The Tonerator I is a 6V6 push-pull amp based on the projects in Kevin O'Connor's "Tonnes Of Tone" (published by London Power ). For the gory details, check out the schematics .
My main goal was to build a decent power amp that would let me directly compare the sounds of different amp architectures/options. I also wanted it to serve as a platform for future diabolical experiments, mainly with preamp architectures, so the preamp is in a different chassis from the power supply and amp.
In the power amp I added switches to select several options/modes:
The preamp is pretty much the same as the London Power Standard Preamp in "Tonnes Of Tone" but with a 'Thick' switch on the Drive channel (as described in "The Ultimate Tone"). Also, the two tone stacks can be lifted by turning the Bass controls all the way down (they're the kind of pots with switches on the back). I'm currently running it with a 12AT7 and 12AY7. Two 12AX7s was way too much gain for my purposes.
The layout of the power supply is pretty close to Kevin's, but the rest I figured out on my own (the slowest part of the whole process, at least until I worked out a systematic approach). The power chassis is all point-to-point (except for a small perfboard for the fixed bias circuit) and the preamp is done on a circuit card with grommets. Both of them are huge because I didn't want to be too crowded for my first amp...
The power chassis worked like a charm the first time I powered it up - virtually zero hum. I wasn't so lucky with the preamp: I had to deal with hum,hiss and parasitic oscillations, but I guess that's the price you pay for designing in obscene amounts of gain!
Special thanks and a tip of the hat to all the great folks at the Ampage , without whom I never could have done it!