead of an attenuator. I will probably never use an amp without it again. But I don't really use it to attenuate. It's a great way to add a loop post-amp for time-based FX and to add modern punch to amps that either don't have Depth/Resonance controls or simply need a boost in the lows. The thing is probably the best piece of gear I've come across in decades.
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I used mine similarly. I only got the thing for the loop and DI, but i used it to increase volume as i had a 50 watt at the time.
 
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