Like the mythical monster, this 35-watt, all-tube guitar amplifier is half man and half beast. With its personality switch, the Minotaur can sing with clean chime and sweetness like a “Showman” would, or with the rage of a cranked old GA-40 might. Housed within a vintage bench meter, the circuit is a mixed of point-to-point and turret board hand wiring, and using NOS components to achieve greatness.
The Minotaur breathes life with a pair of 6L6GC power tubes fed by an NOS 6SL7 (octal) phase-inverter. IMHO, the bigger plates of the Octal 6SL7 allow for greater clarity and liveliness to the signal at such an important stage. High-voltage DC is supplied through a EZ-34 Tube rectifier.
With the Personality switch set to “Man” Your guitar signal will be evoked by three 5751 triode gain stages and a Treble/bass tone stack. In “Beast” mode we add one more 5751 triode driver plus a 5879 Pentode stage (for heavy odd-order clipping), and a tweed-style tone knob late in the signal chain. The Girth control adds a unique deep bottom end to both channels.
This amplifier can evoke sweet clear tones from a vintage Strat, chimey spank from a Tele, and layered overdrive from your Paul. It takes pedals very well and has a passive Send/Return loop for your time-manipulated effects. Its under your control but be careful, its still a wild beast.
Try it out!
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