jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

he modded it then... maybe active electronics?

its got a weird white plate on the back too behind the control route

why didn't you just ask him what was up with it?

go see Sunn live and prepare to have your organs liquefied! a recording can't reproduce the visceral quality of their live show

dude, I would love it if the Captain's little wage slaves just charged on camera and beeat him and Chapman bloody with a couple of Explorers and then liberated all the high end gear in the shop giving it to impoverished musicians in the UK who will do more than noodle on it

see, I would just add a master volume knob to that, especially given that its active so you won't experience audible signal loading from an extra pot in series... but man, where to put a master?

with respect, that's a very cool but impractical design

no, I don't think GUITARS sound okay with hughes and kettner amps, but that's me

most of their current offerings are full of innovations geared at metal guys and they favor super high gain tones at the expense of a decent clean sound... I have also seen more broken tri-amps on the road than any other amp but the JCM2000 series (they just don't build 'em like they used to, but they sure do pack them full of pointless gizmos you would not miss if they were not there)

although the puretone by H&K is okay... if you are looking at a puretone its a good amp with a nice vintage Marshall on steroids sound.... never seen one broken either

others will disagree, but I just find H&K to be europe's mesa... jamming all those options onto a small amp chassis is just asking for reliability issues... also, even a simple bright switch will have an effect on tone even when n bypass (its got plenty of extra wires to act as an attenna and to add capacitance, put enough voicing switches and you are trading some of your signal for bells and whistles), so adding lots of potentiometers and switches to make the amp super versatile is always taking something away (this is my complaint with the ampeg V series amps thata re being discussed in another thread).... channel switching is a tone suck too, don't let anyone tell you otherwise... only the best engineers seem to design around it effectively and a Soldano or Tone King is an expensive buy in... I have NEVER been knocked out by the H&K stuff. Its all 'okay'. Those amps sit tonally in the Soldano camp of high gain, but are not made as well and it doesn't sound as good as a result.

I think if I had to build a rig from 'almost' scratch like you are doing and I already had a tubescreamer I would just get a silverface deluxe reverb. I relied primarily on a 60s Princeton reverb and pedals through a lot of the 90s and was never disappointed by the tone. Not the sound I was shooting for, but I always sounded good and was seldom too loud (though the deluxe would give you somewhere to go when you needed more power, whereas a Princeton is pretty limited in the volume department fr larger gigs where they are not putting the amps through the PA, that came up back then, but it might not now... things are so different at venues today). A good deluxe reverb (1980 or earlier) will serve you until you are old and grey and will deliver a lot of great classic rock tones from spanky 60s clean to Cheap Trick dirt and when you add the tubescreamer you can get SRV tones with a strat. It will also NEVER break and seldom need much in the way of routine service as long as you stick with JJ output tubes. Fenders just keep running and running. Old deluxes can be pricey though, so if you can tolerate more wattage I recommend the blackface bandmaster which is still a real sleeper and can be regular had for 600 USD or less. Maybe a bit more with the matching 2x12. I ahd one of those for a while and it was a killer American amp still running on all its original parts from '66. A little ahrder to overload at tolerable volumes, but even more of a champ with pedals than even a Princeton or deluxe, The bandmaster just inhales drives and delays. Fender heads from the 60s are still a vintage bargain for how great they all sound and how indestructible they are.

If I were you and I were going to abandon all ym current gear and start over I would probably get a Marshall 18 or 20 watt clone, a Vox handwired ac15 or 30 or maybe a Marshall Studio 15 from the 80s if I could find one for less than a grand (it happens, the Studio that I ahd was marked at $600 when I got it and I traded a Maestro fuzztone form the 60s for it flat out... but I sold it on ebay for almost a grand, so YMMV)

okey doke... seems like a lot of features I don't need though.... and being an expression pedal it is HUGE... and last time I used one I thought the detune was fixed at 50/50 dry and wet or thereabouts and the detune did not track chords well, but at 50/50 it helped mask the glitchiness (but that was a while ago, maybe the new one with drop tuning functions will doo 100% wet for microtonal shifting so I can stereo-detune)... wish digitech woudla just stuck a blend control on the luxe

I also wish I had kept my TC nova system just for the excellent detune, but I disliked almost everything else in it but the phasing

what do you mean 'the overall response'

its a pitch shifter, does it track chords cleanly? if the preamp circuitry in the pitchfork is lackluster I am sure I could modify it with better components to provide more fidelity... maybe the problem is that EHX is trying to meet a pricepoint with this gadget and doesn't want to spend a lot on the surrounding analog components....

you seem knowledgeable about pitch shifting, any other really great, standalone shifters on the market I should know about that will give me a 100% detune (preferably with the ability to control how many cents sharp or flat I go, but at this point I am not feeling picky) ???

I am getting the feeling I am going to wind up ponying up for an Eventide H9 one of these days. Argh! so much money....

no way to take the dry signal outta the Luxe, I want a full detune so I can split between amps... I play at least 2 amps at once ;-)

I am looking to increase my separation. It shoud be especially cool if I space my cabs wide with stereo slapbacks that will ping pong in time.

