trinityamps.com

This was Duane's amp.

He started on fender stuff, then went to marshall 100's and eventually settled on the 1986 super bass 50w head. He did this to get his bassier less trebley tone also he went with the 50 watt because he liked having more distortion; rumor has it that he pretty much just dimed the amp and used the volume controls for rhythm/lead selection. He also played with half open marshall's cab with rumor's about JBL D120's/ celestions/ Cerwin Vega ER123's and even some altec stuff... the cerwin vega's seems to be the most consistent rumor. This is because at the fillmore concert his speakers didn't have silver domes like dickey's did.

Anyway I've known this for a while, and I was messing around with my 18watt the other day... I usually play with my bass at 7, mids at 5 and treble at 3.... and I'm thinking, man this is still pretty treble heavy... sure this could have something to do with the JJ tubes or my strat... But ive been reading a lot about how treble heavy marshalls are lately, and I'm thinkin i'll look into the differences between the tone stacks of the 18w, 100w superlead and the 50w 1986.

At the same time; I really want one... a 50 watter would need some sort of VVR/VRM; but that is easy enough. Ceri@tone is the only place I've seen offering a kit. Soultone makes a clone with an effects loop that i think is pretty slick. At the end of the day I still don't have any money so these are just long term dreams haha.

Metro amps sells a 50 watt kit. Easy to mod to super base spec.
http://metroamp.com/store/product_info. ... cts_id=484

Stew

Ceri@tone has a 1986 kit (as well as a 100w SuperBass kit). There's not much difference between the 1986 Bass & 1987 Lead pre-amps. I had been looking at building a version of the Lead that could be switched to the Bass pre-amp. Got lazy & that plan is on the shelf at the moment.

If you're pushing the 18w hard some of the "trebly" character comes from how the EL-84's overdrive. They get a little intense (just a little!) when overdriven. The JJ's (if you're talking about the pre-amp tubes) tend to be a bit darker than Chinese, Tung-Sol or Mullard. Not sure about the JJ EL-84's. Haven't tried them. I have EH EL-34's in my Trinity sIII.

There's probably a couple of cap changes you could do to darken/fatten the 18w somewhat.