jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

Nah, Craig Anderton is an electrical engineer who used to write for the guitar rags in the 70s and 80s. He also published a number of electronics books aimed at guitarists when I was a kid. One of them has projects for unique effects like the Tube Sound Fuzz. Lots of early boutique guys stole his ideas and tweaked them into high end retail stompboxes. The guys who do the video demos for the UK market have no relation. They are also either complete morons or total scheisters in my estimation, though I am sure they are nice enough people to have a beer with.

EDIT:

as far as audible RFI interference in tube amps goes it really depends on how fresh your tubes are, how well the chassis is shielded and ESPECIALLY how well the power is filtered after its converted to DC (the amp may reject radio interference just fine in all of its gain staging and tone circuitry but power lines in the building where you are gigging might act as antennas just like a cheap instrument cable and if the amp isn't stoutly filtered or run on a conditioner it will amplify the RFI from the mains power, but solid state is just as susceptible to dirty power on paper... a lot of it is down to the tube amps power supply. Weak power filtering provides a more vintage feel to a tube amp and can be desireable tonally... your old plexi or ac30 will be very susceptible to dirty power because of this, some RIs have upgraded filtering, but they aren't perfect in tone and feel for purists... a lot of these designs were created in a time where neon lights were new and radio transmissions were only AM broadcasts and short wave, now everyone is sending gobs of microwaves out of the phone in their pocket all the time... solid state designs tend to be more modern and less focused on a nice feel from the power stage since even the ebst mosfet or bipolar design will fall way short of tubes from a guitarist's perspective, also transistors are all very current oriented versus tubes thata re high voltage devices and high current with low voltage is a lot less susceptible to these problems than high voltage... that was a lot in parenthesis, hope that helps you get what electrical factors are coloring your perception of tube versus transistor technology).

In addition, Marshalls and Voxes made before the UK jumped in on the ROHS international electronics standards were universally grounded poorly with various ground points around the chassis for the audio ground busses and various electrical ground points. Old Fenders are like this, but Leo's people had a good sense of just how sloppy they could be with grounding before you would create loops and potential antennae. In the UK they were insane with it well into the 90s. My 62 ac30 has a good amount of self-noise at 60hz thanks to the grounding scheme (or lack thereof) and needs to be ground lifted if I want to use another amp. The 60 cycle hum when taken out of standby was true of every Marshall I ever owned thatw as made before about 92 (whichw as all but 1 of them) and none of those Marshalls played well with other amps apart from that 900SLX which just didn't have the Marshall sound to my ear.

Now everyone FINALLY recognizes that a single star ground point to chassis is best and safest though. But it took a long time to get there with guitar gear. There are a lot less grounding concerns with solid state because of the way transistors work vs tubes. Its a safer, more reliable technology that is better for lots of things. That said, guitars are not lots of things, they are very special things and our ideas about how they should sound are historical in context, informed by the amplification technology of the age in which the first magnetic pickups were perfected and 78rpm motorized record players became affordable for the average American household ;-)

oh hey sure... I own and have owned a ton of guitar junk and have repaired, disassembled and modded lots of gear over the years, if you have a techy question as to how something really works and how it impacts the performance just ask me, I will look up a schematic if its essential...

here's something I forgot in ODs:

There's the CMOS inverter "logic" IC based pedals that are all riffing on Craig Andertons tube sound fuzz. Amplike tweedy drive at low gain settings on these. They are more grindy than crunchy. Turns into woolly fuzz-like tones as you get the gain way up. Think Neil young with his tweed deluxe dimed. Very cool. This style of circuit can be noisy. My favorite ones for tone are the discontinued Catalinbread pedals, the Super CHarged OD and HyperPak. They sound fanfuckingtastic but have a lot of the background hiss in the upper midrange that's inherent in these designs that cascade miniaturized mosfet stages in an IC not designed for audio use. The WayHuge Red Llama is probably the most famous version of this OD design. Its the lest noisey and has a good, balanced tone. Both Tom Petty and Mike Campbell use the Way Huge pedal extensively live and occasionally as a solo boost in the studio. Think a "Mary Jane's Last Dance" tone for the Way Huge and more of a an Orange or Hiwatt bold brit tone for the CB version. Nick's 2 version I mntioned can get anywhere from "live at leeds" to stoner rock like Sleep or some 70s Iommi sounds for the SCOD (the HPak is way lower gain but a lot nicer sounding as an all arounder). These pedals veer into distortion/fuzz pretty easily at higher gain settigns, especially if you try to boost an amp that's breaking up a little like you would with a TS9 or SD1. I think Ibanez and EHX did this whole CMOS thing too. EHX had the hot tubes pedal. The original version ahd no tubes and was a tube sound fuzz, then they did a hot tubes overdrive with 2 12ax7s, then they recently reissued the CMOS version... I forget what Ibanez called their version. I think it was part of the 10 series of effects with that big wonky switch lke John Mayer's shitty TS10 tubescreamer!

EDIT: and the Grunge is a mid90s DOD pedal. I think they kept making it as a digitech pedal too alongside the popular badmonkey. The bad monkey is a TS9 with a baxandall toe stack, treble and bass that are flat when both at 5.... the Grunge is a Big Muff with the same style tonestack (though the ones under the DOD name had the names "butt/face" for the bas and treb knobs I think... fucking DOD).

I always liked the ceramic CTS speakers in 70s ampegs (cts built speakers for Magnavox in the 60s and branched out in the 70s but kept the Magnavox contract and did speakers for ampeg after Magnavox bought the company). These speakers are 8ohm medium alnico magnets with aluminum dustcaps and a Jensen style seamed, ribbed cone.... they appear to be the same speakers in early Kustom tuck 'n roll cabs, some Wurlitzer organ cabinets and certain fender 2x12" combos and cabs made from the mid-70s. Very similar to the popular Fender OEM alnico 10s in mid-period super reverbs also made by CTS.

A lot of people hate aluminimum dust caps because they supposedly make the speakers harsh, other guys think they are only tuneful one JBLs from the 60s like the D120F found as a factory upgrade in some 60s Fender Twins. My opinion so far is positive. I front loaded one in my sealed 2x12 paired with a Greenback (which is probably a little more efficient, I expect the CTS is between 95 and 97dB sensitivity and celestion rates the Chinese G12M greenbacks at 98dB, so I am trying to decide whether to put a lower efficiency celestion ceramic with this speaker).

I haven't hit this speaker with a ton of power yet, but wired series with the G12M for 16 ohms it has taken down some of the gratuitous thump this cab had, evened out the upper mids and added some pleasant 50s Jensen type sparkly, compressed treble. The cab sounds less "brit" now in a good way. I am hoping to hit the cab with at least 15 watts of overdriven tube tone over the weekend. Anyone else ever try any of these speakers? One of the engineers from CTS bought the factory in Eminence KY when CTS went under in the late 70s and that new company became eminence speakers who are still going strong today so there is some lineage to these badboys....

I have a spare if anyone wants one. I will sell it cheap for an alnico. $50 US currency plus actual mailing costs. I don't think I need 2. They handle about 25 watts RMS, 8 ohms.... nice sound, I am really surprised at how much I like them. Just don't need two.

I just did some spring cleaning and ebayed a bunch of crap. Auctions are going well already. I think the proceeds are going to fund one of these from a Japanese guitar pusher who reached out to me last week:

http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/OuwAAOSwBLlVFFL3/s-l300.jpg

its a 1980 MIJ small-bodied semi-hollow that predates the similar ES339 by 20 years. COOL! lacquer, fret edge binding, 42mm nut width, bound top, back and F holes, gotoh pegs, solid abr1 and stop tail clone, decent maxon PAF or T-Top copies of the classic MIJ era... I need to own this guitar. Its decided.

hes letting her go below market because she's pretty beat up (picture is not the actual guitar), but one man's wear is another man's relicing and for this price I am going to bite assuming I can keep my out of pocket $100 or less after all my ebay junk ships out!

I think she'll be #10 in electrics....