I am looking to detune one of my amps on the cheap to have a pseudo chorus/doubletrack thing going on... how is the detune setting on the pitchfork by EHX? I see it can be 100% wet, ut how does it track chords and such? I know EHX are the masters of this effect ever since the POG, think it has enough fidelity to help me create a wicked double track setup?

you are so ghetto... why not just get the right tools if you are springing for 2 volume pedals?

almost everything you ever suggest with gear is ghetto rigged even though your ideas often involve copious amounts of gear and may not even be cheaper than doing it the correct and effective way

and anyway, you want the voltage pad at the end of any effects chain. not the beginning, so if you have him using another volume pedal as a trim knob then he should stick it right infront of the sound guy's feed... it won't help all his problems, he has some impedance issues going on as well as gain probllems

I wish people would read a book or at least get some legit real world experience before they hand out advice. All you younger guys on here are the biggest smack talkers, Liam excepted. He actually has a clue how some of his gear works evne if I don't get his aesthetics all the time.

did it look stock from the front?

life is cruel, isn't it? Boom will have to use multiple pieces of kit to achieve his ends... I would totally have bult something by now or modded my existing volume pedal to do what I want

no wait, I wouldn't have because I just use my guitar's volume controls

Narcy makes a point with the MVP assuming the gain can be adjusted below unity. It would do exactly what you wanted.... but now you are going Fly Rig as a DI so it may not matter much.

Nick's amp in a box pedals are pretty cool designs. Keep in mind they are voiced to work best with blackface fender amps because those amps are very common with rank n file players in the USA on the club circuit. Its a shame Nick passed away, he was a great guy who I dealt with many times in catalinbread's early days. Anyway, you may need to tweak some cap and resistor values to mate with your gear.

I never tried the SFT, but the Formula drives and the DLS are pretty decent renditions of their respective amps. I am not sure about the RAH, WIIO and SFT though as the tone of Hiwatts and Ampegs overloading has a lot of factors going on as these amps were designed to be very clean. The demos sound good though. Report back on your findings.

If you can read a schematic and solder you may wanna consider building a kit amp after you try the AD15. Start with a champ for bedroom use and maybe try a marshall, hiwatt or similar EL34 powered circuit after that. In affordable kits I really like Ceriatone (especially if you live in the EU, since they are an international organization). Nik at ceriatone doesn't have the BEST transformers, but there are worse ones in some kits and the rest of the components are really damned nice.

even $400 is a bit steep for an Ampeg V in my book unless it has brand new tubes and has been professionally serviced prior to the sale. An unserviced V with tired tubes is a money pit at first.

y'know, now thnking abut it, you might like an Ampeg Gemini I (the Gemini II is louder and jazzier). It has some simialrities with the later V amps and the 7591 output tubes produce a gnarly overdrive when you push it (they are a really unique pentode that in my opinion has a response somewhere between a 6V6 and EL34, and in most circuits the wattage will be right between the small tetrode and large British pentode too). At 20 to 30 watts thru a 1x12 its not deafening. It has the good ampeg reverb too. Its not a particularly coveted ampeg model either and it only uses 1 super-weird, unobtainium tube.... but most ampegs do. You would not be commiting a crime if you modded it to accept an ef86 driver and 12au7 phase inverter or changed it to use a different [entode/triode in place of that pesky 7199 driver/inverter tube.... I always thought the Gemini 1 had a really cool voice. Not for me, but I can see a guy trying to do QOTSA type sounds really appreciating her. Its a real sleeper too, jazzers love the Gemini 1, the reverborocket and jet have a following, and the V amps are big with guys who love to break eardrums as well as bassists who don't want or can't afford an SVT, but the Gemini 1 is mostly unappreciated and often goes for very little money.

by the way, European vintage amps cost a small fortune here and even the current production UK stuff is expensive for what you get, so don't be a complainer! we all contend with the same problems getting some of the stuff we are coveting. I got a deal on my vintage Vox because its got some unoriginal cosmetics and speakers AND because I bought it almost 25 years ago when prices were just getting out of hand the US dollar was strong coming out of Clinton's 2 terms in office here. My cool Marshalls I used to own were really a number of lucky scores at pawnshops and chain stores staffed by young kids with no knowledge of amps and no interest in their used stock. Market value was lower then, but I really made out like a bandit on every marshall I ever bought. Ebay was just taking off, there was NO reverb or g-base yet and gear forums were just getting going. While some of this stuff was already being mythologized, the community was smaller and the demand was lower. I wouldn't even try to replace any of the vintage amps I sued to have now that I sold them. It'd break the bank! So guitar is a cruel mistress everywhere, dude.

