jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

yes, that's either a vintage LP or a historic, the headstock doesn't look like a Nashville made standard, its too.... RIGHT looking, LOL! doesn't look that big next to her to me anyway, she looks a lot like me with an LP.... well, I'm sans tits, but slender and tall, smaller hair too.... obviously, but my LPs and teles and especially my 335 dwarf my skinny torso and arms sitting down even though my hands are big... I am sure standing up the guitar looks 'normal sized' on her, she looks tall

that's a hagstrom Viking, looks like an old 70s one, made in Sweden, not the far east RI (which gets great reviews for some reason but every Viking RI I've played is a piece of dogshit)

anything goes in 'fusion' -- do you have a jazz background?

up until recently? no.... but I remember watching a NAMM video last week for something that's like dirt and trem that's playing reactive.... I just don't know who made it, check the premier guitar site and sift the NAMM videos

there's some misleadinginfo in there, not totally inaccurate but taken out of context or interpreted in a way that seems like tis designed to sell their switching modification....

the tone stack design is just a small part of the different eras/styles of fender amps.... author barely touches gainstaging, which as the amps evolved changed around the similar tone circuits giving them a totally different sound and feel, but anyway

well, they got that wah sounding pretty badass in the video.... but then again they always do! having seen the hotone products in person I gotta say they LOOK chintzy to me, so much so that I went right by them without trying the wah or those cute little nano guitar heads. After watching this video I wonder if I shoulda tried the soul press last time I was puttering around GC

I am pretty sure you need a 25K pot in your pedal for an active bass -- otherwise? No other advice. Brands? Mission makes great stuff, they are expensive but worth it. I have used their expression pedals before and that is one sturdy piece of kit. But yeah, not a brick and mortar product usually. I would think you could find a place to try the Boss and Morley stuff though.... I will say I have seen some broken Morley wahs over the years... they are not as bulletproof as they claim, so don't assume its immortal, Morleys don't suffer from the same problems as classic volumes and wahs but they still have some other reliability issues... not sure about Boss' pedal, but I never see anyone using one so that's a bit of a tip off there (I mean, on planet guitar if no one uses a product professionally its probably not a professional product) and I wouldn't buy it without trying it first... did I mention that the Mission stuff is sturdy and probably worth the buy in? If I hadn't gone with the MIDI board I would own a Mission expression pedal for my Flashback X4.

you know, if you just look at Morley's bass wahs you may find something you like in both roles tat is specifically designed for an active bass... I'm pretty sure my local Sam Ash has every morley wah in current production in their pedal case, why not take a roadtrip to your nearest samash or GC (or whatever big box guitar retailer you have in TX) and try them? You won't find the mission stuff and you may not find that unpopular Boss pedal but you will certainly encounter a Morley and you can see what you think.... also check out the new EHX next step volume pedal, that whole line is really intriguing

for the record a buffer is a unity (or near unity) gain line amplifier that by definition puts out a low impedance signal

welcome, get posting

eh

... That sounds like fun.

It is until you realize to cast a spell, you have to say, "ENTANGLE BALL ENTANGLE BALL ENTANGLE BALL

owww my poor dangus

its sad, you don't even know what a buffer does...

never repeat thisbut when I was 17 or 18 I did son LARPINGl Vampire the masquerade

20 years ago now, but it was oh so goth then.

try the handbook of acoustics or learning how a guitar amp works in detail... but I don't know I have the time to learn another engineering discipline...

though technical details get me all hot and bothered.... mmm slew rates and bias supplies, room modes and diffusion of low frequency standing waves.... yum

really? they seem like a nice little operation like Keely doing modded classics... and that colour box, ooh, want one

Don't bother. Tried once, nearly shot myself.

but I am a lot nerdier than you...

ooops, I blocked out the twins because I don't wish double trouble on anyone! although I know 3 couples that have had twins lately including you.... its like a blessing or a plague

I think you didn't expect the members would have such a psychotic amount of gear laying around when you started up ;-) but some of us have whole rooms fulla stuff, I can dedicate a room just to guitars and amps before worrying about synths and then the studio space? I took over a whole closet for stuff tht doesn't rank as 'every day' gear that needs to stay wired up in Daddy's studio corner...

how's the baby?

I'm not dumb, maybe I can teach myself enough to help Gchiaren and Michael facilitate this much needed upgrade....

pinched harmonics on a banjo sound pretty cool actually... also very cool on dobro because you slide them

I wish I were a decent coder, I would help with some of the grunt work, but alas I never learned. Always tubes and transistors, 1s and 0s never interested me as much... there must be someone with skills on the site who could donate some time though!

y'know guys, its been said MANY TIMES already here, but again we really need categorized user pages. Mine is a total mess, I can't take it anymore. When can you fit this project in and how long will the retool take EB down for? Its time to answer the people and get on with it.

