New Crate Plans

Alright, so, I've decided to take the Crate rebuild in a different direction - Vox land. I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a single channel AC30 with no reverb or tremolo and it turns out yes, they call it a Trainwreck Rocket!

Now, of course, I'm going to have to deal with heat. I suppose I would have anyway (seeing how I don't work for Crate and thus am not comfortable hanging tubes below a completely sealed chassis) but cathode bias ups the heat load I'm going to have to dissipate. Also I'm going to put in (switchable) sag resistors to emulate tube rectification. Needs moar recs!

Here's what I've come up with so far. Still a lot of tweaking to be done. It's based on what people assume is in a Trainwreck Rocket, as well as the original AC30 top boost channel. I've added a handful of tweaks throughout; we'll see how they work.

• Parallel first triode. Why the hell leave it unused. Same gain, lower noise. 
• Arc protection on the cathode follower to help the tube survive switch-on.
• Grid stopper on the cathode follower. Just something I feel like trying. Figured I'd split the difference between 10k and 1M for starters. 
• Reduced grid leaks on the LTP to reduce noise. Reduced cap across the second input to help recovery from blocking distortion.
• Lar/Mar PPIMV
• Sizeable grid stoppers on the power tubes for better distortion.
• Power tubes biased in pairs, partially to spread the heat around, partially so one pair can be pulled. I might do individuals, we'll see.
• Zener-assisted bias for the power tubes. Cathode-biased 6V6s seem to distort nicely anyway, but this might be worth looking into.
• Switchable sag resistor for a "tube rectified" feel. Might make these bigger.
• Heaters referenced to power tube cathodes for free elevation. Humdinger to get the last of the noise out.
• 1k screen grid stoppers. 
• Grid stoppers everywhere. 10k for starters. 

Layout is going to be a big pain. All the tubes are in the center of the chassis, so I'm going to have to get clever. I'm tempted to start drawing it up in DIY Layout Creator or sort of CAD program. I may just use paper. It's going to have to be all point-to-point, but since this isn't going to be as much of a ground-up as Bodie was I'll be able to plan better.

Welp, I've been spending even less time in front of the computer lately, but I'll post again when I've got more to go on.