a way to look at the orange el84 amps is like this:

the JCM800 2203 is a late 70s Marshall superlead bright channel with an extra gain stage, a master volume, and a little voicing tweak between stages to get it all to grind nicely

an orange AD30 is to the late 70s Vox AC30 what the JCM800 is to the Superlead

the AD15 is to the 90s Reissue vox AC15 what the 800 is to the Superlead

the changes in the single channel AD versions from vintage Vox are mainly to do with high gain on one channel over 2 different voiced/featured lower gain channels, a master volume and maybe a smidge more power filtering... orange also added a mid-range control to the tone-set, but as far as I can tell they left the basic tone network the same as a vox so the tone controls are less interactive on an Orange, but more intuitive to dial in... otherwise you are looking at pretty similar amps between orange and vox which have a lot of overlap in what they do... so they really are like a 'what if' amp, its like orange asked 'what if vox had made a high gain ac30 to compete with the JCM800?'... of course vox kidna did this with a few amps in the 80s, but they marshallized more than the preamp

the tiny terror is a hot-rodded vintage ac15/ac10, they took out the finicky EF86 preamp tube in favor of the more common and more reliable 12ax7 dual triode and then used those 2 triodes to create a single-channel hot-rod interpretation as well as tightening up the power supply considerably to modernize the voice a bit... it doesn't have a ton more gain than a vintage ac15, but there's more there for sure and its a different flavor of gain being a cascaded triode preamp versus a single hi-mu pentode... the stiffer power section balanced thigns a little though by taking away some of the sponginess of the vox's power tube distortion... overall the tone is very similar to an old vox 15 or 10

aso, 500 euros is about 500 US dollars give or take and it can get a lot of amp if you know what you re looking for... I spent less on my '68 Traynor

incidentally, the old orange tone controls that were just treble and bss that orange seems to have abandoned in favor for marshall/fender tone sections? they are baxandall AKA james style tone controls, and that's what ampeg used in their amps. The small ampegs had the exact same circuit as an orange but for a few component values while the V series you are interested in had an added semi-parametric, active mid-range unique to ampeg (although marshall tried it on a few bass amps in the 80s) that's based around a special multi-tap inductor like the inductor based studio EQs on the coveted Neve consoles as well as being similar to he varitone control found on Gibson's ES-345

I wish you luck with the AD15, its a pretty good modern, mass produced amp with good resale and trade-in value. I think it will serve your needs really well once you get used to it. Be sure to keep it well ventilated, don't put the back of the amp directly against a wall. Cathode biased EL84 circuits run hot. My 62 ac30 once burst into flames on a hot stage. Being a PCB amp, the amp has to ventilate as extremes of heat and cold are bad for the board material and the traces. Also, if you have the amp travelling in the cold you must be careful to let it warm up before before plugging it in as frequent shifts in temperature extremes will hasten the board cracking and traces peeling up (even if you don't lose a trace and the board just cracks, the crack iwill effect amp performance in engative ways as the board ahs some dialectric properties). This is the main drawback of PCB designs on the road (really its best for your tubes to be powered up from room temp anyway as the glass and the plates don't respond well to abrupt changes in temperature either, and tubes are directly heated by DC current... the heat is really what causes the anode to shed the electrons that make the tubes work).

the AD15 is the small version of the AD30 single channel. I played with a guy who had a single channel AD30 and it was a woollier AC30 top boost sound with an extremely useable master volume design. Pretty decent sounding amp, so the AD15 would be the same only with a little less headroom and low end definition (it will drive itself at slightly more ear friendly levels and will be less boomy, though also less punch to cut a mix in the low frequencies). I would expect it to be a pretty decent and versatile rock amp once you learn its secrets (every amp needs to be explored and mined for its secret and vox type amps can be extremely versatile).

the TH30 to the ebst of my knowledge is an AC30 with a darker voicing and channel switching between a clean voxy channel and a higher gain channel with a 1knb tone control that effects the midrange mostly... I have not tried one as I own 2 AC30s and a Matchless and don't really need to worry about the 4xEL84 cathode biased sound with all those amps to draw on

the QOTSA sound is not about channel switchers... but hot damn if I don't love ac30s and ac30 type amps, theya re just great and 30 watts is an ideal stage wattage for all different sized venues... the extra headroom from 30 watts might help you get closer to Homme tones than you would with 15 watts if only because the larger output transformer willg vie you better low end definition. The TT's transformer is on the small side for an ac15 type of amp, more like the petite fender deluxe or marshal 18 watt transformers than a vintage vox one. It sounds great, it just favors midrange definition over a larger chunk of iron.

you need to decide whether you are going for horseshoes and hand grenades Homme sounds or if you wanna nail it... also, Josh would be down on you for imitating his sound and tell you to find your own voice, but I get trying to find your sound by copping someone else's first... I started chasing Brian May's sound in my late teens and along the way I found my own sound (but I can still conjure the Queen tone when I want, though I didn't have a guitar that could do all the out of phase stuff or the exact right treble booster until recently, 20 years after my quest began)

if you weren't chasing a specific tone I would say just buy that AD15... it'll sound great for any styl of music that doesn't require an extremely loud and punchy squeaky clean sound, but will still provide a nice, chimey clean in the vox style at manageable band levels if called upon to do so... it will probably have the best balance of consistently pleasing harmonics and EQ versatility of any amp you are looking at... if you don't know exacly what you will be doing with it (maybe a little of everything) this is probably a safe ebt that will make your ears very happy and probably only cause a little bit of hearing damage

