Amwatts Penguin 5 Watts
PENGUIN
Introducing the latest design from Amwatts Amps Australia newly developed in 2024, A handmade ,hand wired old school guitar amplifier co-designed by Amwatts and Michael/Warren from Penguin Vintage Guitars in Sydney
THE CONCEPT
After the success of the Amwatts 15w Grande Expresso 1 x 12 amp , the first original design from Amwatts, We discussed a 5 watt version incorporating the Amwatts Custom Universal Gain Stage preamp design, this is to cater for people who like that classic vintage tone of old but are looking for lower volumes for home and studio use. Don’t let the 5 watts RMS fool you, this little amp still packs a punch.
THE DESIGN
PreAmp: A single input vintage style standard triode input followed by – A custom designed universal gain stage and tone stack – this is where Amwatts differs from conventional big name preamps. This allows a higher gain/sustain crunch that can be cleaned up simply by using the guitars volume control. E.G With your guitar volume on 10, you’ll get pure rock n roll overdriven tone with plenty of sustain.As you wind down your volume, the signal cleans up without loss of top end clarity, so your clean and dirty tones are controlled from your guitar (old school).
Gain: The gain knob adjusts the grid leak of the universal gain stage. It’s a subtle increase of the gain structure of the amp, Simply by adjusting the amount of signal that passes through this part of the circuit you can add another dimension to the tonal pallet of the amp.
Tone: The single knob tone stack pays homage to the late Ken Fischer from Trainwreck amps, It combines his TMB tone controls into a single knob, It has been designed to work with both Single Coil and Humbucker style pickups, unlike other tone knobs its full range from 0 – 10 is useable
Master Volume: 5 watts RMS can still get pretty loud, especially with the gain that the Amwatts Penguin can provide. At Michael and Warren’s request, a Master Volume was incorporated for added control.
Output: A Single 6V6GT output valve as used in all the vintage Single Ended low wattage amps from the 50’s, but we couldn’t just copy it directly, Amwatts biases the 6V6GT to approx. 90- 100% dissipation unlike the 50’s counterparts which were over biased , This gives more headroom and nicer bell like qualities to the tone plus adds longer life to the valves. Combine this with a Jupiter 10” ceramic vintage style speaker and you have all the ingredients of yesteryear combined with modern day versatility.
