Gear Purchases

It's a sickness. ~m

Like hell I'm ever using that Metal Zone again. And I want to replace the Blackstar. I need a detox to the point where I have only three overdrives: Super low gain, versatile moderate to high gain, and RAT 2 or Fullbore Metal. That last one may seem irrational, but there are times when a song peaks in such a perfect way that it requires the biggest Goddamn distortion you are capable of using. Of course, right now, that's hardly priority. A low and middle gain overdrive (plus a dual footswitch) are all on my list of things to get soon.

a song 'peaks'.... what, like an acid trip? where faces are melting and you think you are superman and your friends have to keep you from 'flying' out the window?

where do you get this stuff?

anyway, you can probaly handle the metal zone tasks with all the junk you already have.... check this:

or is that VHT gadget not a drive/distortion? Maybe its a reverb and trem?

I'm about to give you a piece of brilliant advice which is THIS

they rarely come up for sale because they are well loved by their owners (I had been lookin for mine for months and months when one finally turned up on flEaBAY) and always go for about $200. I don't know why TC discontinued them. Once you start to understand its capabilities it will blow your mind. If only it had a less traditional overdrive or distortion combined with the RAT or TS9... but still, wow.

There's not a demo on the web that illustrated what this little preset box can REALLY do. Its advanced features are super-personal and idiosyncratic it would be ahrd for a Pete Thorn to illustrate them well in 5 minutes :-(

buy one and set aside a weekend to sit with the manual and your imagination.

I've had a look at the fane speakers and found a fair few 212s with them in them for £200-£300 The one I'm looking at is a guys old combo whhich was a jtm 45 copy but hes taken the amp out and selling the cab and two 100 watt fane speakers for £200. The speakers are from a Hiwatt cab he has said. By the looks of it the cab would be able to mount my vc30 into it without any problems at all, so could turn the vc30 into a 212 combo possibly. Another I found has two 50w fane speakers in it and is a cab for £300

I like the 50s myself, I've heard the bigger ones and they are good too but different. The more wattage they take the more they are voiced like an evm12L it seems... I still haven't heard any of the 75 and 80 waters from any era that I am aware of. Some Hiwatt heads swear by 50s, others 75s, and other crescendos (which are their own thing).

Mine is an 80s classic series that's medium efficiency, but the 70s 50 waters come in a higher efficiency as well as the greenback level efficiency like mine and are supposedly the best, though some guys like the stronger magnet and other guys the weak magnet. The word is that higher efficiency fanes have more bass and are punchier.

I think the one I have souns a lot like the earlier 50 waters I've heard in 70s hiwatt cabs, but its tough to be sure since I tried those hiwatt cabs with DR103 and 504 heads which are different than what I have. Brighter, cleaner, more gain stages but less gain at V1, just different. So its tough to say. I might mod my traynor to be even more of a CP103/L100 early hiwatt than it is, add the extra gain stage and maybe the cathode follower, move the master and screw with 1 or 2 of the 4 channels, but it sounds pretty good as is so I am hedging.

The classic 12/50 has as much thump as I could comfortably manage with my gear. It has really creamy and full midrange and a subdued top end. Its the direct antithesis of a vintage 30. When you get it driving it seems to growl more than crunch.

can you post pics of the fanes you are looking at so I can help you ID them? fane has made a million models, even more than celestion and its confusing. Certain ones may not suit your playing style. The 100 waters could be Axiom Alnicos which were designed for Vox in the 80s as a smoother celestion blue with huge wattage handling. They are said to sound great but I have never seen one in person. The 50 waters could be ANYTHING w/o seeing them. They could be classic 12/100s or maybe the rare 80s Medusa 100 (30s and 150s are more common).

My take on the fanes can be summed up in 1 word though: THICK

a song 'peaks'.... what, like an acid trip? where faces are melting and you think you are superman and your friends have to keep you from 'flying' out the window?

Close. Watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk4BxhCvc-s

It clocks at 11 minutes, but I'm sure you can handle that. The best example can be found at the end. Usually, it's either utter silence to a sudden cacophony of distortion. Other times, it can lead up to that wall of sound. In those instances, a thick, powerful distortion is an absolute necessity.

