Gear Purchases

and sometimes... they ride motorcycles.

http://orig11.deviantart.net/73cf/f/2009/298/9/2/biker_mice_from_mars_by_sinner18th.jpg

Egnater SS4 head switcher has become my x-mas gift. I called Ultrasound who distributes them exclusively and arranged a better price I swore not to repeat. Finally I can MIDI switch up to 4 different heads into 1 cabinet thus forcing me to justify it by joining a gigging local band in the new year. I am kinda envisioning myself getting another head or 2 in the near future just to use all 4 head loops.... I am seeing the traynor (which I finally finished servicing and tweaking internally to deliver a real early orange/hiwatt type sound), my matchless, maybe a blackface fender bandmaster for clean cleans and something stupid high gain like a soldano, EVH or orange so I have a real variety of flavors.

I'm kinda envisioning a rig that's a bit like a POD only with legit gear LOL

EDIT:

I just got a deal from a friend on a '65 Selmer Treble N Bass 50 (shes a bit hacked up inside with a replaced power transformer and a switch to diode rectification like a mk3 TnB to accomodate the lack of center tap on the replacement tranny) so I'll be seeing what that's all about.... I've enver tried a big EL34 selmer. It seems a lot like a blackface fender with british tubes on paper. Maybe it wil bridge the gap between superleads and bandmasters/bassmans. I think I will be needing to restore the 70s Arbiter AC30 and sell her though. I don't really need 4 ac30 type amps anyway, whereas a second flavor of el34 50 watter will be fun. The Selmer has so little in common with the traynor that I expect she will sound completely different. Its funny, they basically sue the same components, just in a completely different arrangement. I thought I was done with EL34s when I sold my last superlead 5 years ago, but truth is I was just done with vintage Marshall. Everyone's got THAT sound. A lot of the big amp competition (other than Laney) had its own thing going and I want to build that library of tones. I dipped my toe in abck in the day with the V series ampegs and a loud-ass Sunn I sometimes regret selling, but I never touched Traynor (okay, okay, the most famous traynor is a plexi, but the other mdoels are unique and interesting), Selmer, Sound City, Hiwatt, Matamp or Orange.... the time is now

I've been eyeballing the Ampeg SVT-CL Heritage. I did a lot of reading over comparisons between the Heritage version and the regular (which is $600 difference for same amp). Though I would normally just go with the cheaper clone, in this case it seems the more expensive version has way less returns, complaints, repairs, and retains its value more online. I've also read that the higher end valves the heritage uses come out to about $400, so you really are only paying $200 bucks for thicker copper, wiring, and circuit-boards.

If I spend the money to get this head, I will have to downgrade some o fmy gear. There's just no need to have multiple setups. My current available rigs are

1. LH1000 Rack with 2 sansamps, Korg Pitchblack, DBX 160A, Furman

2. Fender Rumble 500

3. (Old Fender I use at the church)

The Fender rumble was supposed to be my quick and easy option for a portable gigging rig and the LH1000 was my at home, smooth as f*%& practice/recording amp. If I got the Ampeg, it would be my main practice and gigging amp. I think if I do this, I will sell the whole rack with exception of the LH1000 and just keep it as a backup amp. I just got the Fender Rumble this year, so I don't feel it's wise to sell it already.

I have experience with both the standard CL and the blue line with 70s cosmetics.... they are built very similarly (not so different even from 60s/70s originals which were PCB amps) but there seem to be bad batches of the regular version whereas the blue-line with vintage cosmetics have much more consistent reliability as you have figured out for yourself.... to the best of my knowledge the CL is supposed to use better quality components across the board (no pun intended) ina ddition to the better PCB and wire dress you mentioned which doesn't seem to improve the sound to my ear (both sound great if you like the big 70s arena bass sound) but probably further improves reliability.... that said, the bassist from my biggest band toured with a standard issue CL built in the late 90s for YEARS and it was the only bass amp he owned that never went down at a gig or practice. He still owns it and its only needed servicing once that I know of.

I know you are thinking 300 watts is not loud by modern bass standards, but SVT watts are tube watts. 300 watts of clean signal reproduction on an oscilliscope. A tube amp keeps getting louder after the onset of inaudible distortion and compression. The SVT only sounds great played HELLA loud. Its insanely loud.... it easily cuts through 200 watts of marshall power. It may be too much amp for you. The V4b is a more modest 100 watts that is insanely loud, but more of a giggable volume and you can work the amp nice and ahrd without deafening small audiences...

just a word of caution there about the deafening volume of an SVT used in anger (the only way worth using it)

the SVT is the gold standard of rock bass amps... there are tube bass amps I like better in the 200+ wattage range, but not by a lot....

