The Santa Cruz Amp, overview and concept
The Santa Cruz Amp is not really an original design, it is a hybrid of 3 amps in my mind…The Champ, the Princeton Reverb and the Super Reverb. This may seem strange to combine these 3 amps with a wattage range of 5-45 watts, but read on to learn why I love the way this worked
…I have always loved the sound of a small amp, cranked and washed out, but I, like many, have always wished for that tone at higher volume, or with more tonal control, or mainly, in a bigger cab to reduce the “boxy” sound of a small 5 watt amp.
The Santa Cruz Amp combines the power section from that 5 watt Champ, (cathode biased, single ended, low voltage etc, this is the classic 5 watt design in my mind) then take the pre amp from a Princeton Reverb (AA164 is virtually the same as the AA764 Champ pre-amp) and lay that out on a Lil King Board with the reverb section, but combine that with the 5 watt power section. I prefer to use the LK board rather than having a custom board made because it mounts inside the chassis perfectly with no extra holes or mods, this keeps my production time down as well, I just omit the tremolo section and route things differently in the power section on a stock Lil King fiberboard. Then I paired that with Volume/Treble/Middle/Bass and added an audio taper pot to the Reverb (stock Fender Reverb had 100K Linear) to slow the taper down and allow for a more useable range in the sweep of the reverb control. The Tone controls now act like a Super Reverb in that the volume is also controlled by the amount of bottom and mid you dial in…Some pros will turn the volume control most of the way up then dial in bass and mids to get the actual level they want for stage volume. It is a cool trick to have with such a small amp!
The other thing I did with the Santa Cruz is to allow the user to throw in multiple (the more popular) Octal pinned power and rectifier tubes without the need to re-bias anything…. the stock sent up is 5 watts with a 6V6/5Y3 combo. You can run anything up to a SS rectifier plug and a 6550 power tube for 10 watts. The most popular is the 5 watt and 8 watt (6L6/GZ34), as this is by in large a Fender crowd that buy a Headstrong Amp.
One last thing that makes a big difference is the aforementioned cabinet size…and speaker choice:
The cabinet is the stock Princeton Reverb (or in this case, the Lil King Reverb) size and allows for anything from 8-12” speakers. The 12” is very popular and is the 10”…This week I am sending out a 10” version with the Alessandro GA10-SC64 and it is such a great sound! Nice break up, but very articulate on the pick attack. I actually ran the Santa Cruz with my Alnico Lil King (No. 001), what a sound! Warm and round, the 12” GA-SC59 combined with a low watt amp (and the 10” Alessandro) was something I will be revisiting at a gig very soon!
The larger cab size really does make a difference, having more area to resonate inside the cab before pushing out the back, fills a room better and there seems to be more sonic range to my ears. I am not saying it is better, I just prefer the sound of a larger cab…The smaller cab will always have a purpose, it is how the original sound was born…We don’t need to get into how many classic tracks were cut with a stock Champ (tweed and black).
In closing, the Santa Cruz and all of what I do is nothing original other than to combine some things or in the case of the Lil King S, beef up some voltages, but to keep things as much as I can, the way they were, tonally, build style, materials etc. Yes carbon comp resistors are unstable and noisy….but guess what, open up your “insert killer fender amp models here” from the 50-60s and that is what is in there…all outta wack and hissing a little…But plug in and punch those first few notes, that hiss is not even audible….Speaking of which, I am going to go plug in now!
Thanks for reading!
Wayne