Full Tour of a Jose Arrendondo modified 100 watt Marshall..Amp Nerds only

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harddriver
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Full Tour of a Jose Arrendondo modified 100 watt Marshall..Amp Nerds only

Post by harddriver »

PLX get your popcorn ready.....
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Re: Full Tour of a Jose Arrendondo modified 100 watt Marshall..Amp Nerds only

Post by PLX »

The clipping/bounding circuit on a switch is a staple of the Jose amps.

My Ceriatone Brown-Eye clone (which is nothing more than Friedman's clone of a Jose modded Marshall :roll: ) has it on a 3-way toggle switch with two transistors wired in E-B/B-E configuration, or two asymmetrical diodes mounted on a small tag board.

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Re: Full Tour of a Jose Arrendondo modified 100 watt Marshall..Amp Nerds only

Post by harddriver »

Does Friedman use the actual Jose Master placement between the tone stack and cathode follower?

I thought the Friedman BE100 used the standard Marshall JCM800 PrePI master volume placement but he has a 100K resistor on the wiper output on the 1 Meg volume pot.
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Re: Full Tour of a Jose Arrendondo modified 100 watt Marshall..Amp Nerds only

Post by PLX »

harddriver wrote: Sun May 29, 2022 6:17 pm Does Friedman use the actual Jose Master placement between the tone stack and cathode follower?

I thought the Friedman BE100 used the standard Marshall JCM800 PrePI master volume placement but he has a 100K resistor on the wiper output on the 1 Meg volume pot.
Friedman wires the clipping circuits parallel to the tone stack.

Those 1M resistors you see there between the transistors and the diodes simulate the 1M pot used in the Jose version.

The middle position of that 3-way switch bypasses the solid-state clipping devices altogether.

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Re: Full Tour of a Jose Arrendondo modified 100 watt Marshall..Amp Nerds only

Post by harddriver »

I do like the option of the push pull switch on the original Jose that you can bypass the extra cascaded gain stage and Jose master setup and select the standard JCM 800 master volume setup.

Did you notice that the Jose Master volume pot was a dual 500K pot not 1 Meg? I remember that being a discussion back on Metro if it was a 1 Meg or 500K audio pot then there is the discussion that Mark Cameron used 2.2Meg resistors to make the 1 Meg Audio taper Gain pots react more like linear taper pots.

You see the 2.2 Meg resistors hung in the input lug to ground on many great sounding Cameron Jose modded amps including the Psychodave amp which was a killer sounding Cameron. I have the pics........
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Re: Full Tour of a Jose Arrendondo modified 100 watt Marshall..Amp Nerds only

Post by PLX »

harddriver wrote: Sun May 29, 2022 9:04 pm I do like the option of the push pull switch on the original Jose that you can bypass the extra cascaded gain stage and Jose master setup and select the standard JCM 800 master volume setup.

Did you notice that the Jose Master volume pot was a dual 500K pot not 1 Meg? I remember that being a discussion back on Metro if it was a 1 Meg or 500K audio pot then there is the discussion that Mark Cameron used 2.2Meg resistors to make the 1 Meg Audio taper Gain pots react more like linear taper pots.

You see the 2.2 Meg resistors hung in the input lug to ground on many great sounding Cameron Jose modded amps including the Psychodave amp which was a killer sounding Cameron. I have the pics........
I never got to try a Cameron amp.

I sent Mark Cameron $3,000 once, and all I got in return was an empty box of Totino's pizza rolls, an empty baggie of crack shoved in a FedEx mailer pouch, along with a hand-written card that said, "Thanks for the memories !".

It was shortly after that, I started learning to build and mod my own amps. :|


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Re: Full Tour of a Jose Arrendondo modified 100 watt Marshall..Amp Nerds only

Post by harddriver »

I didn't know you were another one of his victims... Last I read it was at about 14 that he screwed out of money for CCV's.

That sucks man... sorry you lost your money... was this pre 2011 before the Brad era?

Quite a few people sent him working amps never to return. Mark was helpful to me when he would pop into Metro, at the time I didn't know he had issues he seemed to be a pretty good guy in the PM's but most people with issues can usually seem normal for a time.

I don't know if he had a drug problem or mental issues or both but he does have good ears and can build some pretty killer amps and that's where it ends......................... :roll:

Is that the actual letter??????? WOW he even included a trip to Disneyland on it for you.... :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: Full Tour of a Jose Arrendondo modified 100 watt Marshall..Amp Nerds only

Post by PLX »

harddriver wrote: Mon May 30, 2022 12:59 am I didn't know you were another one of his victims... Last I read it was at about 14 that he screwed out of money for CCV's.

That sucks man... sorry you lost your money... was this pre 2011 before the Brad era?

Quite a few people sent him working amps never to return. Mark was helpful to me when he would pop into Metro, at the time I didn't know he had issues he seemed to be a pretty good guy in the PM's but most people with issues can usually seem normal for a time.

I don't know if he had a drug problem or mental issues or both but he does have good ears and can build some pretty killer amps and that's where it ends......................... :roll:

Is that the actual letter??????? WOW he even included a trip to Disneyland on it for you.... :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
:lol:

I PM'ed with Cameron on Metro a long time ago. Asked some questions, got some answers.

Never sent him money. :D

I saw what happened when other people sent amp builders money up-front for an amp.
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Re: Full Tour of a Jose Arrendondo modified 100 watt Marshall..Amp Nerds only

Post by Watson503 »

Man...Cameron needs to be Belladonna'd with Neagan's Lucille
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” - George Orwell

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Re: Full Tour of a Jose Arrendondo modified 100 watt Marshall..Amp Nerds only

Post by PLX »

The real innovation with these amps - and this was something Jose never did as far as I know - is DC heaters.

It's tough to "mod" that trick into an old Marshall, because you need an additional tap off the power transformer at about 14VAC, and then enough space on the board to rectify that down, and smooth it out to regulated 12VDC to supply the heater voltage for all the pre-amp tubes.

This gets AC out of the preamp tubes, which is very helpful with noise reduction once you start adding the two extra gain stages from the additional pre-amp tube.

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