Personally I love the music man stingrays with 2 bass humbuckers. But that's my taste in bases and I am not really a bassist. The carvin sounds like a steal. Carvin realy does a bangup job on basses. I find fault with some of their stuff, but for the modern bassist seeking a quality American instrument they are fantastic. Never played a clunker bass from Carvin.

EDIT: That Carvin video sums it all up. Bass sounds killer to me through my little monitors even thru youtube AND its pretty.... plus, the seller is having so much fun laying down the funk, I have to give some credit to the bass. It must be a killer that's fun to play. Buy it!

vintage small stones (I've had a couple) are easy to mod to true bypass and unity gain when engaged....

new ones are easy to mod to sound better... honestly I don't think the new small stones are that far off from the 70s ones... its the small CLONE chorus that sucks these days

but thesmall stone is a very "full range" phaser that is way more over the top than the phase 90, for most people, especially people planning to do phase into OD, the mxr circuit will be best... a smalls tone is finicky as hell and better suited to clean tone and VERY RETRO overdriven and fuzzy sounds that are maybe a little nasty and unpleasant. The DOD phasers made between like 75 and 95 are a great compromise between the 2 styles tonally and they also feature 3 controls versus 1 but without sacrificing 2 stages of phasing like and mxr 100 or EHX badstone

In readily available, affordable phasers that don't take up a lot of pedalboard realestate its a simple choice between the phase 90 and small stone. They are both voiced very differently and use a very different circuit to achieve their phasing. I am more of a small stone guy, but the mxr will suit more people. EHX recently rereleased the classic bad stone phaser. Its less extreme than the small stone and has more controls but its bigger. MXR also does the phase 100 that is to the phase 90 what the bad stone is to the small stone; less stages of phasing with more knobs. The old DOD phasers are real sleepers and can be had for reasonable prices. They are FET based designs like the EHX phasers but have more of the MXR voicing with a narrower, guitar-centric bandwidth and real focus.

The best phasers I have ever played were vintage mu-trons, but they are pricey (especially the notorious bi-phase) and they have shitty, tone-eating bypass. But they have a glorious, warm phase sound that cannot be set to sound bad even if you turn the knobs until they sound a little silly. The circuit for mu-trons phase is just phenomenal. Sadly, if it breaks (and they break, they are OLD) you are up shits creek as they are full of parts that have been out of production for decades.... and those parts are part of the great tone. 2nd runner up is the old Maestro phaser, I think there are some boutique guys cloning this.

Another different option that's not exactly a phase are the pedals absed on Fender's Brownface harmonic vibrato. This effect is not true pitch vibrato but is a weird mix of tremolo and phase that effects treble and bass frequencies differently. In the Brown and Blonde fender 6L6 amps this effect was achieved with a pile of 12ax7 tubes (much like Magnatone and Vox true pitch vibrato on the vintage amps). Catalinbread and EQD clone it in pedal format with fets and the CB version, the pareidiola, sounds awesome. I haven't tried the EQD harmonic vibrato yet because it was just released at NAMM.

Keeley's phaser has a devoted following too, but I haven't tried it...

the fulldrive is a tubescreamer... its a little more hifi and achieves the TS signature feedback loop clipping with those mosfets wired as diodes which yield a less compressed sound. I had one briefly. It was just okay. Sits pretty squarely in the TS9/SD1 camp and costs an arm and a leg. If you prefer fender blackface amps you may like it more than a stock TS9 or 808. If you play british amps look at something that leans closer to Boss' take on the TS9 type OD (the SD1). The MXR custom badass m77 OD or whatever they call it with the gold box? Good place to start if you have a vox or marshall. In the diodes-to-ground camp there is always the classic OD250 or the EHX soulfood (which captures the klon sound pretty darn well for very little money). then there are the amp-in-a-box drives and there's a lot to say there. I have owned some and tried a lot. I tend to like the Catalinbread versions, especially into blackface fender amps. Bogner's Ecstacy Blue pedals is also fabulous. I am interested to try his pedals with little output transformers, but I never seem to make it out guitar shopping lately.... all that said, if you want a pedal that sounds like a cranked amp nothing gets you there. Lots of things add the falvor of a certain amp or style of amp, but a pedal just doesn't have the goods, particularly into a clean amp.

hmmm, paying your dad back is awfully responsible! Its definitely not selfish.... you are going to lose Gear IQ points on that one....

