Ampeg B15n Fliptop Clone (2013)

Email: th@thallenbeck.com.

This is more or less a clone of the head section of the Ampeg B15n, known as the Portaflex or “fliptop.” I’ve been wanting to try building a tube bass amp for a while and I’ve been curious to find out why fliptops sound the way they do.

B15n Clone - back view, complete   B15n Clone - schematic

B15n Clone - partial layout

Below is an exciting video documenting the tail end of this build. Please keep in mind that I’m not exactly Tony Levin.

B15n Clone - interior #1   B15n Clone - action shot

My fliptop interpretation preserves most of the “canonical” aspects of the original(s), like the extremely high input impedance (5.6M Ohms), the Baxandall tonestack, -50V fixed-bias (*not* cathode-bias!) and the unusual phase-inverter configuration. But this one sports a few departures from the original:

1. The instrument input uses a decoupling capacitor (22nF) before the biasing resistor of the first preamp grid input.

B15n Clone - interior #22. The resistor and capacitor values for the DC filtering stages aren’t anywhere close to the original(s) – I used 50uF can caps because I had some available. The difference in the filtering stages probably changes the whole sound but I don’t have a way to find out because I don’t have access to a real fliptop. I’ve seen some B15n schematics specifying diodes for rectification and others specifying tube rectification. Mine uses diodes. I wound up with about 465V at the plates of the power tubes, which might be a little too high, but I haven’t done a round of tweaking lately.

B15n Clone - top, no cabinet #13. My version has one channel instead of two like most others do, because I wanted to keep the interior as uncluttered as possible for the inevitable 5 million little adjustments I made.

4. I used a great big filter choke rated for 500 Volts, because I could. I found that a choke helped reduce noise and hum.

5. I always try to use elevated heater supplies (see schematic), even for push-pull amps. In this case, the filament divider resistors are tied to the -50V bias (see schematic). That’s one way to deal with 60Hz/120Hz hum from 6SL7/6SN7 tubes. I guess this doesn’t qualify as a “departure from the original” but it’s how I got rid of most of the AC hum, along with isolating the ground lines for the filter capacitors from the other grounds and busses, like I should have in the first place.

B15n Clone - top, no cabinet #26. I found that I could coax more clean headroom out of the unit by using 6SN7 tubes for the preamp stages instead of 6SL7 (think: 12AU7 vs. 12AX7, sort of). For bass, I like clean headroom. I looked at the signal from input to output with an oscilloscope and found that clipping was most likely to happen first in the preamp stage. That can sound nice, but for this unit, it sounded awkward and nasty, to me anyway. Swapping 6SL7′s (higher gain) for 6SN7′s (lower gain) reduced the strength of the preamp signal but gave more headroom before the nastiness kicked in. The drawback for 6SN7′s is that they demand twice as much filament current as 6SL’s (~=600mA instead of ~=300mA) but the power transformer is quite capable of handling that increase (see schematic).

My version puts out somewhere around 30 Watts at the most, from what I can tell. I used a Classictone 40-Watt output transformer, so I don’t want to try to push the output higher than it already is. To be honest, I’m guessing at the Wattage, assuming about 20% or 25% power loss for the push-pull output transformer.

The tubes are all Tung-Sol. I tried a pair of Tung-Sol 7581′s for the power tubes, and a pair of JJ 6L6GC’s, but I liked the Tung-Sol 6L6GC-STR’s for their relatively wide frequency response.

B15n Clone - interior, no board #1

B15n Clone - interior, no board #2

B15n Clone - front, completed

B15n Clone - top, no cabinet #2

B15n Clone - back with cabinet

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