new ampegs are just crates and most of them bear little resemblance to the amps created by Everitt Hull, Jess Oliver and Ken Fischer in the golden era. That said, St Louis Music (crate and ampeg's parent co) puts work into making reliable reproductions of the SVT and now the V4b using only available tubes. They actually get pretty close.The V4b RI willg et you to Homme-sville, but I gotta be honest, an old V4, V2, VT40 or VT22 (all absically the same amp with different wattage levels and speaker options) is usually cheaper, though maybe not after having it serviced and finding fresh tubes. Other than full authenticity there is little to be gained by going vintage on a VT22 or V4 (apart from reverb on the non B models) as the originals were PCB amps and had no special components inside other than using those out-of-production preamp tubes. My uncle owns two GVT series amps and really likes them, but he has 2 because theya re not reliable. Theya re very low gain and jazzy in the 60s ampeg traditionand don't sound like 70s ampegs (which is what you are after). The only small ampeg of recent memory I think si worth a damn is the handwired Jet J20, but the reason its such a fun rock amp is that its really just a Fender brownface Deluxe clone in Ampeg livery. Still killer and very well made with nice hand-wiring on a turret board. Not a vintage ampeg sound though.

apart from the original UK made TTs I am not versed in modern Oranges, but I did try an OR15 and thought it had a cool, mushy doom rock sound, though it didn't sound like a vsmaller vintage Orange OR series ehad AT ALL. Too much gain and the tone controls respond like amrshall, soldano and dual rec controls. I assume it utilizes a cathode follower tonestack like the OR50. I think the only Orange in current production with the original Orange design features is the CS50, everything else in the line is heavily based on Vox and Marshall's most famous designs with tweaks to give them the darker and rainier Orange voice (with varying degrees of success). That said, the original UK issue of tiny terrors was like the meanest, fuzziest ac15 you ever heard, not as clear, but NICE. I have looked at the schematics nd its an excellent design with a lot drawn from the famed Matchless Spitfire 15 watt amps of the 90s. I have a matchless bias owning an amp with their most famous famous circuit. I play the shit out of my DC30. She is a rock beast.

The JTM60 and 30 were marshall's attempt to compete with the fender hot rod amps. I had a 30 (still have it, but who cares, its broken). They have shitty chipboard cabs and piss poor construction methods. They all break. The effects loops are designed in such a way that they always go down and take the amp out in a way that's very difficult to remedy. They can sound very good when they are working but are Marshall's least reliable tube designs ever. The JCM2000 series is Marshall's second elast reliable design. The 2000s alsosound fierce on their own but less impressive in a band setting. They are also rather high gain and overcompressed for a Homme tone. Very modern marshalls. Homme used a 900 in Kyuss. Not my favorite Marshall series, but not bad... I ahd a 900slx single channel and I would say that's by far the ebst 900. Like a super hot-rodded JCM800 2203. The channel switching 900s have a lot of jack assery in the circuitry to voice the distortion and sound pretty dated. Very 80s. They sounded dated before they were ever even released to stores which is why they disappeared quickly and spawned legions of haters.

Given my choice between a Vox-type design like the terror and a stock master volume Marshall design I will generally go to the vox side assuming output power is not an issue.

as I said, I think the OR15 is a high gain marshally type pre stapled to the tiny error output section, so it might be a best of both world's amp for you, but I don't know anyone who owns one so I can't speak to reliability

try tog et an old tiny terror if you go that route.... I KNOW theya re super reliable.... evne the current Chinese crop seems to hang pretty well as its a very simple circuit in a well-ventilated enclosure

if you want the sound from the abums you referenced agreat deal of it is VT40 combos and V4 heads and NOTHING sounds quite like them. though the big, clean british heads that stay away from Marshallisms in their circuitry (like Orange, Matamp, Hiwatt, sound city) come closest. The ampeg V series is unique even by ampeg standards, and ampegs were ALWAYS their own sound. Look up the vintage ampe story, especially as told by former ampeg engineer and famed owner of Trainwreck circuit, Ken Fischer.

A good, old sunn ehad will do most of what you want as will certain 50 watt traynors, but only certain traynors. The most popular ones are all Marshally inside (in a good way), but some of the sleeper 50 watters are a real mutt of ampeg, orange, hiwatt and fender circuitry in a really cool way.

