The Guitar Doctor Is In

Ask questions and get answers about how to make music in any particular way. Hardware or songwriting or whatever.
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by mo »

Lunkhead wrote:
Mon Jun 24, 2019 12:54 pm
ujnhunter wrote:
Mon Jun 24, 2019 10:29 am
my Fender Performer 1000
Whoa!! You have one of those too????? That was my first amp. Bought it 20+ years ago, still got it, although I haven't been using it much since I got my Deluxe Reverb Reissue. Great amp though, for a solid-state/tube hybrid. It indeed is loud. I hated the volume curve, it was like, starts on 1, 1-2 is very quiet, 3+ will blow your face off.
That's like old Fender Tweeds. At 3 or 4 they are actually at max volume, everything after that is gain, not volume hahahaha
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by fluffy »

Okay so, what's the difference between gain and volume, in this context? I thought they were synonyms for signal level being crammed into the amplifier.
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by jb »

I have a Fender combo (Princeton 112+ from the 90’s), and my understanding is that the volume potentiometer is a “reverse logarithmic” type. That means most of the volume comes really low on the dial and as someone pointed out the rest is just gain.

The signal to both preamp and power amp are controlled by the same knob on my amp— no separate “gain” knob.

For example, I turn it to 3 and it’s a really loud clean tone. I turn it to 8 and it’s just as loud, but now the pre-amp is being overdriven and the sound starts to break up.

I use a Joyo American amp emulator on my board to give me a tube amp drive tone, with a low level going into the Fender— there’s no way in any venue I could turn up a 65w amp to breakup point. In a bar it’s too loud and in a pro venue they mic the amp and if cranked the stage volume would be too loud.

But we played a DC Rollergirls halftime show once and we were in a gymnasium— I cranked the amp to 10 and didn’t use my pedals at all because the amp broke up on its own.

You can have the volume potentiometer changed to something like a “linear” type if you want more control over the loudness of your Fender.

Here is a web page (from 1999!) by a guy named R.G. Keen, about potentiometers: http://www.geofex.com/article_folders/p ... tscret.htm

Here's a diagram from that page (I guess R.G. Keen made the diagram), that shows the difference between the types:
Image

We Fender folk are all dealing with type number 4 on that diagram. :)


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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by fluffy »

Okay, so basically gain is on the pre-amp and volume is on the power-amp, and in a perfect signal chain they'd be equivalent, but amps aren't perfect so you get different sorts of overdrive and clipping based on which signal is being cranked up. Good to know!
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

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fluffy wrote:
Mon Jun 24, 2019 2:05 pm
Okay, so basically gain is on the pre-amp and volume is on the power-amp, and in a perfect signal chain they'd be equivalent, but amps aren't perfect so you get different sorts of overdrive and clipping based on which signal is being cranked up. Good to know!
Yes. And unlike the pre-amp, which we overdrive to produce the sound we want, the poweramp signal should NOT clip or distort. As far as I know, amps (combos for sure) are all calibrated to stop prior to overdriving the poweramp. I don't think poweramp saturation is the "pretty" sound that we associate with an overdriven amplifier.

We recorded using an ancient Fender "tweed" amp once. It's a 10w tube amp, and cranked, it has a really really heavy tone, but it's not loud at all. I can get something similar from the small Vox AC10 amp that I have in my home office here. I can crank the gain knob on it but I have to keep the volume knob at a point where it's a hair's breadth from not being on at all. Heh.

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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by jb »

(P.S. I'm certain there are aspects of the relationship between pre-amp and power-amp that I have stated incorrectly. Looking forward to more experienced heads chiming in.)
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by fluffy »

jb wrote:
Mon Jun 24, 2019 2:20 pm
fluffy wrote:
Mon Jun 24, 2019 2:05 pm
Okay, so basically gain is on the pre-amp and volume is on the power-amp, and in a perfect signal chain they'd be equivalent, but amps aren't perfect so you get different sorts of overdrive and clipping based on which signal is being cranked up. Good to know!
Yes. And unlike the pre-amp, which we overdrive to produce the sound we want, the poweramp signal should NOT clip or distort. As far as I know, amps (combos for sure) are all calibrated to stop prior to overdriving the poweramp. I don't think poweramp saturation is the "pretty" sound that we associate with an overdriven amplifier.
I assume that on the power amp side of things, the amp can handle way more power than the speakers can. 1W of signal power goes a long, long way.
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by jb »

Actually I think it is key to have a speaker that is rated for a higher wattage than your power amp can produce. That way you never blow your speaker.
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by fluffy »

Ah, good point.