I toy with the idea of moving to the Midwest somewhere to build a scene and live off my creativity like I used to before the kid.... but I know I won't.

country music screams out for more dive bombing

agreed, I play differently on all my guitars hence why I don't like to sell them, but I sound like ME and can use any axe for any gig... I might o different stuff but I will play in genre and get a sound that works for the idiom, pretty much outta any amp too.... assuming its not some modern headbanger amp (even though I can take my 60s 50 watt ampand get some solidly modern emtal tones from them if called to).

until you visit Detoit or Camden don't believe the hype.... white flight alone is not the ticket, there are tons of white folks in Camden and though Detroit is predominantly black now its decline predated 'white flight' despite the mythos...everyone wants to make sense of things and put urban disasters in little, pat boxes, but its so much more complicated.... urban decay takes many forms and as you travel you realize that no 2 places are the same nor do they have the same story yet the environment becomes similarly dangerous

I've watched the rollercoaster of philly neighborhoods and race has little to do with it, its more about an injection of creative types as well as people willing to capitalize on the succesful ones that leads to renewal... and decline can often have as much to do with white artsy types fallen on hard times as it does to 'white flight'... there are complex social conditions going on and if Dallas only suffers from white flight don't expect decline, I lived in DC and there's heavy white flight apart from the itinerant politocos, but a lot of solid African American communities with vlues hold it together (apart from southest, which ash been the hood since WW1).... anyway

why bother stating the obvious, Zep 1 is a low output 59 tele, a wah, a fuzz and a tiny 6973 based supro (or maybe a modded thunderbolt, still a silly little amp) and yet it sounds bigger than the later LP and Plexi tones in many instances... pure hard rockin goodness as well as low wattage bluesiness... some of it is creative use of gear, a lot of it is Page owning shit and getting the most out of anything because he has a voice that transcends his guitar and amp -- if that can't show people that its about the player and their style then I don't understand anyone's thinking.... ever

how sensitive are your ears in a blaring band situation? most classic rock music was made with junk cable and no one ever says those iconic guitar heroes sound bad.... on the other hand, yes some cables sound a little better or at least perform differently (I mean, a shitty coily cable was aprt of Hendrix's sound)....

my recommendation is to collect good quality jack ends and buy a couple ayrds of good quality shielded coax cable with good capacitance specs.... just makes your own cables.

unless you need something super durable from guitar to pedalboard or amplifier input or whatever in case you step on it, then get a spectraflex. Decent audio specs and indestructible.... I've had the same one since 1996ish.

y'know, I sued to see these freeman guitars along with mitchells used on the ultra cheap rack of a store I liked in southern Maryland.... usually selling for about $30-50 US used.... I am thinking there's not much to know, just cheaply made far east guitars as my friend Tel-Nobody explained.... also, when enxt to squiers on those racks they didn't appear to be exactly the same dimensions as the fenders they copied, just similar in spirit

y'know, for as much as people trash Detroit proper there is still some arts and such, techno is from inner city Detroit and those originators still lvie there for the most part.... I personally thik Camden, across the river from me in NJ, is worse.... that city is ALL bad lands with very few honest working families interspersed and NO arts, civic sponsored or underground... drug dealers, prostitutes and a couple of government building in the middle near their train stations.... pretty much only the waterfront (around their aquarium) provides a zone of normalcy where criminals aren't operating openly... even around the government buildings you will be solicited by dealers, pimps and hookers and if you get out of view of security cameras or the odd stationed by civic buildings you may have tos tare down a mugger while backing up towards an area where you can be seen.... venture out of that small area and you better be willing to fight that mugger and hope he's not well armed because in Camden they will certainly beat you even if you give up your valuables without protest just so they are sure they can make good their escape to go get more dope and crack.... I think Detroit and Camden have been batting the 'murder capitol of the USA' title back and forth for some time, but for some reason Detroit maintains an udnesrveddly worse reputation, probably because its bigger and it has more derelict buildings while Camden has quite a few little businesses even in the worst areas like North, but MANY of these businesses are fronts for drug packaging, fence stolen goods or at least provide places of refuge for dealers and such on the run for a price... I don't think Detroit is as bad top to bottom, end to end, though it sure is hideous in person

anyway... I give US Hell status to Camden NJ

Holy fucking blizzard outside my window! I know the weather people predicted this, but it was 65 degrees out and sunny yesterday. My son was playing in my back yard after dark in the yard because it was THAT warm into the night. Now this.