Do you live in the USA, UK or somewhere else?

well, a dead match isn't needed for solid state, just don't go below the minimum impedance (and even then you might not break the box of transistors if tis well-designed, you obviously didn't blow that combo up), you are just losing wattage with each 100% mismatch upward, but as you were putting high into low you probably almost DOUBLED your wattage... plus, if that cab was an OLD crate 2x12 with Fane speakers or Pyle Drivers like they used in the 80s sometiems then the speakers were MASSIVELY efficient, at least 100dB of sensitivity, hell, even the eminence speakers they used back then were pretty loud

things ae deicidedly pickier in the tube world because of the output transfrmers and things are also more complicated as regards the effect ofimpedance on wattage...

but the other thing to realize is when you play games with impedance you can potentially effect frequency response and even introduce distortion you might not otherwise hear, and that goes from your instrument jack to speaker jack... every connection is designed for a certain set of impedance conditions, some will be very narrow in what they will tolerate while stll functioning as designed, other stuff will totally bug out if you screw around with mismatches (no top end, crazy oscilations, weird distortion), and some stuff will put up with a lot while still sounding pretty much as it was intended to with normal use... as a rule MOST guitar and bass gear is designed to be pretty tolerant, but gear designed for other purposes may not be designed to play well with guitar and bass stuff.... guitar and bass electronics are a holdover from an older standard of audio electronics, things changed a lot in the 60s as theory advanced in-step with the needs of broadcaster, recording engineers and the (then new) sound reinforcement professionals... but guitar technology stayed pretty much the same and because it took another decade for guitarists and bassists to worry about interfacing directly with gear not specifically designed for them, the 60s pretty much just saw the introduction of the DI as a Band-Aid o help us interface with all this new stuff... and Gibson/les paul tried low impedance pickups in the little-known les paul recording model (Les' favorite solidbody), but when alembic pioneered active systems they were worried about driving long cable runs on festival stages but focused on driving an instrument amplifier since no one relied on the PA back then

I digress

don't feel bad, it took me til I was in my 20s to really start to 'get' electronics, before that I was a decent musician who could solder as long as there was something obviously broken that I could SEE... it helped to make a bunch of records for other people and really spend a lot of time with all thosec crazy electrons... I wouldn't think of electricity as a river or a cable as a pipe and gear as a valve per se, but I ehar a lot of people use that analogy and I think its misleading and confusing.... you might want to find a basic book that's actually written for musicians, that helped me a lot as did looking at the history of electronics. Being a bit of an antiquarian, relating the evolution of electronics in the 20th century to the evolution and development of modern musical forms that employ all this technology really made it exciting and interesting for me VS just diving into text books right away. The right text books are a lot more engaging when you have soe historical sense to everything you're reading.

whats funny s that in the studio particularly, I often throw out the rule book and misuse gear, but I have an idea what results I will get before I start because I learned the 'rules'. My curiosity really got going when I would screw things up while making records and ask myself "now why did that happen?"

they're still selling records with new songs on them? good to know

the output from the sans amp can act as a pad and it has an XLR out, so you are set to drive a cheap Mackie or whatever you've been overloading with a balanced signal of correct voltage and impedance... it might not be as good as a DI with a dry thru jack if you want to send a padded DI signal and still drive your amplifier's input with a lot of voltage, but if you don't have any small signal tubes in your rig you're trying to bludgeon (or tubes you are trying NOT to bludgeon because you want a clean sound) its hardly important

EDIT:

generally when I am planning a rig or pretty much any signal chain for any purpose I am looking at impedance specs and nominal output in dbv 1st and foremost.... appropriately integrating gear with varying input and output impedances as well as stuff at instrument level, mic level, and different line levels like +2dbv and maybe some old -3dbv stuff really needs to be thought thru carefully to maintain your signal integrity, produce only desireable and musical distortion and avoid frequency loss or performance issues caused by sending a low impedance into a bipolar transistor biased to see a high impedance or driving a vacuum tube stage with a meg resistor setting it for instrument level with too low an impedance at +2dbv when its only designed to take maybe 1 volt peak-to-peak at froma higher impedance source so some of that signal is being resisted by the 1 megohm resistor

I learned a lot about this stuff when I got my 1st rack gear as a teenager (that's a story in and of itself) and tried incorporating it into my pedal and tube-amp based rig

but I digress.... a word on padding down active pickups.... did you know that bass amps with active inputs are providing you with a lower impedance in that also has a voltage pad before it hits the 1st stage of preamplification and gain control? gear with a switch for actives tends to just lower the 'sensitivity' by changing a couple resistors to achieve a similar effect, dropping voltage and loading the active electronics down with an impedance load closer to the system's output impedance

I know, this guy.... hisss

nah, sans amp fly rig should handle that, its both a multi-effects and a DI isn't it?

I could tell. And you don't seem to have an electronics background either.

here's some very basic info from a guy who knows how to lay it all out for people whoa re new to guitar amps:

https://reverb.com/news/daves-corner-amp-topologies-101-basic-low-gain-and-high-gain-preamp-circuits-explained?_aid=tank

https://reverb.com/news/daves-corner-basic-guitar-amplifier-output-stage-circuits-explained?_aid=tank

https://reverb.com/news/daves-corner-amplifier-power-supply-stages-explained

I also forgot to mention that most powerful tube amps sound lame played at 1 or 2 on the dial and master volume amps sound tinny if you turn the gain way up and run the master at 2, so that's why I say to scale the amps to fit the gig... if you have to turn your powerful amp way down it is probably not going to sound muscley and powerful anymore and the guy in the band getting on stage after you using a cranked small-to-medium amp very well may sound meaner

the exception to this rule is cathode biased amps which tend to sound hot and tasty even at 1, though they won't produce power tube distortion any sooner than a fixed bias amp of similar power and gain

yeah, you won't know what you like if you don't play some... look for a shop with a no-questions asked 30 day return (or at least exchange) period so if you get it home, take it to a rehearsal and HATE it you can go swap it back