I've noticed a lot of consumer electronics amps actually show their volume level in terms of attenuation, so when you have the amp at its (rated) peak level it's +0.0dB, if you have it 1/10 of the power it's -10dB, etc., and I guess that's how guitar amps' volumes work too -- the pre-amp gain is a signal level increase (which can distort), and the power-amp volume is a signal attenuation. Like, the power amp is always cranked up to the max, it's just that the signal coming into it is made quieter.
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by mo »

grumpymike wrote:
Sun Jun 23, 2019 8:37 pm
Guitar doctor, how do I get good distortion out of my Dual Rectifier without blowing my ears off because the gain knob is touchy? And should I get a cab that is smaller than a severely obese grade school child, or is there a combo I might replace the whole rig with that gives me the same sound without all the complex, heavy overhead?
Assuming you're talking about a Dual Rec half stack, and not one of the combos, the first thing I would say is that everything matters in the sound, so you will certainly hear/feel a difference if you go from a 412 8 ohm situation even to a 112 8 ohm speaker situation. If you're really used to your amp, going from a 100 watt head to a 50 watt head will already feel different, even if it sounds mostly the same. Every part of the signal chain affects the sound and a lot of it is interactive. So make sure your expectations are a bit measured.

That understood, there are a few options for trying to achieve the Dual Rec sound in a more back-friendly way (you mentions something about the gain knob being "touchy" but I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at--is it that the taper is too abrupt? Is it that when you get a good tone it's simply too loud? Something else?)

1. There are 212 and 112 Dual Rec combos that will definitely sound pretty close if you want to go that route. Since live and studio you're micing a speaker most likely anyway, it won't sound terribly different, just the difference between different amps of the same model, mostly.

2. You can use an attenuator, which siphons off power between the power amp and the speaker, but those generally come with a bit of tonal mushiness. They do work though.

In the same vein, a Variac like EVH used will reduce overall volume and get you more gain, but honestly, it's like 2-3 db max difference, so it's more for people wanting to get a little more warm gain from an amp.

3. A smaller speaker cab will move less air and inherently be less loud, but it'll still be f'ing loud. But who knows, maybe that's enough for your needs.

4. Dual Rec styled pedal into a clean amp. I have a buddy who does this with an Okko Dominator, but I'm sure there's plenty of other pedal options that might be less expensive/more accurate/more suited to you. The old Triaxis preamp might be a good solution for you too.

5. The solutions suggested by Ujnhunter and JB will work too, to reduce overall volume, assuming that most of your sound is in the preamp. The JHS Little Black Amp Box and the volume pedal fix (or the orange Mad Professor pedal that does a similar thing, I can't remember the name of it right now, although it's designed to go in front of the amp I guess) reduce the amount of signal actually going into the power amp, so if power amp saturation is part of your deal, then you won't get that component into the sound. Granted, the way a Dual Rec is built, the power amp is pretty clean so you probably aren't getting a ton of power amp distortion anyway, but I don't know how you run your rig.


Related to what we were saying with Owl's more general tube amp question, the inherent problem with tube amps is that they need to be at certain volumes to sound good, because the tubes need to see a certain range of current to operate in the realms where they are giving up the good stuff. So there are a lot of situations where 100 watt tube amps are just literally too much amp. And there are situations where a 15 watt amp is not enough amp, because it won't have a lot of clean headroom once it's turned up to compete with a drummer, and even then maybe the distortion is too mushy. Master volume amps can help, but again, it's this whole question of what tone you want, because whether they are pre or post phase inverter (and there's a lot of debate on how much what we think of as power amp distortion is actually generated in the phase inverter tube) they limit the actual volume going into the power tubes, what the transformers see, and what the speaker sees (speaker distortion matters too).

