The Bottle Garden

Scott at Electrodrone made us this amazing device that can function as either a 4watt amp head or a tube preamp/overdrive. The speaker out jack is switching, so when no speaker is connected, a resistive load goes into circuit allowing it to function as an overdrive box. Much thanks to Scott for adding our request at very late stage in the design: a relay-based bypass footswitch circuit. This is an original design but Scott tip his hat to the late Gar Gillies (Garnet), whose Herzog design was an inspiration .

As with the ZB50, he named it after a motorcycle, in this case the British Ariel Square Four:

Our friend Scott Hodgson (Electrodrone) designed and built this very nice 50 watt high-gain amp for us in 2006.

He named it after this freaky 80s Honda motorcycle:

Tube complement

2x KT77 outputs/12AX7 preamp/12AU7 phase splitter

Features of note

Matching 2×12 cabinet with old Altec 4178H alnico speakers

Half volume switch (built-in attenuator)

switchable midrange cut

Construction

Here’s the chassis during its final stages of testing:

Scott’s father is an ace carpenter so we hired him to build the head and speaker cabinet enclosures. He used baltic birch.The finger joints fits together perfectly.