I looked up the amp you have, its essentially the same circuit as the Vox AC4TV with blonde tolex that was everywhere ebfore Vox brought out the top-boosted AC4C1 with a 10" and the handwired AC4HW with a 12" I have in my bedroom for practice... the word on the web is that Hiwatt deviated from that platform by adding some solid state componenets to get crunchier drive textures with the master volume turned down, but the place a 5 watt single-ended amp shines the most is in its wonderful power tube distortion with all those tasty even order harmonics! If you like the single-ended sound you could get a better rendition like the AC4HW1 or any number ofboutique takes on the venerable Fender Tweed Champ and related Supro designs. Many of them come in larger cabs or as a head. There's also the Laney Lionheart line that has larger models like a 20 watter and 50 watter that uses big EL34 power tubes in parallel single-ended (instead of the traditional push-pull) to produce a lot more volume but with the signature single-ended power amp distortion.... the enxt closest circuits to single-ended are cathode biased push-pull designs like the Tweed Deluxe, Marshall Studio 15, 18 watt and 20 watts, and of course the voc ac30, ac15 and ac10... and clones of all the aforementioned, they are 3 VERY popular amp formats. But seriously, 5 watts is pretty darned loud at 10. 50 watts is really not that much louder because power and sound pressure do not equate in a linear fashion.

If you don't nee a clean tone, a 5 watt single-ended amp will hang with a drummer if you play through a larger cab than you have like a 1x12, 2x12, 2x10 etc... use efficient speakers, at least 98dB sensitivity like a celestion greenback, 100dB plus will be better.... you will sound righteous thick classic rock sounds... famously, Clapton record Layla on a 50s Tweed Champ turned all the way up and fever since overdrive became fashionable its been common practice to turn up little amps to meltdown levels to achieve great tone in the studio or on small stages... there's a lot of big amp muscle you lose by going this route, but much of it is a 'feel' thing that may not be noticeable in the mix.... you gain (pun intended) thicker overdrive at manageable decibel levels, the ability to use your main amp to practice at home without the cops coming, and magical class A harmonics way out front in a way a big amp cannot deliver.... you also won't have any crossover distortion (which is generally held to be harsh and unmusical and is present to varying degrees in ALL push-pull circuits based on their class, bias and phase inverter design) because in a single-ended amp, 1 tube is responsible for amplifying both the positive and negative side of your signal

you may also wanna look into the THD Univalve and Bivalve amps if you are happy with the single ended sound but want a little bit more and the potential to play with louder, cleaner and/or bolder versions of that tone

you may also wish to consider mixing a 15 to 30 watt amp with your current 5 watter to get a blend of defined, muscley semi-dirty tones simultaneously with your pinned single-ended tone (Keith Richards ahs always favored tricks like this and often runs small Oahu amps in conjunction with his huge, 80 watt tweed twins to he has a 3D clean/dirty sound w/o effects apart from sometimes a little tube tape echo or phaser for the 80s stuff)

I'm just saying the hot cake has quite a following and is a very untraditional design

I recommend playing your amp at 10 like a man.

I updated my previous post

my biggest advice is to scale the amp to fit the gigs you are playing AND to know your style and sound before dropping the big bucks on a high end amp.... if you need to experiment, do it in the cheap seats

you seem to have a very 'vintage' rig in mind overall so Ic an only assume you are looking to do classic rock, blues and maybe some alternative, but if that's not the case say so

the TS9 really mates with blackface fender amps and the MODERN non-blackface designs the best whereas brit amps (vox, hiwatt, orange, selmer and EL34 equipped Marshalls and some of the 50s American tweed designs) get on better with its cousins the Boss SD1 and BD2 (if you wanna stay in the TS camp and stick with tried and true, big-name stuff)

in really alternative OD circuits, the crowther hot cake is a fave with vox/hiwatt/orange guys though to be honest I have not tried one

to be clear, I wholeheartedly recommend Hiwatt if you want to play HELLA LOUD and you are willing to seek out a legit DR504 or DR103 on the vintage market

a big hiwatt won't be a lot like what you have.... might have a similar voicing at the 1st gain stage, but everything else about it will be different

you should play some DR models at the volume levels you expect to be playing at before deciding, they are not for everyone and certainly don't want to 'keep it down' for the neighbors or sound man at the local bar.