That brings me to my last thought, although I'm sure a real expert might come up with more.

6. Reactive Load Box with IR. The newest breed of this tech is like the Suhr Reactive Load Box or the OX Box, which allow you to take advantage of speaker cabinet impulse response technology to get the best approximation of the full amp that can be output at whatever volume you want, with the digital emulations of whatever speakers and speaker cabinets you can load into the hardware unit. Unlike an attenuator or any kind of power soak, you still get the full output of the amp, and right now, the tech for speaker cabinet emulation is the best stuff we have--better than preamp emulations for sure. With this kind of load box, you can go direct to the board, run out to a monitor or your own speaker cabinet (with a non-emulated output), so it gives you a lot of convenience. I know a bunch of guys who find things like the OX Box have made them go back to their tube amp collections for recording studio use and live use as well, because they can get the specific amp tones they want in a format that is more useable with today's tech and today's needs.

If I think of any other suggestions, I'll add on later! Hope that helps somewhat
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by mo »

Yeah, exactly, gain is how much input signal goes into the circuit to be processed by all the fairy dust, and volume is the level of the output signal, that's the simplest way to think of it. They are very different beasts in a guitar amp circuit because what kind of signal the amp circuitry sees determines how the circuit will react.

The general rule for a speaker is that you want a speaker that can handle twice your amp's RMS output. But, inefficiency in speakers can get great sounds, so the minimum is the equal level of the amp's RMS output, which is why some people love a 412 cabinet loaded with 4 x 25 watt Greenbacks, which totals 100 watts. But some people prefer high efficiency JBL or EV 120 watt speakers, which you'll probably never blow out, but also don't add any speaker distortion to speak of.
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by mo »

jb wrote:
Mon Jun 24, 2019 2:22 pm
(P.S. I'm certain there are aspects of the relationship between pre-amp and power-amp that I have stated incorrectly. Looking forward to more experienced heads chiming in.)
Well there's quite a lot of people who have different opinions about it. Guitar tube amps are basically built to specs that actual audiophile engineers point and laugh at, but it turns out that's what actually sounds good, so screw those guys hahahaha

Distortion is pretty much inherent in the tube amp by design. It's pretty rare that you ever get an actually clean signal, because it's exactly those added harmonics that we think of as warmth and richness, whereas a truly clean signal is sometimes the most unpleasant thing you could hear (In fact, I might argue that the difference between a good guitar and a shit one is how close the truly direct clean signal is to something you'd actually want to hear).

Early amps didn't have master volumes, so the volume controls were usually before the tone stack, and served as input gain only, which means that after a certain point, there wasn't much of an appreciable change in volume, only gain. The speakers were lower rated for loudness, and so often even if they were producing 10 watts RMS at full output, they didn't have to be that loud. They were also limited by the size of the transformers, which is actually really important to the character of the gain.

The first master volume amps didn't come out until much later, and they immediately caused people to argue about whether preamp distortion was the cat's balls or if you needed power amp distortion too. AFAICT, power amp distortion on its own is kind of nasty sounding, and a lot of the chunk and thickness people talk about is actually about loudness and the speaker more than the power amp section itself specifically.

But I mean, everything that's basic in the signal chain is a gain, volume and EQ filter, from you, the strings, the guitar body/neck/hardware, etc./pickups/wiring harness/cable/preamp/power amp/speaker and after that you're probably miked to the board, so there's a whole other chain of EQs on that as well.
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by jb »

Yeah I’ve never, in my admittedly limited but not zero experience, seen anybody who tried to distort a power amp. I mean, to what end? Especially today.

I see a lot of guitarists in our DC scene with amps that they will never play louder than 2. Ever. Just obscenely massive wattage even tube—anything over 15 is a waste in a small venue scenario.
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by mo »

Oh I totally have seen people try to maximize power amp distortion hahaha. Crank the volume and then set the gain to taste, theoretically that's more power amp distortion, or at least closer to the way a non-master volume (NMV) amp behaves. The problem is, by the time you get any kind of power amp distortion, it's because you've turned the input gain up enough that you are getting a decent amount of preamp gain.

