Divided By Thirteen - CJ 11 Amplifier

Divided By Thirteen CJ 11 in Cream

Divided By Thirteen are a relatively new company (with regards to amp manufacturing) based in California and spear headed by Fred Taccone. They make some great sounding and beautifully build amps, not to mention the way they look!

The CJ11 is one of Divided By Thirteen's smaller offerings and provides all the "overdriven Fender" goodness you could possibly need.

Here's the description from the Divided By Thirteen website;

"When asked, by Corky James, amongest others, "Can you take my favorite 1959 tweed amp from Fullerton and instead of the controls being Volume Volume Tone make it Volume Treble Bass, give it more clean headroom, a wider range of usable overdrive (throw in a little EL 34), make it a little louder with fuller, tighter low end, and put a master volume in it so i can play at all levels and dial in and hit the sweet spot of whatever speaker i am using at the time, mostly a G12M Celestion?"

Sure.

Powered by 2 6V6GTs it's hard to believe the performance of this stout, 11 watt, 1x12 combo that is just the latest in an ongoing tradition here at Divided by 13 of collaborating with and responding to what players, writters, and produceres ask us to do."

Did I mention Divided By Thirteen make some beautiful amps? Check out the SJT 10/20 below, I'd love one of these;

Divided By Thirteen SJT 10/20

But back to the CJ 11 - we all want to know how it sounds, so here's the trusty ProGuitarShop video for you;

Let's have a look at some gutshots of this beauty;

As you can see the top notch worksmanship isn't just limited to the cabinets and finish it all continues on the inside. High quality parts throughout and clean concise wiring - the perfect way to make a great sounding tube amp.

Here's the schematic that has been deduced from all the available photos;

Below are the two schematics for the Fender Blackface Deluxe AB763 and the Fender Tweed Deluxe 5E3 circuit. You'll notice that the Divided By Thirteen CJ11 is basically a tweaked composite of these two classic Fender Deluxe designs - the AB763 preamp and the 5E3 Phase Inverter and Power Section;

The 3k3 cathode resistors bias the preamp stages quite "cold" meaning a slightly brighter and glassy tone is produced which really emphasises the CJ11's Fender roots.