Oh, hes not my friend really. He actually is kind of a dick.

check your controls when you get back.... Lucian's new thing is flipping the power switch on the ac4 which is really bad for it. Ugh!

pete, chris cornell's brother who apparently got thrown off this site without me noticing

or Bb major pentatonic (which the OP naively posted as A#)

ain't nuttin goin on there but those same old five tones we americans have always favored in our music, even some of our classical composers like Aaron Copeland

Narcy does this periodically. He needs a book.

no, the artisan is a handwired amp, all turretboard construction, but who knows where it was hand wired and who cares... the new voxes are handwired in Vietnam, but I have to say the wiring is way better executed on my HW than my JMI AC30b from original Vox Uk production.... I wouldn't want a far east hand wired hiwatt, nothing could ebat harry Joyce's truly mil spec work on the old hiwatts, but a Vietnamese handwired vox or marshall can't be any sloppier than the originals. The lead dress at Vox and Marshall in the 60s was pitifully sloppy.

Gearhead since before I played guitar.. learned how to tweak amp/pedal knobs at age 3 or 4, dad would play guitar and I'd just mess with it.

that's what my 2 year-old mostly does.... he strums occasionally while I fret too... I did that with my dad's guitars when I was his age.... Lucian is 3rd generation now, damn!

EQs are useful to shape your signal before its distorted so you can accentuate certain harmonic ranges. If you have a cathode follower tonestack amp with a master volume with a master like the JCM800 and yo get all your amp OD from the preamp tubes then the EQ is shaping an already distorted signal. A lot of 80s guys and metal people use an EQ to shape what frewuencies of the guitar their marshalls distort. Its not exactly how I do things, but YMMV... although the 60s and 70s treble boosters are a primitive version of this approach, slamming a treble or upper mid EQ boost into the first stage of your amp and then fine tuning with the tonestack once you shape the distortion character....

if your pedalboard is empty its a good thing, it means you can get down to business and play some guitar instead of practicing your tap dancing moves

voxes are self-biasing, what marketers call "class A" in guitar amps in the engineering world is really cathode biased class AB run with a nice, hot idle current and little to no negative feedback... no need to bias a vox, a fender 5x3 deluxe, a marshall 18 watter, a watkins dominator or any 15 watt supro, dano or harmony

pretty much all el84/6bq5 based amps are cathode biased because the tubes really lend themselves to this type of bias scheme, there are a few vintage exceptions as well as the popular fender blues jr which I believe is fixed bias.

if you wanna go stomp boxes voxes are kinda finicky and they are not channel switching, nor is the vox style really great when they add channel switching... not for the way you are looking to use 2 channels like a glorified stompbox.... for stompbox use get a fender deluxe reverb, many guys design their stuff with ths amp in mind these days, its a pedal champ with a fantastic clean tone and a shocking amount of headroom for a 22 watt 1x12... I love the deluxe reverb, it sits perfectly between the bigger fenders and the Princeton... a notable alternative is the discontinued ampeg jet j-20, handwired in Vietnam these amps are secretly a brownface deluxe in ampeg colors, great with pedals, better than a deluxe reverb for power tube distortion but with more clean headroom than a Princeton or tweed deluxe... it has a slightly browner clean sound than the blackface circuit (I know, brownface, brown, but I mean brown in the eddie vanhalen sense, midrangey and full of edge-of-breakup harmonic content the stiffer blackface amps just don't have)...