That's exactly right--btw solid state RMS wattage and tube amp RMS wattage are different beasts, so yes, a 15 watt tube amp is plenty. Remember that loudness is also logarithmic to power, so a 50 watt amp maxed out is almost as loud as a 100 watt amp maxed out, and a 10 watt amp is about half as loud as a 100 watt amp. A 1 watt amp is about 1/4 as loud as a 100 watt amp, the difference is in the clean headroom. Depending on the amp design of course, but a maxed out 10 watt amp would be super fuzzed out, while at the same loudness, a 100 watt or 50 watt or 35 watt amp would still be relatively clean.

Just as a matter of comparison, a 15 watt solid state amp would be super clean, but probably couldn't even be heard over a medium hard drummer. That's part of why bass amps, which are usually solid state, are often like 200, 300, 400, 500 watts--bass actually needs that much power to be reproduced properly, partially because bass frequencies require more power, and solid state efficiency means you need more power to create equal loudness.

Personally I am all about tube amps, but I like to set them at the place where if I play harder, I noticeably get more gain. That way I feel like all of my controls, volume knobs, tone knobs, etc. are all operating at their ideal sweet spot. If I were playing more metal or whatever, I wouldn't need it--that's part of why I think you see so many of the metal, super high gain guys going to Fractal or Helix or whatever. The digital stuff can replicate 99% of what they need. But where I like to set an amp, the digital stuff doesn't replicate the thing I like perfectly yet. But they are so much closer than the POD 1.0 hahahaha.
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by jb »

A 15 watt tube amp *is* plenty, though I don't think anybody makes a 15w solid state amp with a decent speaker. The money's just not there-- I think if they did, we might discover that 15w is enough for solid state too. If you know of an apples-to-apples comparison of some 15w solid state amp to a Vox AC15 or some such, point me at it I'd love to see it.

As you know, there is a never-ending rabbit hole of YouTube videos and forum posts about the loudness-difference between tube and not tube, and whether it's an actual decibel difference or if it's in the way humans perceive sound. Because the physics don't indicate that tube would be louder than solid state at the same wattage. I've watched my share of those videos (I know too much about Chappers and The Captain at this point) and currently my opinion is I don't give a crap, give me whichever amp is easiest to stuff into my car and carry up a long flight of stairs to the stage. Mostly because I'm happy with my tone and its achieved with a pedal, so all I need is a clean tone with the EQ knobs all set at noon.

And I know we'll all agree that while a 15-watt tube amp is plenty for most purposes, a 10-watt tube amp is not enough to be heard over a rock drummer. And that's the criteria. You have to be just a bit louder than the drummer. If you're a LOT louder, then nobody will hear the drums, and you've got a shitty live mix and deserve the scorn everyone will heap upon you.

My current favorite YouTube guitar channel is That Pedal Show. I think those guys are great.
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by mo »

Dude check out the Quilter Labs amps. That's my next thing to try. If they really have cracked the code for a solid state amp that can do that edge of break-up that to my knowledge only tube amps have been able to do up to this date, then it's a game changer. Their amp heads are like 2 lbs. They use the same speakers as regular tube amps, Celestion V30 or Greenbacks or Fender-voiced Eminence or whatever you like.

https://www.quilterlabs.com/index.php/p ... -combo-12/

I basically don't really trust what I hear on YouTube demos, not for something like an amp--I have to play it in person and I haven't come across one yet. Probably should just cave and go to Guitar Center.

I agree that in theory, 15 watts of power is 15 watts, but the other side of it is that most of the time, a 15 watt solid state amp that I could get in the store back in the day just wouldn't compete with a hard hitting drummer (I am totally willing to believe the high end stuff is much better). I don't have video, but I have swapped in my favorite, broken in V30 into a 15 watt Peavey and while it did sound better, it was not loud enough to really use (I thought I was going to save money and just swap a speaker instead of having to get a different amp). I did hear that some of the old Crates really kick ass but I really don't remember playing one that stuck in my mind. I used to have a Yamaha 65 watt solid state amp that actually sounded really good clean--I had it back when we played those SF in SF shows way back in the day. I'm not against solid state, but my experience has been that a) you need to make sure you have enough wattage and b) they don't do the edge of break-up thing that I like, where I can control my gain level entirely off the guitar controls and my pick attack. I think they sound great if you want a clean sound that is pretty stable, and of course a lot of pedals are designed for them.