Other times, it can lead up to that wall of sound. In those instances, a thick, powerful distortion is an absolute necessity.

I actually made a pretty good reply, well reasoned and based in years of music arrangement experience but I thought better of it and deleted it. Follow your muse, or follow explosions in the sky, who are following slowdive's muse

I'll put a few links on here later, they are hiwatt branded, I'll leave it to you to work out as I know nothing about fane, never even heard of them till you mentioned them a while back

If they say they were made for the Audio Brothers then they are the speakers from the 90s UK Hiwatt reissue amps and cabs. By all accounts the Audio Brothers speakers are modified Medusa 150s, an 80s high power/efficiency Fane that's a love it or ahte it thing. They were popular enough that Fane reissued the medusa for a while, but now fane discontinued those in favor of the ascensions thata re supposed to be like 75 watt, high efficiency hiwatt speakers from the 70s. Who knows? Don't overpay for an Audio Brothers Fane. They are only worth about 30GBP each in good condition. I have played an Audio Brothers reissue 4x12 and the speakers sounded good to me at reasonable volumes, though a bit dark for me.

look forward to seeing the pics. I am not a Fane expert but I am getting better at identifying the different models by their frame style, cones, domes and model codes. Generally 6 digit model codes starting with '122' are 50 waters, '121' is 20to 30 watts handling and '125' are 75+watts until the classic series came out. In the classics it seems '122' was the rare 30 watter, '125' was the 50 watt I am trying out and I have yet to see the 75, 80 and 100 waters to find out what code they had. I am not sure what codes were stamped on the frames of actual 80s Medusas and the reissues just say something like M150 on the frame or just the date of manufacture as do the 90s Audio Brothers cast-frame speakers.

Fane is way more confusing than vintage Celestion and Jensen. I am having a lot more trouble learning what all the models are. From what I can tell, in the 70s the 1st 3 digits of the model code are diameter and wattage and the last 3 seem to have something to do with magnet size, maybe gauss/flux density, maybe frame style or maybe what amp manufacturer they were built for. For instance I know 122581 Fanes from the mid 70s are 50 watt speakers that were OEM in 200 watt Park 4x12s as an upgrade option from the moe common Celestion G12H30s that only gave the cab 120 watts handling. But Park's parent company Marshall never put this speaker in Marshall branded cabs for some reason even though a JMP, metalface superlead could definitely use the extra handling if you are only using 1 cab.

There are codes that likely relate to orange too as well as vox/sound city (in the 70s both amps were made by arbiter), laney, carlsboro and a few other lesser known companies who made high power amps for the UK market.

the dark matter seems like it might be the same basic circuit as the distortion section of the NDR1 Nova Drive only with a switch to scoop the mids more for chuggachugga-metal brootality. In that case it is a really well tweaked rat circuit. Since there is already a mid emphasis to the Rat, so on the nova drive its nigh impossible tog et a metal scoop from the pedal alone with the treble and bass controls. It sounds pretty flat thru my gear with the bass gunned up close to max and the treble well above noon. With both controls maxed the scooped sound is pretty subtle and you would need more tweaking at the amp to get all metal about it.

The Nova Drive runs at 12 volts and both sections are pretty dynamic until you crank the gain up, does the Dark Matter run at higher voltage than 9v or contain a charge pump?

TC's derivative drive and distortion circuits are pretty great tweaks on tried and true designs. What I really like about them is that, unlike a lot of booteek versions that are finicky with amps or are laden with switches to voice them, TC seems to voice their dirt to be pretty equally at home on ANY type of tube amp, and my voxes and traynor could not be further apart from the 1st gain stage biasing and voicing to the output tube and power supplies. The exact same Nova setting I created to push my traynor sounds fantastic thru the ac30hw without tweaking. In fact, it doesn't sound like the same setting. The vox and celestion character recolors the whole OD texture in every way. I wouldn't say it sounds just like the amp breaking up on its own with the vox with the traynor settings, but it sounds good as hell, no preset tweakin' needed.