there's nothing fresh in this, just a fresh combination of different big name and boutique ideas... tube electronics, especially for guitar is a well rod road

how much heat? no more than your 800, probably less, the switching generates zero heat and can even switch it down to less by idling power tubes, the rest of the design is pretty standard in a heat/ current/voltage sense... an ac30 will go hotter given that all 4 tubes are cathode biased and in the case of my 62 the bias point is 'fry bacon' levels of current and voltage....

it sounds ore complicated than it is, videogames and tube amps are barely related

your queston about the flick of the switch cab? they exist.... to an extant, odd numbered speakers will blow a tube amp unless like the 3x10 bandmaster it is designed to do odd numbers above 1, but your amp is meant to go with a 250 to 300 watt stereo cab that can be used as a 4 ohm 4x12, 16 oh 4x12, pair od 8ohm 2x12s or individually as 8 ohm 2x12s (no need to use both)... I have owned many stereo marshall cabs and have used them as 2x12s to reduce projection at small shows though all halved 4x12s get boomy... you are not getting that reducing the number of speakers reduces the wattage HANDLING but not the output level in wattage or dB

.... there are nos tupid questions, but if there were some in amp world this would be one because its moot because you can disable speaker s left and right but the airspace in the cab has more to do with perceived projection and loudness than how many speakers are working... I think I explained this to you, but whatever... sometimes I feel like I'm not talking topeople... no offense, but I just feel this way with laymen... like what you want supersedes science just because you change a single unimportant variable, well, science is science... number do not lie, there are many things that are subjective in guitar amplification but power versus loudness within a few feet in equally efficient speaker systems with similar frequency responses is linear and set ins tone... I have to say it over and over that less speakers is not quieter, just less dispersion so it spreads less distance at a consistent volume, but also the air space behind said speakers also effects projection as well as tone and can be an issue in many regards... acoustics is a science separate from volts and amps with rules of its own and psychoacoustics plays into it too... its far more complicated than amplifier design

I always assumed you are a gear guy since you are not a muso...

not trying to be a dick but sometimes I talk to you and you say "why can't someone invent magic for me ?" and I'm like.... well, music is mathi it does what it does and you can understand or fumble blindly.... and electronic is math and you can calculate things or invent blindly and to no end misunderstanding spaces, the ear etc

y'know, I've been batting around an amp design since you posted this, something in the 30 watt range but NOT ac30ish power amp sound and a really versatile but simple feature set that will allow the amp to have a number of different voicings

I drew some ideas from Matchless, Orange/Matamp, my oddball traynor and even a lil fender... the first thing is to use 4 6V6es biased in separate pairs with the ability to disable either pair on a switch. One pair will be cathode biased like a 15 watt tweed deluxe and the other pair will be fixed bias. At 30 watts you will get a blend of tweed/vox 'class A' sparkle and squish with the firmness of later class AB fixed bias designs and in half power you can choose one or the other. Also, it will give you the option to standby both pairs if I use individual switches and this will allow you to use only the preamp to drive another power amp or into a DI without loadboxing the power amp to prevent cooking it with no speakers attached. I'm also looking at dual rectifier slots so you can have a hugely firm response from a single GZ34 or tone it down and give it some squash with 1 or 2 smaller rectifier tubes... it also crossed my mind to try 2 dissimilar pairs of tubes with similar output in different bias cnfigurations. You can goose a solid 22 or so watts from 6V6es in fixed bias but only 15 to 18 in cathode bias, but in cathode bias the ampeg favorite 7591 produces a good 22 watts in a pair and is a true pentode with a more EL34 sound.... maybe that's the ticket, but its not what my rough schematic looks like right now as the 7591 is a more expensive tube than the 6V6 and I don't want to make something impractical. I will also have to give dissimilar tubes separate power supply lines, although using them in pairs immediately means I need separate lines, but in this instance I am looking at 2 independent designs whereas with all 6V6es run for 15 watts regardless of bias scheme I can build identical supply lines.... less work, less to go wrong in a prototype