Also, the modern UK made Hiwatts are said to be kinda crappy by Hiwatt enthusiasts. They are plagued by reliability issues because though they mimic the old build quality, the comonents aren't up to snuff ine very batch. Also, the current owners of the brandname aren't paying royalties to the estate/famiy of Dave Reeves (who designed them and built the brand). If you must buy new, Hitone is the way to go. But vintage examples are built like tanks and shouldn't have any reliability issues. Literally Hiwatt made the most rugged vintage amp, period. Stay away from biacrown branded Hiwatts (80s), pretty much any model that says "Lead" on it is junk apart from the 80s 30 waters which are okay, though a little marshally. Generally youa re looking for a 70s 4 input amp in 50 or 100 watts depending on how much ridiculous headroom you need. Earlier years break up a little earlier, alter ones are super clean machines. At the end of the 70s they went to 2 inputs and a smidge more gain and those amps sound quite good. Also, the 90s UK 'made by Audio Brothers' amps are apparently very good too. You really can score a good 70s 4 input hiwatt for about the cost of a current reissue though. I see road worn examples with righteous tone for between 2 and 4,000 USD on the reg. Be prepared for the amp NOT TO OVERDRIVE ON TIS OWN unless its at stadium volumes. Also be aware that the master in all but the earliest Hiwatts cannot be sued to produce preamp overdrive. It wasn't designed to be like an 80s Marshall. The Master on a Hiwatt serves an entirely different function and ahs totally different implementation. If you want a 50 to 100 watt amp that's more Hifi than a Marshall but has more of its own natural overdrive look at vintage Vox AC50 and AC100 mk 4s, early sound city heads (L100 mk 1 and 2, 3 is ceaner and 4 is a totally different thing that's not for the uninitiated) and Orange Matamps or Orange Graphics. A lot of guys like the Orange overdrive heads of the era too, but I don't think they sound as good as the older ones without modification.

additionally, tubescreamers are a bit mid-heavy for the hiwatt voicing, though hiwatts play well with a ton of drives and distortions and generally take pedals of all sorts VERY well

I'm really set and forget too, I want amps with minimal options and to have anything at my feet preset based so I can focus on playing... the only things I fiddle with while playing consistently are my guitar controls and mainly then its the pickup selector and maybe a volume knob

I don't know how mesa guys deal with all the options, its overwhelming... I can get flustered trying to dial in 2 tone knobs and a presence control sometimes because every position sounds good to me once I'm driving the amp hard enough

y'know, the pedalboard you are building would probably kick ass going direct into a big, wide-bandwidth power amp, you could split the feed between the board and that power amp driving a nice full range speaker configuration to monitor yourself... the board has a lot of shaping options just on the fly rig

I think if I were going to play bass in a band again I would put together a bass board like yours and just slam it into one of these bad-boys:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=390917&gclid=CJyfkeyqh80CFUkkhgodNZ0GnQ&is=REG&ap=y&c3api=1876%2C92051678282%2C&Q=&A=details

maybe driving on of those mesa cabs with some 10" speakers and a 15" with a horn... either that or I would just run straight into one of those new TC toneprint rigs.... they seem awfully convenient and I tend to love everything TC puts out

EDIT:

bass is a weird instrument to amplify and to add effects to, because what you can get away with is very dependent on the genres you want to play since the bass has such a variable role in different types of music... in years past when I did bass gigs I would use an ashdown that belonged to my full time band or before that I would slave a Fender Bassman 50 with an Ampeg B25b... the ahsdown was easier to tote around, but harder to dial in, especially for a more vintage sound, whereas the ampeg/fender tube set-up was pretty versatile as long as I had big, efficient cabs to make up for the lower headroom... surprisingly, slaving 70s ampeg and fender heads together can really cover some modern tones.... I also used my early dual showman for a few bass gigs as well as Sunn and Univox all purpose 100 watt heads I owned for a bit, but the ampeg and fender really worked well together formost musical styles (the b25s are portaflexes with more output in a stand-alone head and the Bassman 50 & 100 are in my opinion Fenders first bass amps to flatter the instrument and not just be a guitar amp with extra thump... and I did rock gigs, an industrial band or two as well as plenty of jazz and country-tinged pick-up bands... if someone wanted to pay me or a friend needed favor because someone got sick I would load up the 'ol neon's trunk and back seat and fill in)

I highly doubt that setting 2 pitch shifters to cancel eachother out will be transparent, but in times past it wouldn't even track correctly, these days the technology is so well developed that it just might....

my limited experience pitch shifting bass way up within a DAW is that it generates some really strange harmonics as you go over the octave, especially if you are playing further up the neck... but you can definitely do it if you want your bass to sound like some kinda extraterrestrial stringed instrument (which is pretty much what I was shooting for at the time)

I wonder if you'll get some crazy artifacts trying to use 2 or 3 pitch effects at once or if the modern digital circuits track so well now that they can work as a team.... I mean, to me the glitches of using all 3 would be an incentive to have all 3 on my board

that's if I weren't a purist with my dry signal, goddammit I am even warry of buffer coloration

oh, unpurchased as of yet... I am a real gear demo doubter.... everything sounds good in the demo video, but when I get to my local big box store I am more times than not underwhelmed... and there is a lot of stuff I own and love that sounds decent in its demo videos, but will blow your mind face to face whether you are using it on stage or recording in a serious studio environment

both the guitar and bass fly rigs are awfully tantalizing.... I was always rather fond of the sans amp VT when I've heard its DI sound, I don't know if they captured a portaflex or SVT, but it sounds very good.