in affordable channel switchers in your wattage range make sure you try a fender supersonic 22 watt which is a hybrid bassman/vibrolux clean channel and a customshop prosonic gain channel married to a deluxe reverb-based output section (though the 6V6es are a little stiffer than a deluxe reverb when overloaded because it is diode rectified instead of using a GZ34 tube)... also, in the vox channel switching style the one everyone raved about when it was released was the mesa transatlantic 15 and 30.... its a scary small amp with lots of features jammed in, but I have yet to hear any maintenance horror stories and its capable of a wide range of tones from the 2 differently voiced and power scalable channels. I think it came in 15 and 30 watts and has not attained cult status, should be less than 1000GBP for a 30 watt head version.

watch some youtube videos from jools Holland, BB plays the important bits and those live versions are the best way to learn the key licks

I am always ina band or playing as a sideman.

but Pete was a legitimate artist with his band black market radio., low level, but legitimate, we were on the same little label (buncha assholes, grr)... pete borrowed my strat and I think one of the plexis I used to have back then.

yeah, I've played in Syracuse... I like it there, white plains is nice too

I'm 35, divorced, father of 1 little punk-ass rocker. Ex recording engineer and studio manager/accountant, now I work in healthcare finance. I think dealing AP?AR has made me more miserly than I legitimately need to be, though getting divorced has been expensive. I'm from philly and after a stint in DC am back in my hometown. Where are you from?

I can't blame Metallica for coming after napster or Pearl Jam for starting those ticketmaster hearings... Metallica was just trying to stop the paradigm shift in music biz revenue and Pearl Jam rather prophetically saw that if album sales ever tanked then ticket sales controlled by the ticket master monopoly would hurt everyone's last viable revenue stream.... heck, shows are even where most merch gets sold! People being all about illegal file sharing vs iTune or being comfortable with all venues over 300 seats being ticketed by ticketmaster who is also clear channel/livenation, choosing what new songs can be broadcast to your car unless you plug your iPhone in....

gah, I forget what I am getting at Joe! I am glad to be out of the music biz though.

You actually can have too many if there are some that don't make it in rotation once a month, but I have yet to hit that number and play every guitar I own for at least and hour every 30 days.... I just ahd my son help me decide which 2 I will be keeping on stands for daily noodling this week (he shocked me and went with 2 teles). I think I have 9 good electrics right now and would like to break 10 again so maybe another semi-hollow or LP? Or a strat? I am eyeing some cool older stuff lately, but I am really picky as well as being notoriously tight fisted, doubly so since becoming a father.... I know I shouldn't buy a 10th guitar, but I really like to acquire a guitar or amplifier every 6 months even if I part with one I have tired of.

apart from fearing middle-age-tattoo-regret (aka MATR syndrome, a condition that can only be cured with lasers) I also never got inked because its expensive and I like tospend every available penny of luxury money on guitars and amps... and cigarettes and liquor, but these days that budget is the little boy budget. Smoking is supposedly unhealthy anyway :-(

yes I love Bernard Butler.... he's like the bastard stepchild of Mic Ronson and Johnny Marr... influenced by marr, Butler favors the ES345 and is definitely a member of the ac30 club! I believe he is also a tonebender fuzz kidna guy, but its been awhile and I am not 100% on where his fuzztones come from because I am recounting from memory seeing him play live as a solo artist in the late 90s or early 2000s. I could swear he had 2 ac30s, a tone bender and a 345

I can achieve all the 90s suede tones using my MIJ 335 knockoff with the ebony fingerboard, a tone bender or fuzzface, any of my ac30s set cleanish on the TB channel and maybe a treble booster

the song are surprisingly simple under the slick guitar playing and once you learn the chords Butler's licks are surprisingly intuitive.... listen to the record and learn 'em by ear, its a little 60s, early 70s and UK 80s all rolled up in a tasty ball of "why didn't I think of that shit?!"

in other words Bb major, the C is the 9

actually due to divorce issues I have nothing to allocate selfishly or unselfishly... nice Tarantino reference...

I might buy myself a present in March anyway depending on how a few things pan out between then and now.... can a man ever have too many guitars if they are all different?

