Inside the 25th Anniversary Amplifier Kit

Written by Kenny Prochazka

Reaching 25 years in business is quite a feat, and Mojotone is eternally grateful for every customer, vendor, partner and employee that has had a hand in our growth along the way. From a small-time electronics supplier to a worldwide force in amplifiers, cabinets, wiring harnesses and pickups, we quite literally would not be here without you.

So how does a company with this much history celebrate their 25th birthday?

With a special edition of one of our favorite amps, of course!

Mojotone's 25th Anniversary Amplifier and 25th Anniversary Amplifier Kit are based on our beloved British Style 50W Amplifier Kit, adding what we believe are some significant adjustments and improvements. Here is all of the versatility and tone that you could want, with some exceptional style, if we do say so ourselves.

To dig into what makes our Mojotone 25th Anniversary Amplifier so special, we must start at the beginning:

One of the first things that you will notice about our circuit is that we have opted out of the original PCB design, and instead employed a hand-wired turret board. There are those players who can hear a small difference between the two, but the main reason for this was to keep the amplifier as user-friendly and versatile as possible. We love tinkering with amplifiers, as do many of our customers, and turret boards are vastly easier to work with for future repairs and modifications.

For capacitors, we selected the most consistent and reliable ones that we could find, including Sprague Atoms, silver micas, and our wildly successful Mojotone Dijon capacitors. Tired of receiving counterfeit and downright sub-par capacitors over the years, our parts team dedicated themselves to designing and sourcing the best capacitors that we could make available. No corners were cut to provide these high-performing polypropylene film Dijon capacitors, based on the vintage Astron and "Mustard" caps of legend. We use them in all of our builds, and know that you will love them.

We also partnered with Heyboer to provide top-quality vintage-correct US-made transformers with no plastic bobbins and only the highest grades of steel and copper, so that you can be proud of your amp for a very, very long time.

The original 50W JMP 2204s had parallel gain stages, with the low and high inputs feeding separate preamp tube sections, which was a natural offshoot of earlier designs. Around 1978, though, the high input jack came to have its gain stage cascaded with the low input stage, for increased sensitivity and gain, and that classic late-70s/early-80s sound was born. We naturally chose to follow the 1978 parameters with our build, to coax as much intensity out of the signal as possible.

After adding in all of that gain, we knew that this would be a loud and present-sounding amplifier, so we wanted to add versatility for those who play small clubs or simply rock out in their house/apartment. Our designers implemented a half-power switch to bring the 50 watts of power down to a more manageable 25 watts, saving ears, windows and potentially marriages in the process.

Another upgrade, this one inspired by our customers, was including a low-noise non-clipping effects loop with true bypass. Now players can use their time-based or modulation effects after the preamp stage to preserve clarity and tone separation. The time has come to dial up your EQ, delay or chorus pedal to the max without fear of muddiness!

In addition, we have designed and built a limited edition cabinet to show off the amp with timeless styling. We went with the traditional 25th Anniversary silver color over Black Levant and limited-run White Tron grill cloth, for a head that doesn’t look like anything else out there.

We are extremely proud of our Mojotone 25th Anniversary Amplifier, and even a bit impressed that it came out so well. This amp has a little bit for everybody and tone for days, so try one today, find your sound and love your tone.