Ask yourself this question, how serious are you about your tone? Does your amplifier sound lifeless? Volume not what it used to be? Does it hum or make all sorts of odd noises? Maybe not even working at all?!? Or maybe you wanna squeeze that last bit of tone out of an already killer amp...
What about YOUR tone? What are the options are that are available to you and your equipment, and what is the most cost effective way for you to 'get there'? A new, custom amp or work with the existing gear you already love? There are Good, Better... and Best options to consider... AND it's all about your tone and budget!
We can't stress the importance of taking care of your tube amps. Tube amps, just like your car or anything else you own, require routine maintenance. It needs an overhaul every 5 to 10 years so it can keep performing as designed. Resistors overheat and drift in value, electrolytic capacitors dry up, coupling caps may pass DC, sockets get corroded, pots get dirty, switch jacks corrode and need burnishing... you get the picture. All of these things can be easily corrected. We can make your tube amp like new, with new tubes, biased to perfection. Your amp will be good to go for another 10 years and sound like it did the day it left the music store.
Call us and let's talk about your tone and what you need, and then let's see what we can do to help you reach that elusive Holy Grail of Tone... yours!
Glenn J. Miller
, owner and equipment technician of Atlanta Tone Labs!
Meet
1988 Carvin FET 400 Power Amplifier
1993 Marshall 9100 MonoBloc Power Amplifier
Soldano SP77 Series II Preamp
1980's original Scholz R&D Rockman X100
1980's Scholz R&D Power Soak attenuator
2009 Kendrick New JoyZee hand wired amplifier - built from a kit.
Atlanta Tone Labs is dedicated to helping all players in trying to achieve that magical sound in their ears. How serious are you about your tone? Here's a few recent examples of what's come through our shop...
Carvin FET 400 (circa. 1988) solid-state power amp rated _ 100W per channel into an 8 ohm load.
Signal handling and output pc board of a Carvin FET 400 amplifier.
Semiconductor and discrete component layout of a solid-state power amp readied for 'surgery'.
After removing the MOSFETS, the output finals are overhauled and restuffed with the proper components.
Slowly bring up the power, carefully checking the integrity of the work performed.
Repaired and re-installed circuit board, just needs to have the top of the enclosure replaced and buttoned up.
Internal component view of the hand-wired tone stack of a Kendrick tube amplifier kit.
Top view of a hand-wired Kendrick custom amp kit.
Front bezel of a hand-wired Kendrick custom amp kit.
Rear view of a hand-wired Kendrick custom amp kit.
Marshall 9100 MonoBloc power amplfier, rated _ 50W per channel.
Marshall 9100 enclosure with it's top lifted open.
Marshall 9100 power amp with the bottom of the enclosure exposed, revealing the 'guts'. Ready to be worked on...
Marshall 9100 waiting for the output finals to be biased.
Output and power transformers for one channel of a Marshall 9100 power amp.
Output (5881, the big ones), pre-driver (12AX7/ECC83) and phase inverter (12AT7/ECC81) tubes of a Marshall 9100 power amp.
Soldano SP77 preamp opened up and ready for modifications. Adding hi-gain & voicing mods to allow tones & gain very similar to a SLO-100.
Jason Kemmery is a master craftsman & he custom builds what are in my opinion some of the most beautiful guitars that are REAL players! Buy one of his creations, you won't be sorry!
Gerald Weber is probably the nicest man I've ever met, and his industry reputation speaks for itself. I also learned a LOT from him about tube amps, especially Fender. Kendrick amps ROCK too, built one myself!
Ted Weber (1951-2009) was a legendary innovator in speaker technology amongst other things. His tools and products can be found scattered about the bench here _ the Atlanta Tone Labs - and for good reason!
This is THE big iron for your amp, serious players agree that these are essential building blocks to your tone!
THE place on the web if you're going to find parts for almost everything in your projects! A real treasure trove!
Wanna find out what clubs and bands are happening locally? Check out Kevin's site - just one click away!
Atlanta Tone Labs can be reached anytime _:
TELEPHONE: (678) 379.TONE
E-MAIL: info (at) atl-tonelabs (dot) com
Need service, quickly fill out ouronline form!
Normal Business Hours : 9am - 6pm EST Weekdays
Weekends by appointment only!
< Back >
It all started back when I was a knee-high, the curiousity, the need to know. Getting into everything within reach, much to my parents chagrin, I developed my mechanical skills early on. It evolved into getting Dads tools and figuring out how everything worked and fixing things if I knew how. "He fixes stuff just like a doctor" was how my brothers & sisters used to put it.
When I was in my early teens, my older brother was a pretty damn good musician and the various bands he was in would play down in our basement. I got hooked on the drums at first, just for the fact you could get real physical with em - didn't hurt that I loved the sound and thunder. All the drummers that would come over were all pretty cool guys and would take the time and show me stuff. Eventually, the tone chasing began as I gravitated towards the guitar after noodling around with keyboards - after all, my brother was a guitar player too. And, these wonderful amps for all the different instruments and purposes, this completely fascinated me - I just HAD to know what was in them and what made them 'tick'. My obsession with all things electrical/electronic was born.
In my later teens and into young adulthood, I played in a good many bands with my friends. All the while I was employed by a large data communications company during the day as a 'lab rat' in their R&D department - gotta eat too. I was working with analog modems, T1/E3 digital switching gear and any other piece of equipment on the companies product list down to the 'chip' level. Breadboarding played a big part in learning & understanding the ninja arts of pragmatic research, development engineering & troubleshooting, all critical pieces in leveraging any technology whether it be hardware, firmware and/or software. Old radios were fun to tinker with too, vacuum tubes have their own appeal to geeks. The functional basics in comparison of analog (tubes) vs. digital (transistors, etc) are essentially the same - how they actually accomplish these tasks are altogether quite different. A solid understanding of the underlying physics and mechanics helps a lot - an older engineer that was a mentor of mine always told me "you've got to be able to talk to these things properly in order to build, troubleshoot and fix 'em." Sage piece of advice, never forgot it...
During this period of time, I just started repairing stuff for guys when their gear went down, too. It seemed like after a while I always had somebodies amp, pedals or other piece of gear triaged and ready for some sort of 'surgery' - forever a room full of projects. Now the professional hi-tech skills and experience really started to come to the forefront. I wasn't just some hack with a soldering iron and a clue, I was repairing equipment to IEEE standards (where applicable) and my musical friends & colleagues equipment received professional service at a very reasonable price. I was helping the local musical community to which I was involved in, too.
Fast forward to the present. There's still always something on the bench to be repaired or modified, and it's done with the same passion - it's all about the Tone. Now I'm offering this same intense passion for music, electronics and technology to everyone! Service, restorations, overhauls and modifications - I'll even built a custom hand-wired 'boutique' amplifier to your specs. Contact me about your gear and let's talk about what Atlanta Tone Labs can do to find that Holy Grail of Tone - yours!