JB what pedals are you using now? Also I stopped watching the Anderton's guys hahahaha. Wampler's got good stuff on YouTube for pedals, and he's pretty straight, not trying to do sales bs.
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by jb »

Yeah Anderton videos got tiresome and too self-involved and i don’t like Dorje (Chappers’s band) at allllll.

I have tried a lot of things to get what I want for MÀG shows. It’s basically similar to a Blink 183 or Weezer tone as the goals. Here’s what I’ve landed on, currently, as my pedal chain from out to in:

Big Muff Pi <— Joyo American <— MXR Carbon Copy <— Tuner <— Epiphone Casino

The Joyo is always on, and does almost all the work. It’s great. It’s a cheap imitation of the Tech 21 American pedal and it’s great. The Big Muff is for the OMG moments. The delay is to hide my shitty guitar solos. It all goes into the clean Fender tone.

And i have a TC Helicon Mic Mechanic on the vocals, and it lives on the pedalboard, and i bring my own SM58 to slobber into, because I spend all this time getting my guitar tone right, so I don’t think it’s right to let some bartender determine my vocal tone.
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

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Hey I only made that one cocktail and it was delicious so I don't know what you're complaining about
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

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Yeah a funny thing, in China most people don't own amplifiers, so the venues pretty much always provide backline amps, so I had to design my rigs at the time for the fact that I never knew exactly what amp I was getting on a given night. So similarly, I was getting a Fender-y clean tone from whatever amp and using an Xotic SL Drive as my AIAB for Marshall Superlead type gain (or an Earthquaker Talons for something more modern), then around the gain flavor pedal I'd usually have another low gainer drive pedal for a color boost in front and an EQ pedal for whatever I needed in back. It could be used as a volume boost, or sculpting for the room. I am a tape echo guy and the Strymon El Capistan ended my delay pedal search (hey is State Shirt still working there?). Depending on the gig I'd add other stuff, but that's usually the extent of the pedalboard, along with a Polytune 2. I love those things, best tuner pedal for my money. I used to be a kitchen sink pedalboard guy, and while I still love all the pedals and the "modular synth with a guitar interface" thing, it's not really where I'm at musically these days.

Oh, and I went wireless for gigs a few years back, Line 6 G50 system that I got for a song. For gigging, a good wireless is the best. I'm a klutz, so I always used to trip on my cables or would forget how long my cable was and would rip half my pedalboard off when running over there, or some idiot bs. Or the singer would wander over to my corner to have me sing a line of backup or something and then trip on the cable. Plus you can dial in the amount of signal degradation you want, they are great. At home I normally use a cable but sometimes for recording I'll still use the wireless for convenience.
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by mo »

also, you're a delay pedal before gain guy? Interesting choice, may I ask what you like about doing it that way? Do you have the CC modulations up, and are using it kind of as chorus-y thing?
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Re: The Guitar Doctor Is In

Post by jb »

I can’t say I’m super knowledgeable about where to put the pedals. My Youtube research indicates that delay before gain wasn’t unheard of and it made sense to me because at the time the Joyo was last before the amp. Basically it was my preamp, so a I was hesitant to have fx after it. Only recently have I added the Muff after the Joyo.

My only takeaway from where the delay is in my chain is that it’s not as delay-ey as it could be. The drive seems to mute the delay repetitions. And that’s fine, really. What I did notice is that the Muff HAS to be last or it’s worthless do not turn it on or nobody will hear the guitar. But last in the chain? Oh my god.

If I get any other pedals they will need to be major impacts, for a completely different thing during a solo. Like a fake synth or a phaser during a big loud giant section. Anything nuanced can suck it. I gave my OCD [pedal] to my bassist. I have enough drive already. (Which is a lot. MÁG is pretty heavy.)
blippity blop ya don’t stop heyyyyyyyyy
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