Evh 50w stealth mod

  • Thread starter Thread starter ElMuchoDingo
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ElMuchoDingo

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Has anyone else seen this vid? Any idea what the mod is. I think it sounds great and Howard Kaplan is the guy doing the mod. I haven’t played the 50w stealth, is there a volume channel clean up issue?

 
Howard is THE man. He retired like two years ago didn't he?
 
Pbfoot said:
Has anyone else seen this vid? Any idea what the mod is. I think it sounds great and Howard Kaplan is the guy doing the mod. I haven’t played the 50w stealth, is there a volume channel clean up issue?

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any chance you can just say what the mod is? im not watching 10 min of that,

the only "mod" that amp needed when i owned it, was a lower gain preamp in V2. that opened up the gain range on ch 2 and ch3. otherwise for the money that amp rocked my balls off.

also for the record, i dont think of rolling tubes a "mod"
 
tonedover said:
any chance you can just say what the mod is? im not watching 10 min of that,

the only "mod" that amp needed when i owned it, was a lower gain preamp in V2. that opened up the gain range on ch 2 and ch3. otherwise for the money that amp rocked my balls off.

also for the record, i dont think of rolling tubes a "mod"
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no I'm asking if anyone knows what the mod is.
 
tonedover said:
any chance you can just say what the mod is? im not watching 10 min of that,

the only "mod" that amp needed when i owned it, was a lower gain preamp in V2. that opened up the gain range on ch 2 and ch3. otherwise for the money that amp rocked my balls off.

also for the record, i dont think of rolling tubes a
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Funny you mentioned tube swaps. Have a stealth 100. Green channel didn’t do much for me. Red channel has way too much unusable gain. Sounds thin and cold. Blue channel good but was it worth the entry price.

Swapped out V1 to a lower gain pre tested for super quiet harmonic noise.

Now blue channel much better open not as compressed more Marshall high gain tone.
Red channel chunkier leads don’t sound thin or fizzy. Amp is less compressed and harmonically rich. And much quieter.
 
No idea what the mod is, and they didn't say.
I'd be interested in finding out. Seems like it gave a bit of articulation and responsiveness to the blue channel.
FWIW, I have this amp and dig it a lot. I have other amps and pedals that do the crunchy stuff. Still, would like to know what was changed.
 
Huh, funny that Howard Kaplan is modding these amps when he designed them in the first place.
 
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I may be the odd man out but I thought the green channel was the best thing about the 50w 6L6 Stealth I had. I didn’t think it needed anything changed. It wasn’t hard at all to get a totally clean tone out of it and it had a whole range of really good breakup to crunch tones.

It was the red channel that I didn’t like. Way too compressed. I like my 6505 better for that.

You could have given me a 2 channel amp that was independent Stealth green/blue with their own controls and I would have been happier.
 
guitarnate2000 said:
from what I understand, a number of the mods that Howard performs on these amps, are things he wanted in the production builds. EVH/Fender gave a lot of pushback due to $$$
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That's interesting. Is there a list of his mods to these amps posted anywhere?
 
I'd just want to lower the gain about 25% or so on the blue and red channels. I don't think that I ever turn the gain up past 9 or 10 o'clock on either of those.
 
japetus said:
Turn the gain lower?
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Problem is the gain range on the knobs with the stock tubes. On the red channel it goes from medium/high gain at 1 (of 10) to modern metal at 3 (of 10). And beyond 4 or 5 it's just unusably insane gain.

@chumbucket your best bet is to throw a 12AU7 in V2, or maybe a pair of 5751's in V3 and V4. This brings down the gain on the red channel considerably.
Suddenly you will even have some Thin Lizzy/Journey levels of classic/hard rock gain around 1 or 2. And the insanity only starts kicking in above, say 7 (of 10) on the red channel's gain knob's range.
 
I believe on the blue channel it's just adding a bright cap over the gain pot.
 
I have a Kruse modded 50W6L6 and he included a second master (foot switchable) and a switch on the back to lower red channel gain if wanted. Love it, great amp. I also have the combo, maybe I should drive it over to Kaplans.
 
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Kaplan isn’t doing the mods anymore, he got a gig working for Yamaha, IIRR, and closed up shop.

I didn’t even realize EVH was making heads with dual concentric Gain/Volume knobs for the blue/green channels, which Howard was offering as a mod. I absolutely would have had that done in a heartbeat on my OG 6L6 50w.

And yeah, I’ll be trying some of those tube changes, the amount of distortion on tap is stupid. :LOL:
 
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