Carvin makes a great bass. Go for it.

you really need some books

you also need to understand that even when you do not start a scale on the root its not really another scale -- even if its close to one of the modes it will probably be 1 note off from being an independent musical idea of the basic major or minor you are actually using :-)

I would also suggest you stay outta drop D for anything but rhythm playing until you have an intermediate understanding of standard tuning. Okay? You are messing up your head futzing around with a detuned string before you know what standard is all about.

this is the 2nd time you posted because you felt like you discovered one of the modes when you are really just playing a common scale in a different way than you already knew it.... want me to post some video lessons for you to youtube covering right hand techniques like vibrato as well as use of multi-octave scales to bridge different hand positions? Maybe I can make you some exercises that will show you how scales can move across hand positions and segue between a straight major or minor pentatonic into modes within a solo? Applicationa cross a set of chords will be up to you, but I can get you the tools to make some of these choices and to recognize all these itnervals by ear without referencing your hands....

I might be bale to cobble something together for you to practice and think about by the end of the week if you like... I'll make it a guitar figure that's musical and fun to play but it will contain a number of techniques and ideas to practice and consider!

but please do buy a book... I think I used "a modern method for guitar" pretty heavily to get me through as a novice soloist in jr high jazz band! but its been over 20 years so I could be wrong. It all seems more complicated than it really is. A willingness to practice the right things constantly while dissecting them and training your ear and hands to intuitively use the ideas contained in them will see you improve very quickly. Its a lot of work but its FUN work if you really love to play. I cannot believe I am offering to help someone get better free of charge, but becoming a dad has made me all avuncular to you young guys on EB who are just starting out. Plus someone has to make the guitar world a more musical place even if its 1 young gun at a time.

the whole thing with the vox high gain sound is to run the amp LOUD to get the PI and el84s cooking... in 15 watts on a modern MV equipped vox AC30 I tend to get all brian may with it to achieve massive lead guitar distortion. I put a treble boost out front of the normal channel and run the master no lower than 2 o'clock, cut control wide open if I am using a vintage rangemaster type booster that loads my pickup;s upper register a little. This way every stage of the amp is producing a big wollop of distortion and if that's not enough, turning the booster past noon will use coax some drive from the single transistor as well as getting more grunt from V1. In the top boost channel I generally find that I can get a solid classic rock lead/rhythm with the channel volume between noon and full with both tone controls all the way down for a midrangey bark OR for for a less forgiving drive texture with more CRUNCH and definition try Bass between 9 and 11 o'clock and Treble between 2 and 4 o'clock using the cut control around noon to remove any unwanted harshness (if there is any, this is really dependent on your pickups, since going over to all nice pickups I don't seem to use the cut as much as when I 1st got my 62 and had inferior guts in my axes)... I would never run the master control below noon on one of these amps with stock gain structure. If you have something with an extra triode stage or an ef86 channel then you can pull the master down as low as 10 o'clock if you increase the input gain a little without losing much actual distortion, but your distortion character will get less saturated and more gritty as the balance between which tubes are distorting at what point in the signal path changes... if your amp eschews the vox cut control in favor of a Marshall 3 band tone stack remember that the miid control in this type of tone network is 100% passive and it eats gain, especially in the treble frequencies that give crunch. Running the mid below noon with limit your treble response to the extremeupper regions of the guitar's spectrum and will cut your gain substantially neutering your tone. On Marshalls 3 to 4 gain stages I run my midrange full up or close to it if I want heaps of classic british distortion. The gain and tone controls on british tube amps are HIGHLY interactive. Learn how they interact and the amp will obey you.