you're getting the 8x10 'fridge' cab right? it needs that, it sounds weird thru other cabinets... it doesn't even matter what speakers are in the 8x10 to my ear, its just something about the gonzo size that makes her kick the way an SVT should... which is like a mule.... a mule on PCP in a fight with local police officers

I thought about it if I got the cheaper one, the saved 600 would be turned into a cabinet, but I drive a 2003 Dodge Neon. I have no way of traveling around with an 8x10. My Fender Rumble nearly doesn't fit in the back seat. When I had a Silverado, my first rig had a Crate 4ohm 2x12 cab that I loved but it now a rolling table for all my crap that I have yet to decide what to do with. It woul dbe awesome to own it, but it's not reasonable for me. I'm currently toying with the idea of putting an ad out to start a nerd band where I would actually be playing in places not intended for bands to be and with no stage. I figured I would bring the Rumble when I play in places without PA's and cabinets and I would bring the Ampeg to church, where I would go straight into the house.

That being said, I have no experience with tubes. I've read about them and had a lot of buddies that used them, but I myself don't know everything about them yet. I've not experienced that distorted drive sound that people talk about unless you consider playing with high gain and low master, but that's not my tone anyway. It makes me wonder though... if I turned a tube head to max while plugging it into a PA, would the PA be getting that sound but under a controlled volume? Also, don't Heads have some audible noise from them without being connected to cabs?

My only cabinets that I still own now are Seismic; a 4x10 and a 1x15. I've heard they are terrible but they've been good for what I use them for. Rarely I will plug something in that the speakers don't like at low volumes.

I really dig, or dug when I played with one at a guitar center in 2010, MarkBass cabinets. A lot of people I look up to are switching from Ampeg, SWR, and such to Aquilar, but what I've heard of them through the internet videos, I don't like their tone.

I thought about it if I got the cheaper one, the saved 600 would be turned into a cabinet, but I drive a 2003 Dodge Neon. I have no way of traveling around with an 8x10.

I hear that! I ahd a Neon. It caused me to buy some vintage combos (igniting my love affair with the vox ac30) back when I had been collecting marshall stacks for awhile and the stacks didn't get used until I was in a pro band with a van and trailer! Mine also was super unreliable and the extra 600 in savings could help you when it has its next spaz out and needs a new drive belt or radiator. The SVT can be like that if you use it all the time. The tubes naturally run down after a year of steady use at ANY volume (power amps run full tilt all the time, the preamp controls level) and the retube investment on matched 6550s is considerable for this amplifier!

That being said, I have no experience with tubes. I've read about them and had a lot of buddies that used them, but I myself don't know everything about them yet. I've not experienced that distorted drive sound that people talk about unless you consider playing with high gain and low master, but that's not my tone anyway. It makes me wonder though... if I turned a tube head to max while plugging it into a PA, would the PA be getting that sound but under a controlled volume? Also, don't Heads have some audible noise from them without being connected to cabs?

a tube amp MUST be connected to an impedance matched load or the power will backwash into the output transformer and melt the windings... the way to plug a tube amp into a mixing board is to put it on a DI designed to take the pummeling and use the 'thru' jack on the DI to feed the speaker cabinet or a load box (an atificial impedance device designed to handle about double the RMS wattage at the correct impedance, however some loads sound weird because speakers are reactive to the amp not just sonically but electrically so you want whats called a reactive load for anything audio versus static loads for tech work where you need to run the amp to meter mods or repairs and a reactive laod is ahrd to find over 200 watts handling)... no heads do not make music without cabinets. If your tubes are esonating hard and the cabs in another room like in a studio you might hear the tubes rattle some ahrmonics but nothing we would call music, just weird vibrations thata re sympathetic to your playing.... but if your head does this its time to retube. Its actually a bad thing. The tube grind you are excited about is a mixture of subtle distortion from the preamp tubes, power amp tubes and speakers interacting with your playing, something transistors do not do well. The thing is, the SVT has so much power that you aren't going to get it at small venue levels, you could use the preamp control and master volume to overload the first preamp tube or 2 like in a modern amrshall or mesa with a mastervolume, but that's probably not ging to eb the sound you are imagining, more like a solid state amp with a tube preamp (though smoother and better than all but the most expensive hybrids). Even in big venue situations most bassists get very clean sounds out of their SVTs though. The real SVT thing is the magic heft given by all those enormous 65550 tubes driving the huge chunk of iron in the utput transformer. Big iron core transformers have amazing bass enhancing properties and that's the #1 thing bassists are seeking out of the SVT and similar HUGE tube amps. No one has yet simulated the thick transformer saturation in the low end with a solid state or modelling amp. Its a FEEL IT thing. Even at 1 its there to some extent, the transformer adding low harmonics like a jet plane taking off. Also, the SVT has amazing tone controls, simple but incredibly versatile and effective. The midrange control is a brilliant design that's a lot like coveted vintage recording studio EQs.... but if you want grind try a V4, same basic preamp, smaller power amp that will add grind a little earlier. though the wattage is 1/3 of the SVT its loudness is more like 1/2.

