Is the Catalinbread SFT Preamp Pedal The Poor Man's Polytone (in a box)?

[Abandoneur]

If the Polytone is/was the attempt to make a solid-state version of the venerable Ampeg tube amps (I've read this referenced in a few places, though I have no idea as to the veracity) ... and the Catalinbread SFT is an attempt to capture an Ampeg amp in a preamp pedal (this much is certainly true), then is the SFT, sorta-kinda, also a Polytone in a box?

I know both the Ampeg and SFT are based around the Baxandall tone stack, though I'm unsure about the Polytone.

Bonus round: I've read that forum user @Jazzmus made a quite successful stab at making a Polytone pedal ... I'm not sure if he still doing so and/or still active ... but perhaps someone has some familiarity with his circuit?

SFT
– Catalinbread Effects

[sgosnell]

The Polytone was originally intended to be an accordion amp. The owner was an accordion player. Guitar players started using it and now it's known primarily as a guitar amp, mostly because (fortunately) there are more guitar players than accordion players. The market for accordion amps is even tinier than the market for jazz guitar amps. I never heard that the Polytone was intended to be compete with Ampegs, but there are many things I've never heard of.

[wzpgsr]

The Polytone was originally intended to be an accordion amp. The owner was an accordion player. Guitar players started using it and now it's known primarily as a guitar amp, mostly because (fortunately) there are more guitar players than accordion players. The market for accordion amps is even tinier than the market for jazz guitar amps. I never heard that the Polytone was intended to be compete with Ampegs, but there are many things I've never heard of.

My Ampeg Gemini II has two accordion inputs.

[Abandoneur]

Maybe it's just me, but I think having accordion inputs (albeit unused) is pretty cool.

I'm sure there are several things that make the Polytone sound what it is ... but I did do some Googling and confirmed that both Polytones and Ampegs utilize a Baxandall tone stack, which, from what I understand, attributes to a much finer/exacting ability to fine tune treble, mids, and bass frequencies independently, in ways Fender/Vox/Marshall cannot.

This rabbit hole I am currently descending also makes me wonder how similar Ampegs and Polytones sound to each other from folks who have actually owned and spent time with both.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

Maybe it's just me, but I think having accordion inputs (albeit unused) is pretty cool.

I'm sure there are several things that make the Polytone sound what it is ... but I did do some Googling and confirmed that both Polytones and Ampegs utilize a Baxandall tone stack, which, from what I understand, attributes to a much finer/exacting ability to fine tune treble, mids, and bass frequencies independently, in ways Fender/Vox/Marshall cannot.

This rabbit hole I am currently descending also makes me wonder how similar Ampegs and Polytones sound to each other from folks who have actually owned and spent time with both.

The Baxandall circuit is flat with pots at mid position. Each pot "boosts" or cuts its frequency range when set above or below that. Bass and treble pots are independent of each other so there's no interaction between them.

The circuit is "centered" on an attenuated signal. When the pots are centered, bass and treble ends of the spectrum are being attenuated to the reference level of the mids. Turning a pot "up" just reduces the attenuation and turning it "down" attentuates it further. So when used passively, it sucks up to 20 dB out of the signal. Many amps that use it add an additional stage of preamplification to bring the signal level back up before it hits the next stage.