to summarizet, if you are trying to run the master low and tone controls for a scooped fender/mesa response so you have a clean sound that is bone clean even when you bash out chords using a heavy right hand strum with your guitar volume maxed then you are missing the point and would do better with a 40 to 50 watt class AB design that has a much gainier gain channel. For that application you are looking at a mesa or soldano type of design with lots of cascaded triode stages to produce a heap of distortion before the phase inverter at any tone stack setting. This style of amp doesn't work that wayas all of its circuitry is based around pre-mesa concepts and it is not for everyone. Channel switchers with stout power amps are continually popular as stage amps for a reason. They do MODERN sounds, bone clean to scooped sludge at the flick of a switch. They became popular because people were rustrated with their plexis and bassmans. The modern, fully featured amp thing is not MY sound, but if you think its yours take the laney to the shop and trade it for something designed for that kind of playing (the vox night train can handle this sort of thing and still retains some voxy character to the clean tone). Personally I like tog et lots of sounds with my hands NOT my feet. I like to prance around the stage, jump and kinda dance a little when I am rockin' out, so I don't wanna feel pinned to a lot of foot controls. When I m starin' at my shoes I am not giving the performance 100% emotion. 1 or 2 switches is all I wanna deal with and I like to take care of business with technique, my guitar knobs and the pickup selector. No one has ever accused me of having a boring, static sound or being a johnny 1 tone blues player. I have never met a gig that I NEEDED a whole lot more options on than what can be handled with 1 footswitch and the guitar. But I have been accused of being deafeningly loud when I think I am playing at a reasonable volume.

Just because laney added a switchable gain channel to this amp doesn't mean it can work the same way as a mesa. Even when switching channels, the Vox platform excels at the grey area between clean and dirty, going from sparkle to snarl with only a change in right hand technique and maybe a volume control adjustment. Switching to channel 2 should take you from clean arpeggios and a bluesy rhythm to a solid late 60s crunch seguing into 80s blistering grind as you dig in with your volume control at 10. Try my settings on channel 1 and try setting your neck pickup lower in your guitar's body so it is almost flush with the pickguard on the bass side and is about 1/8" above on the treble side (asjust the P90 polepieces up a bit on the bass side too). Run your neck pickup volume at about 3 for super clean being prepared to increase it to 5 or 6 for some rhytm grind and 10 for the BB king solo sound on channel 1. Make sure your lead pickup is as high as it can go before string pull (a good rule of thumb with humbuckers and P90s is to be able to fit 2 coins between the body of the pickup and the 2 E strings and then to tweak by ear from there very carefully) and try running it at 7 for rhythm thru either channel. If it sounds harsh take your tone control down to about 8 and leave it there. Then when you are on your lead channel open the volume up to max when you need more distortion and sustain and want to step out in front of the band for a solo.If you still need more balls you could run a simple OD out front. I like SD1 based circuits and rats for an ac30 as they are easiest to dial in to match the amp's natural OD character FOR SOME REASON. I dunno, because on a fender these type of pedals are kinda blah. The MXR custom badass M77 OD works super well.

Do not get the ac15 if you really need channel switching. Do get the ac15 if you wanna use pedals for all your grit.

I hope all this long-winded explanation helps you make the most of your 15 watter OR helps you choose the amplifier that is right for you. I remember when I branched out from my BF Princeton reverb and pedalboard around '99 having a lot of trouble navigating other styles of amp and I was more of a volume knob ad touch kidna player already than a lot of people are these days. Its hard to figure it all out, but I think the info I just gave you might help you find your tone with the laney or find out it can't do your tone at all. If you ant a pedal platform go with a stouter 1 channel design like a deluxe reverb. If you want he amp to do the heavy lifting but want to go all out all the time with hand technique and guitar settings get a channel switcher with a more modern layout like a night train 15 or 50 watter or an entry level mesa (I cannot believe I just recommended a mesa, I hate mesas, oh well).

Iggy has always sucked, that's what he does. Sucks with aplomb. Have you ever read the stooges rider?

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstage/arena-rock/iggy-pop-06

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstage/arena-rock/iggy-pop-12

I should not buy this amp, I don't NEED it.... it ends tomorrow, maybe I will call the store in upstate NY and lowball them. They definitely said she needs service in the description.... god, that will put me at what? 2 AC30s, 1 HC30, 1 AC15/18watt hybrid and 1 AC4? jeebus.... I am getting over the top if I buy this amp. I will let the auction end and lowball these guys since they will only attest that she powers up and passes signal.... I'll bet the tubes are shot, but I can't imagine what else coud be wrong with such a recent high end production amp

its cheap, but the logo is off and the grille & faceplate are BEAT! She probably desperately needs a retube. I would rather have a head, but whatever, the price is low as all fucking get out and maybe I would like having a little 1 speaker, grab and go combo with 2 channels that's louder than an ac4... or not since it goes down to 5 watts....