I'm also looking at the great orange preamp/tone control circuit combined with the matchless ef86 circuit in back as a distortion stage/PI driver to create something with really versatile but minimal tone controls as well as some interesting gain staging options. I'm kinda debating a presence control as I wanna keep the knob count down, but want it to be flexible too. If I put in the bass voicing rotary, a bright switch, the baxandall tonestack, gain, a trim control on the output on the pentode driver and a post PI master for the whole amp then I am looking at a lot more knobs then I would usually want, but it'll give a lot of control over breakup character, voicing and loudness.... the presence seems over the top but its a control I've really warmed up to lately (not so well implemented on marshalls, but great on tweed, oranges and hiwatts and I know what makes it tick in those amps).

the schematic so far has an unused medium gain triode triode and I am considering maybe having a switchable cathode follower before the tome controls for a mode that's more marshally OR just adding a switchable extra gains tage to give a higher gain mode as the gain as designed will be on the very hot side of vintage, just JCM800, but juicier. with the extra triode implemented well it could give a meaner lead voicing where the driver pentode gets throttled by an extra cascade of gain, but not too itense since its not a full 12ax7 at 100, just like 60.

I'm not sure I have the chops to build a prototype myself though. I might schematic it and talk to a few more experienced builders for circuit refinement and a build.

maybe I need tos tart a Kickstarter.com project for this and all of you EB folks could donate to it and receive the 1st few production amps at cost (R&D will involve some trial and error with aprts swapped in and out of a prototype and then discarded.... values, brands, materials will need to be auditioned BY EAR right down to different wire gauges, styles and insulations and that's cost I cannot shoulder right now... plus I am speccing for a low noise toroidal power transformer -COST$$$!- and a partridge style 50 watt, but there's no center tap for tube rectifiers on a partridge type transformers and there's never been a production centertapped model so I will have to have Heyboer or Mercury make me some custom winds to audition by ear and that's a lot of money in prototyping)....

anyone interested in participating in a ground up new guitar amp design.... a stage/studio amp with one great, customizable channel and versatile poweramp? I admit I am not designing for a perfectly clean sound even at 1, there will always be a little audible distortion creeping in from the driver stage and pentode driver, but it'll do a rock n roll clean when tweaked right... I am not looking to design a jazzer or chicken picken special, that's been done so well already why bother? This will be a rock amp that can kill at various volume levels, produce a lot of different kinda 'feel (variable punch and compression at a wide range of volumes)', different textures, voicings for different guitars or even basses and tons of different drive sounds by changing the way you hit each stage of the amp.... a stage and studio swiss army knife without channel switching that will go from pedal friendly to guitar and cable just through tweaking. An amp that will wrk great on various stage sizes with differing acoustics and a different guitar and FX chain for different gigs and then knock down to studio levels or even bedroom practice level and still rock.

I also have a design for what I call a 'true tone attenuator cabinet' that will be an oversixed 2x12 with a smaller cab inside that will have an isolated 6" speaker with high handling that will soak half the wattage in a natural way. one input will be full power at 16ohms and the other will be half power at 8ohms so theoretically with the amp and cab together you could be getting power tube distortion with a scant 7 to 10 watts of output. Think that over.

dude, this is just sad.... now I got a go to the bar and get a Qui Gon Gin Martini

you can disrespect my balls, but I would be careful what I said about Yoda's...

no no, I'm much taller than Yoda

I live in a townhouse on a cul de sac so I feel your pain.... and Americans are a lot more uptight than Australians. When I do want to play loud I need to see who's home and see if they mind that day. No shit, every time I wanna rip some noise I need to start from scratch and say hey to my neighbors! And sometimes they're like 'please don't!' As a result I generally don't play loud in the winter because my neighbors aren't bumming around in their yards where I can just shout over the fence while smoking.... that and people are cheerier in the summer... and drinking beer. Its an easier sell.

Fortunately there's a huge amount of road between me and the people across the 'street' so the sound doesn't reach them, so I just have to worry about the neighbors on either side and maybe the folks whose yard is behind me though they are pretty tolerant since they're a young couple who parties in their hot tub to all hours in the summer... I generally just ignore them unless they have guests already

but its a real pain in the ass to go above 15 watts with some master volume dialed down on the new ac30 or matchless because even 30 will inevitably slice through the fire walls like a hot knife through butter... when I got the 50 waters in last year as I got the delivery dates I made an effort to talk to all the neighbors about the fact that I had new toys coming and would be testing them at volume right away in case they were defective. I think I would be fine if I had a single home, but alas... I gotta tell you it would be nice to have more space inside too for my gear, but I can barely make time to keep my little house clean as is. Its really impractical for a family as small as mine to have a large single home... so rather than live in squalor with an unruly lawn I just take a hit on the loud music front even though it breaks my balls.

