Product Description:
What is it? It’s a bad thing. Tube distortion pushed too damn far.
It’s the SMALLEST product we have ever made. Shirt pocket size. Inside is a preamp with feedback controls, using two 5702 subminiature pentodes.They are real Raytheon military surplus from the 1980s, not Soviet leftovers. The quality is aces.
ONE knob. The knob controls the feedback and gain. Fully CCW is off. Turn it up about 10% and you get increasingly LOUD signal, sliding into heavy tube distortion. Keep going up and it bursts into VERY LOUD oscillation. That’s the “feature”.
The switch is the other “feature”. It applies feedback to the suppressor grid of the second tube. What does that mean? We don’t know, we’ve never done this before and neither has anyone else. It is “unique” but you get to decide if it is useful or not.
There is a CV input on the front, it basically turns the Amputator into a really awful voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA). Ideally you shouod put at least 0-10 volts into this input. Can’t damage anything because it’s an all-tube circuit and there are no transistors or chips. The output is NOT able to drive “any load” so only feed it into a HIGH impedance unbalanced input.
It’s in a transparent polycarbonate enclosure because we STILL get stupid attacks from fools claiming that there are either no tubes in our products, or else the tubes do nothing and it’s all done with a “ten cent chip”. Fuck you, buttboys.
Power required is 12 volts dc, 2.1mm barrel plug, center positive. 700 milliamps on startup and 250 milliamps in normal operation. NOTE: Not included.
Everything sucks. That’s why each Amputator has different offensive stickers on it.
Size: no idea. Small. Weight: a few ounces.