TC can really do analog dirt pedals.

what do you think of the kemper for lower gain sounds? It seems like, even moreso than the axe FX, metal/post-harcore/ultra-high-gain players rave about the Kemper, but I don't run into a lot of people saying it replaced a vintage AC30 or Tweed Fender on stage for regular rockin'.

oh yeah, out of nescessity I purchased a slightly different Fane Classic 50 from '82. Pulled from a more upscale Vox solid state amp of the era. Its a 12/50 magnet and voicecoil like the one I have already but with a small aluminum dust cap instead of a large paper dust cap and it may have a different cone. I won't know until I can put it side by side with the 83. Should be a little brighter, which makes sense for a Vox OEM speaker. Got her for a pittance but she won't get here for weeks because I bought her from a guy in the UK. Oh well.

heads up to Liam, apart from Laney amps and some Crates of the era, apparently there are a number of 80s Vox models equipped with 50+ watt Fane Classics. The venue series got them as did the escort I think.

I don't know that I would call Steve Vai or his sidemen low gain players. Not Brutal, but I don't get my signal that distorted usually.

Blues guys are their own thing. They come in a handful of flavors (generally based on the influence their heroes have had on their gear selection), but they are generally analog purists if they can afford to be. Working blues musicians I know will generally have a cheap, Chinese production tube amp that has a decent clean and then lean on the 'ol tubescreamer if they are on a budget. I think I would go with a PODHD instead, but that's me. They play small bars with bad PAs and a hotrod deluxe goes a long way for them.

There are a lot of touring country guys toting the axe FX these days, same goes for the pop world, but in rock its mostly the heavy guys going the high-end digital route. In rock it seems like the heavy players always jump on the new technology. I remember as a kid heavy players were all about rack systems with separate preamps and power amps sandwiching fancy studio processors which were the peak of guitar technology though they are now reviled by most and used by some for overtly gimmicky sounds (I did happen to like my SPX90, why did I sell that processor again).... I feel like the guys going with Fractals and Kempers are definitely in that tradition (I've seen a come abck of 80s rack mounted preamp/fx/power amps setups lately too). I don't know if its a legit shift from integrated tube amps though.

The trouble with the Kemper is there's nowhere to try the darned thing! I would love to profile all my amps and just take the Kemper to gig, but only if the sound AND FEEL is 100% there. I don't want to be told I sound great through the mains but feel like I'm holding my dick in my hand while I'm on stage! The older I get the less gain I resort to. I don't play clean often, but my sound has a punchy dynamic that's a little different than what the mass of hard rock and emtal people out there will be shooting for. Think 70s hard rock. I finally tried a POD HD500 and it sounded pretty close but the dynamics were off. I only ever tried an Axe FX1 and it shined in the FX department and the sound of the amp models was even better, but it stil didn't have the same reactive quality as an amp at mid to low gain settings... and there's magic speaker reaction going on in my rig too. old school celestions being pushed right to their wattage limit really react to your dynamics.

simulated amps, I wanna get on board, but its scary to be ampless.... its like taking half my instrument away and turning it to 1s and 0s.... I feel like it wouldn't work the other way, with a virtual guitar and a raging tube stack.

80s G12L-35 celestions to tame my 50 watter for home use... Fanes were over the top, they didn't seem loud until I stopped playing and my ears were ringing. Great sound, more for big-stage use. Holding onto them. G12L-35s are in... they will do.

Hosa IRG cables!! I haven't seen your pedal board, but you can see my new updated board on my gear porn page. Those cables are amazing. Really helpa me to get pedals intimately close to eachother.

I just make my cables to length with really good low capacitance coax... plus then I can choose the right ends for the application, straight or L

I have a few cables made by sommer that are like those cables. I need more of them really, want to try to squeeze an extra 2 pedals on the bottom rail on my board if possible. I want to get a DS-1 and a digitech drop on there and then my phaser and chorus can go on thepolychorus and a few others on the row above with a dyna comp which will probably go before my wah somehwere out the way because its not something I'll always use. theres a few more pedals I want but at the moment I'm happy with what I have