My only cabinets that I still own now are Seismic; a 4x10 and a 1x15. I've heard they are terrible but they've been good for what I use them for. Rarely I will plug something in that the speakers don't like at low volumes.

I really dig, or dug when I played with one at a guitar center in 2010, MarkBass cabinets. A lot of people I look up to are switching from Ampeg, SWR, and such to Aquilar, but what I've heard of them through the internet videos, I don't like their tone.

Mark Bass is god stuff, so is Eden, but Mark Bass is cheaper by a lot... not a lot of other bass cabs I like. So many cabs are geared towards slappers and how often does one need to funk it up that hard? I would audition cabs with an SVT in stores as you will find its picky about cabinet design. Its not fond of ported designs and horns in my experience but YMMV, when I hear an SVT I want a really specific thing from it and you might be looking for your own signature tube bass tone.

I don't know if they make it anymore, but I actually prefer the big Mesa bass amp. Its like 3 or 4 hundred watts from a pile of 6L6es (8 or so? 10 dunno) so it has the vibe of an ENORMOUS bassman. It sounds great. Its what paul McCartney uses for bass on the road and a former Beatle can play through any amp he wants.

but the whole V series is still the benchmark for loud-ass bass

I think my Selmer is being delivered today and I am off from work until after x-mas so I can really enjoy her.... if the boy lets me. Now I just need to formulate some polite excuses for the police when they inevitably show up asking me to turn down.... I wanna dime this bitch out and shake some windows!

are you going for the bass-beast or what???

According to my research, the Deucetone Rat has gotten me the closest to a metal tone that a Vox amp can get XD

I'm really enjoying this pedal as well as all the trading up in /r/letstradepedals. Great place.

an AC4 is not really stout enough in the power supply and output section for modern metal but it should cover anything pre-slayer, especially with the rat for extra bazinga. Voxes love Rats.

I was actually playing some very silly metal-type riffs earlier on the new Selmer, I pushed her way into saturation with the rat-type TC distortion out front with my hottest LP, scooped the mids out on everything LOL. Sounded surprisingly amazing. Much better than modern purpose-built metal amps. At least to my ears (which admittedly are not tuned to metal).

If you aren't happy with the Vox anymore you can trade or sell her off for all manner of good tube gear, tis a very high end production amp. I ahd thought you planned to use her for home practice without your pedalboard to refine your chops and touch, but I admit she is not the most versatile amp for anything else. Great little small stage rocker though. Wind her out in a band setting through a borrowed 2x12 and stand back. But she maybe doesn't have enough headroom to handle most pedals at gig levels, nor does she have enough power and bandwidth to do the modern type of metal sounds. I assure you if shes not emeting your needs you can flip her for something that will do a little more metal at reasonable wattage like a jim root terror or whatever else the AD&D kids are playing thru these days....

I had planned on using the Vox for home practise and occasional live use. I have in the back of my mind of saving up within the coming years and getting a Fender '68 Custom Princeton Reverb (or just keep waiting and end up splurging on big brother Custom Deluxe Reverb). I really like the sound on it, but I also like this Vox.

Maybe... maybe I can do a stereo set-up with two different amps? I'm curious what that'd be like. Anyways, worlds away when I have enough money to do that and maybe do a doom set-up on the side :)

I run 2 dissimilar amps ALL THE TIME and have for years. Its great. You can A/B them for clean/dirty or layer them up for complex tones. Using stereo effects that way can take some dialing in though since the amps aren't responding the same, but it can be done. The easiest thing to carry off in a dissimilar Y setup is ping ong delay. Seems to work well for me with the Matchless against the tweedie... but I've only done it in my house so far. Most of the time my 2 amp use is not really stereo but layering or doubling using a detune effect on 1 amp to get a thick, wide, complex tone in decently sized venues, particularly when I'm the only guitarist and its very riff based music where I need to fill up a lot of sonic space while playing very few chords....

The Princeton is only a biscuit louder than the vox but its definitely tighter and cleaner. I do not recommend a reissue, they don't sound very good. Even a silverface Princeton with or without reverb kills the RI. They're also very expensive... same goes for the deluxe RI. For a little more buy a silverface. It won't depreciate in value the way RIs do and they just sound much better. Old fender is more reliable too. You can't kill a 60s or 70s fender amp. They're indestructible.