I feel the authors' pain!

http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/10-things-we-miss-about-making-music-in-the-pre-daw-age-638586

I particularly like THIS chestnut, "If we can't be bothered to actually perform the chorus three times, why should the listener be bothered to listen past the second verse?"

my pedal drawer is pretty simple and mainly MIDI right now... after having a version that could control some head switching with a Nova system, octave fuzz and analog chorus I realized I didn't use half the cool presets I was making, so the current iteration put all the amps on all the time and went down to bare bones effects:

TC Polytune, Brian May Treble Booster (always on), TC Nova Drive in preset mode, Radial Tonebone ABY (one side to a dry amp), TC Flashback X4 (always on at least as a SUPER subtle tape slap) to 2 wet amps

using the shitty behringer FCB1010 to change patches and tap tempo, so far so good with her, but I don't do a ton of stimping and only have like 6 patches right now I think

last I played with a drummer I just used 2 amps w/stereo delay and didn't use my dry output (ac30HW and this old traynor I bought earlier this year) and was hella loud in a good way, bright, present, full but not harsh.... but its cool to throw the matchless in too for the ef86 channel and dual rectifier squish too if I can get away with that much more level (6x12's is a lot of speakers, particularly throwing 100+ watts of potential power)... obviously nothing is set up to be really clean with my bridge pickups at full volume on the guitar... its a rock rig

I really like letting my amplifiers do the distorting and really work the speakers hard. As opposed to bass where Boom's rig is more my style. I like tons of clean headroom and any 'grunt' should be out front so you can really narrow in on what frequency ranges are grinding. Though I do prefer tube to solid state for bass as long as its excessively loud and punchy tube amplification.

I learned all too late, it's better to save up and buy the expensive thing you know you want and will like VS paying probably more for a handful of pedals that don't do it for you.

I learned that lesson on my first Marshall amp, a channel switchin 800 I hated. Try as I might I could not get the big stack sounds of my youth from it, just a weedy imitation... obtaining a plexi and a single channel 800 at reasonable prices a year or so later changed everything and set me on my path towards waiting to purchase what I really want or building it myself if its total unobtainium

as far as EQ choices? at the moment I have like 3 EQish knobs between 3 amps if I run wet/dry/wet and 2 of them are the tryanor's baxandall EQ and the other is a set-and forget bass voicing knob (the cut controls on the 30 waters and presence control on the traynor just stay wide open, treble is my friend)... I am always looking for stuff that's voiced right and just needs the right input and/or output levels to make the noise I want

that's a simple and effective setup

what amp(s) are you running into? that's a lot of money out front of your amp, I hope you have something super-badass to amplify all that (particular that super-expensive new tape delay)

If I knew what amp you use or are planning to use I would have more to say about the TS808 as I have strong opinions on the tubescreamer and its cousins and their effectiveness as a lead boost is totally amp dependent. They can be amazing or total mush based on your amp's voicing. Nothing against them, I was a tubescareamer man for over a decade when I played mostly blackface amps... also, don't you already have a TS9 mini? the difference between a 9 and 808 is negligible, you will barely hear it, and going for the handwired gains you nothing but a hole in your wallet in a 9 volt circuit over just getting a straight 808 reissue. Handwiring makes a circuit easy to service on the road, but tubescreamers never break unless you plug them into the wrong power supply. They may use a better grade of caps and resistors as you step up the ladder of tubescreamer models from mini to handwired, but the effect on the sound will be very little as the circuit is already mid-focused. Better parts will pass bass and treble more accurately with better transient response to a certain extent, but the entire TS platform s actually design to squash that anyway. The big thing that makes the tubescreamer mids blurry is the op-amp and diode configuration and those 2 elements with their distinctive slew rate are the reason to go TS in the first place.

what do you think of the fly rig so far?

yeah, SWR is a great example

I think we should just create new entries for the true tone rbanded versions of the pedals since there are very possibly component changes going on as well as a new logo (I remember reading that along with the name change that visual sound outsourced production to china recently too)

look, the reason you are overloading the board is that your active electronics are too hot for the preamps in the sound board thata re likely designed for low output dynamic microphones like the sm57, also those preamps are designed to take a balanced lo-z signal and you're sending an unbalanced one.... also, every mic pre has different input impedance and your active electronics may not be as low as the line input on the board wants to see

you really should just invest in a volume pedal that is great as a volume pedal and then in a DI box that will balance your signal for the XLR input of the board, provide phase flip if needed, ground lift if in case you get hum due to some abd venue wiring, and most importantly a 10 or 15 dB pad so that you can send appropriate voltage elvels to the board as well as the correct impedance and a properly balanced signal

there's more going on here than just having too much output, interfacing electric isntruments with equipment with inputs designed for mcrophones and rack gear is more complicated than just adjusting your max voltage...

high five to Boom

I think a lot of what I said was mildly incoherent, but I woke up a smidge hung over from that last beer at the picnic yesterday and I have not been cookin' with gas (pun intended) today at all

in future, 2 beers is the appropriate number after 6pm

yeah, it is yay or nay, why split hairs?