but she is beat up, still kinda pricey for me right now and the cosmetics are a bit ugly. I dunno what blackstar was thinking. She woulda looked better with pre-800 marshallish combo cosmetics, maybe salt n pepper grille and some cool red tolex?

speaking of redundant amps, I shouldn't buy a used Blackstar Artisan 15 combo for 800 bucks, right? She is ebat to shit cosmetically and she is really redundant with my matchless.... and yet! she has the magic ez81 small bottle rectifier making her pentode ef86 channel a real vintage ac15 package and I am mainly ac30ish in my collection.... it ight be a pleasing flavor to add in.... she's got a 5 watt single-ended mode tooo.... oooh

I am always telling EVERYONE on this site to be patient and get EXACTLY what they want/need. that's how little all of you are listening because yall just gotta buy iSOMETHING now!

I think you and I have different definitions of high gain.... so apparently there's a Laney LC15 that is essentially your amp with a higher gain, truly Marshally lead channel (V=vintage gain C15, L=lead gain C15.... go figure, kinda obvious). I thought that vc15's 'gain channel sounded gainy to me, though without really getting the power tubes breaking up maybe its not gainy enough to cover up sloppy lead playng, lay dwon 90s buzzsaw power chords or to do chugga chugga palm muting (though a 1x10 of ay gain level is kinda wrong for serious chgging, closed back cabs are the key to a satisfying chug)....

I don't know where you trump me or if you have trumped me why its important. Anyway, I played in a band with a guy who had 1x12 VC30 combo (I think, its been awhile, I just know his combo was smaller than my Marshall 800 combo) and he played the sucker HELLA loud all the time because I had a solid 50 watts of old-school marshall power thru a pair of highly efficient G12m-65 speakers. I tried his amp quite a few times and never played it low. As I recall I would just use the 'gain channel' with the master wide open and the gain up to 5 or 6 until it sounded like me. It was a while ago though. Laney has been making the VC and LC amps for a while.

Nevermind, you missed the point.

I don't wanna say I told you so, but... actually, I know the ac15 you are looking at MUST be made in China, but is the laney made in China too? I know they used to be made in the UK when I had that GH50L.....

Duke, I don't take you, Liam or Narcy too seriously when it comes to gear opinions, and you are all different shades of young from 13 to 20. I am equally skeptical of all of you sometimes as I would be of a podiatrist who only jams in his bedroom all alone. Its because your don't have a ton of giggin experience. no professional studio experience AND you all will give an opinion on piece of gear you have only experienced briefly in a store and through a Pete Thorn video, which really bugs me (although Pete really puts stuff through its paces in a studio setting, shows a full range of practical uses AND has a professionals perspective, but if I want the reviewers opinion I'll go on youtube myself). I dunno how many times I have been totally stoked bout an item in a store or even something I borrowed, but then once I owned it for 3 to 6 mos the luster fadesand I notice how many shortcomings it has. Its not that you are 13.... though if you were handing out advice on my love life I might be suspicious because I am 22 years your senior, but in the case of a lot of forum regs, you included, the gear yackin' is fun, but your opinions are more perceptions than experiential. How's the laney VC15 treatin' ya? Liam here is thinking of getting a 30. I remember the 30 being pretty solid when I played in a band with a guy who swore by his back during my Marshall phase. But you would have a better idea of what she can and can't do than I would now that you have hd her all winter!

how many knobs does the RG have?

if its 3 I would dump the knife switch and maybe do the PRS wiring:

http://www.guitarelectronics.com/media/img/guitarelectronics/W650-H550-Bffffff/W/wd2hh5r11_06.jpg

I think this is pretty close to what you originally decribed:

http://www.guitarelectronics.com/media/img/guitarelectronics/W650-H550-Bffffff/W/wd2hh5l11_04.jpg

note the "super switch" in place of a traditional strat switch with less terminals.