I hear that, I've played a million 'great' gigs in tight, accomplished bands sharing the bill with great and/or famous acts... I've had roadies and a tech to tune my guitars, but my standouts are the garage bands in tight, sweaty rooms, with a bad mix (or no mix at all), blaring noise after humping 3 halfstacks down or up a flight of steps only to discover I only get one free drink and we're not being paid despite drawing a few hundred people... those shows make you say 'fuck it, let's have a great time tonight!"

when they're happening you don't expect they'll be memorable, you think you'll remember opening for Peter Murphy or something like that, but you don't

I think smaller amps respond better to close baffling, even close miced, but YMMV... I also think closed backs generally suck in tight spaces (like baffling) because a well made closed back needs space to 'bloom' for various acoustical reasons.... I will close mic a closed back to record, but only with a figure 8, Omni or a in a pair with a room mic to get the 'bloom' as the waveform develops out front.... open backs are another story due to leakage from the back and can work quite well in close spaces, but again, 40 to 50 watts max in my opinion

I don't think I have ever been happy with a closed back cab recorded in a space less than 4'x6' with pretty high ceilings

okay, have a good nap, you must need it! so here's some dirt on perceived cabinet volumes:

the 2x12 will distribute/project your sound less distance but still be technically as loud using normal measuring practices about a foot from the cone if the speakers are the same efficiency and basic response curve... now putting lower efficiency speakers in will really give you some dropping as every 3dB decrease in efficiency will provide a 30-50% volume cut per watt at 1 foot from the cone (its a logarithmic scale, so the 1st 3dB cut about 50%, then an additional 3dB down is 30 or 40% quieter measured at a foot but really you won't find speakers lower than like 95dB, median is about 98dB, though there's some swing in different manufacturer's specs due to different measuring conditions and outright lies to make their product appear more robust on paper).... you couple in the 50% less projection from the smaller enclosure and it should really help with the neighbors

you have some fender speakers (probably made by eminence) and an EV right now, right? Emis, even the OEM models, tend to be pretty efficient and EVs are hugely efficient speakers with long throw cones (designed to maintain or increase efficiency at distances greater than 1 foot). You probably have a system efficiency of about 100dB or so depending on the fender speaker specs. If you look at speakers with a 98dB efficiency (medium magnet ceramics and Jensen style alnicos with higher handling) you will be getting some volume cut even close to the cab while still working the amp hard internally the way tis designed to be run.... if you go down lower into light magnet turf you will be knocking a lot more volume off, but you will need at elast 100 watts of handling for safety really limiting your options. Weber speakers DT series designed for Derek Trucks comes to mind and may give you the more American tones of your current rig, but in sub 98dB speakers my favorite is the 80s Celestion G12S50. I like the even lower efficiency 80s G12L35 too but 2 of those won't handle your amp with all 4 tubes in and you will have to pull a pair of tubes and halve amp impedance to avoid blowing them. And at 50 watts the 35 tends to break up prettye arly, get growly, and you might not like that given that you like EVs whch have late distortion even when pummeled (and handle 300 fucking watts)....

so with similar speakers in a 2x12 it won't sound quieter to you (though maybe darker as the cab is shorter and not blasting in your ear when sitting on the floor), but it'll be a little quieter to your family and a good deal quieter to your neighbors, maybe not enough for everyone's comfort though.... using really inefficient speakers (sub 98dB which is greenback level as well as a lot of other classic designs with decent power handling) may drop you down low enough though wen you factor in the reduced projection... given you are a 100 watter your choices of low efficiency speakers are somewhat limited, as I mentioned, given that most manufacturers never made a low efficiency speaker with 50 watt+ handling because low efficiency used to be considered a budget model back when everyone wanted to be louder and louder

that help?

y'know Terry, this week I took a sec and did an experiment, I took a matched pair of JJ 6V6es (they handle the same plate voltage as an EL34, more than even the ebst vintage 6V6) and popped them in my Traynor and biased them up to make it a 20 watter and its really darned close to the EL34 stock sound, just about 1/3 less loud at comparable settings. Clean (ish, its a gritty sounding circuit) the sound is chimier with tighter lows and a more compressed response but its bedroom level through my low efficiency 2x12 (has some very light magnet 80s celestions in it at 70 watts handling) even pushing the power tubes into a creamy/crunchy breakup and it still hits the speakers plenty hard to get classic rock overtones from them... totally non-destructive mod for EL34 amps I think I mentioned before, but it really sounds good

just make sure you rebias and set your impedance a notch lower than the cab's rating

ever find a new amp you like?