Vox and fender are miles apart though. Best to have both. Good for different things. If I have to choose its Vox, but I like having the Pro around too and could use another Bandmaster head.

I was actually going to say that'd be a bit much to spend on vintage, but I just checked the prices now. To think a 70's silverface Princeton Reverb is only a a few hundred more than the brand new reissue is certainly a deal to me.

I also see there's a massive debate between blackface and silverface. I wouldn't suppose you have a weigh in that discussion?

okay, in silverface it depends on the model! some circuits were utterly butchered beyond allr ecognition by '72, others changed a little bit for the worse gradually over time and weren't fully mutated until the 80s and then the little amps didn't change much or in the case of some, AT ALL. The champ and vibrochamp are identical in silverface to blackface. The Princetons switched from a GZ34 rectifier to a 5U4 and got a bias tweak from the factory that makes them cleaner (but you can switch the rectifier and rebias to get blackface and brownface tones, really) and then the Deluxe reverb is almost the same circuit hacing a slight change in the way the eyelet board is mounted and I believe some snubber caps added that prevent self oscillation (due to the change of parts positioning) but also make the silver ones a little duller than the black ones but still way more lively than the reissue.

Silverface's worst offender is the Twin which was moronically butchered by the end of its run and not in a way that helped it compete with Marshall's 70s amps that were owning the charts. You get what theyw ere going for, but all the changes were done so peicemeal that they didn't wind up working well together whereas if they designed an 85 watt amp from the ground up to have a master volume, ultralinear hifi output section etc it woulda probably soudned way cooler. The ideas in the silverface fender ideas aren't bad taken individually, they are just badly implemented and poorly thought out by CBS's no-musician engineers. The SF Twin (and to some extent the alter SF Super and Pro reverb aps which slowly got the twin treatment) really gives the whole 70s line its bad wrap, but there are lots of winners in the line too. Silverface introduced the mighty Bassman 50 and 100 (fender's first purpose built bass amps that really sounded good for bass) as well as the MIGHTY Bandmaster Reverb, Fender's 1st head with reverb that is essentialy a headboxed blackface pro reverb... the mid70s were a weird time for music having funk, disco, metal, punk, cleaner and poppier country and western from folks like George Jones.... a lot of guitar needs to address. I think fender just didn't know which way to go and they really looked at doing similar things to all their 'stage-size' amps instead of taking the modern approach of each model coming in 2 or 3 wattages but addressing a specific niche type sound.... but the most important thing to say for silverface fender is:

ALL SILVERFACE AMPS HAVE BETTER TRANSFORMERS AND COMPONENTS THAN ANYTHING FENDER HAS MADE SINCE THE EARLY 80s OUTSIDE THE PRICIEST CUSTOM SHOP AMPS. THEY ARE ALL AHNDWIRED ON THE CLASSIC EYELET BOARDS. THEY HAVE A CERTAIN RETRO 70s CHIC TO THE UGLY SILVER AND BLUE COSMETICS THAT"S HIP AGAIN TODAY.

I do plan to buy the Ampeg CL Heritage in February. I'm also going to pay to have my bass preamp fixed or replaced.

ah the SVT.... may it bring you much joy and your audience much tinnitus

watcha doing for a cab?

I spent the day alone, so I was able to really get my amp loud. I'm amazed at two things: 1) Tube amps sound amazing loud, and 2) That strong, hard, not-really-breaking-up-hard tone that I wanted resides in a not very little gain and lots of volume.

I'm actually kind of happy, but also sad because the last time I tried cranking it live, the clean was too loud for distortion, and even alone it was just too loud. Still, I'm very happy with this result. Now, I can say definitevely that the sound I was seeking in pedal format is simply a loud, low-gain tube amp sounds.

On a side note, I think I'll settle my delay and reverb needs to a Keeley Caverns. That'll leave plenty of room for the Boss Tremolo, a good overdrive, and maybe even stay with the Boss Loop Station.

Desicions, desicions...

that's power tube distortion and maybe a little speaker distortion.... its magic, I am always trying to tell you youngsters about this. Big amps do it too, its burlier, but similar.... and of course much louder. I've never heard a pedal pull it off though many claim to. The ac4 has a particularly sweet type of power amp distortion being true class A. All even order harmonics. see what I mean when I tell people 5 tube watts are loud as hell and gig worthy? One day you will be a man playing in front of a raging halfstack at 10 and know the true joys of rock guitar playing.

You've discovered the holy grail I keep trying to tell you about, now bend it to your will and tell the soundman to eat it.

Just you wait till February guys. I'll get to join in with 300 watts of ear rape.

Speaking of ear rape, I was hoping to get some from Sunn O))) after they announced their tour, but it's nowhere near Cali :(