1 Introduction to the Fuchs Audio Train 45™Amplifier
The Train-45™... your new tone just pulled into the station!
Perhaps some of the most famous amps from New Jersey (besides ours!) were the Linden Ampegs and
the legendary Trainwreck amps made by Ken Fischer in Colonia, New Jersey. Ken Fischer was actually
laughed at when he suggested a channel switching amp to owner Everett Hull at Ampeg! Ken eventually
became legendary, building a series of single channel non master volume amps under the Trainwreck
name. Being from the N.Y, New Jersey area, I couldn’t help but see, hear and service my share of
Trainwreck amps over the years. Although I’ve built a great reputation for channel switching amplifiers,
I’ve never lost my love for a good grinding rock and roll amp. Give me a Les Paul, a couple of hot naked
humbuckers, an AC/DC riff or 2 thru a nice 412 cabinet and I can be a happy camper!
Well, when I started the development of the Lucky 7™, Blackjack 21™ amps, I wanted to make a series of
single channel non master style amps with a more rock and roll attitude than our ODS and TDS amps.
These new series of amps offer that rock-n-roll tone & attitude in varying power levels. All these models
share a similar “in your face” attitude, at different power levels. I felt a fitting “top-model” in the series
would be a traditional “wreck-style” amp that had both the EL-34 power & attitude to drag off to a gig
and shake some people up. An amp that was “clean to mean” using both the guitar volume control and
your hands, a simple, short signal path for maximum speedy response and hand-to-speaker transfer, and
just plain simple to “grab and go.” I took the basic 3-gain stage circuit topology of the original Express, had
the correct power and output transformers designed, and added a few circuit twists of our own to the
mixture.
I’ve always believed in audiophile style circuit techniques to bring out the best in any tube circuit. Guitar
amps are no different. I started with an audiophile style high voltage storage system. Instead of using
single large capacitors, I used a group of smaller capacitors in a back. By using a bank of smaller capacitors
ganged together to produce one large capacitance, you end up with a power supply that is both forceful
yet agile. One that holds lots of energy for transients, yet can respond quickly to each and every note.
I then laid the amp out on a heavy fiberglass two-sided circuit board. The power and preamp tubes are off
the board, chassis mounted on premium grade sockets. I used extremely wide and heavy traces to
emulate a hard wired amp. I made constant comparisons to both real Wrecks, many of the so-called
“Wreck-clones”, and my hard wired prototypes. I even used ground plane technology on the circuit board,
which adds capacitance to select circuit traces like a wire would get from resting on a chassis. This warms
up the tone, lowers noise, and keeps the circuits stable. I used single point star-type grounding to keep it
ultra-quiet, and DC preamp tube filaments to wring the last ounce’s of noise out of it, (no matter who’s
preamp tubes you use). Other than logically selecting the first preamp tube for lowest noise and crosstalk,
the remaining preamp and driver tubes are non-critical. Like the high-end ODS and TDS Fuchs™ amps it
shares much of the same premium metal work including an aircraft grade aluminum chassis, and a cooling
fan.
By using many of the same components of our other products, we’ve kept this great tone affordable. The
Train-45™ features a unique train logo with an LED “headlight”, which is super-bright and will never need
replacement!
