jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

In particular, my all-original 1960s Bandmaster

+1 for bandmasters... that's the one fender I've ever sold that i really was sad about aprting with... 64 or 65 bandmaster with the mathcing cab and jensen C12PS ehavy duty speakers from that era, though non original to the cab.... I really didn't wanna sell that one evne though I'm not so much a 60s fender guy. Heads up, if you run into a Fender Concert that's literally a Bandmaster in a 4x10 combo, not a non-reverb super reverb. Its a pretty under the radar blackface.

whoa, necroposting

yes, that's a spectrum analyzer.... you don't see too many people using them in hardware format these days outside of mastering suites. If you sum to analog or record in analog entirely it can be a really useful tool. There's a general shape to records from certain genres that you can 'see' even on a unit with less bands.

If the OP plans on using it to check when the room he's mixing in is 'lying' to him then he can just use any old plugin, they're actually more accurate than analog units.... unless he's doing some of his work outside the box, then he'll want to find a used unit from the stone ages (read: when I was young) I used to have a Samson rack unit that was rpetty decent and didn't cost much.

If he just wants to have a cool LED visualizer for his music to entertain himself and his friends maybe? and accuracy is not an issue? There are tons of DIY explanations on how to make your own audio visualizer fromr eadily available aprts. Really, no electronics background is needed to make something like that, but understand that what these dudes are using is a precision piece of test equipment and that what you build will be a little less precise and shouldn't be sued to actually analyze the audio going into it for mixing purposes.

And frankly, unless you're pretty experienced and you can really hear the frequencies quite a bit already, name those key bands and really understand the gians tructure needed to drive loudspeakers the right way in each frequency range then being able tos ee them can do more harm than good to your mixes. I think 'seeing the music' on the a screen has done a huge disservice to music as a whole. These sorts of advanced meters are for people with a really strong electronics and acoustics background coupled to their music chops and good ears. If you don't have a firm idea how much extra power a abss frequency eneds in roder to be heard at widely varying playback levels in spaces ranging from living rooms to car itneriors to clubs? well what is the gain elvel at 80hz on a spectrum analyzer really telling you? Its in the red, tis hot, yes, but in relationship to the mix? Do you turn 80 down or turn the whole mix down? Or limit the mix?

I just saw a review of these 20 watt marshall 'studio' versions of the plexi and jcm800 and I'm kinda intrigued. I would love to take a look inside and see what they did to make them quieter without using smaller power tubes like most companies would.... every time I count marhsall out they come abck in with something interesting like this.

otherwise I have seen nothing that excites me, not even in synths... boring year

I would bulk order parts and build a bunch of them to sell, no pre-order, for a somewhat more reasonable price to people who wanted them but I just don't have that kind of money sitting around. It wouldn't be very responsible parenting to dump all our money into parts for a hundred tube amps either.

you probably can't afford it... I can't build it cheap unless you have a suitable donor amp to mod already, and that takes some tiem to gut a suitable amount of the original amp without damaging anything you'll need later. The more stuff thatc an eb sued form the donor the cheaper the build will be. I put very little money into ym prototype ebcause the amp iw anted to build could use msot of what was there in the tube PA. I needed a few caps, a few resistors, new fitler caps and some potentiometers. Maybe $100 investment, but you would ened a good hand wired amp around for me to hack into or at elast soemthing with off-baord tube sockets and suitable transformers so I can easily lift the old PCB and put in my own temrinal strip and pots for the controls. Like, there are a lot of 80s EL34 based amps i could make nto a jim-watt, but not many cheap 90s amps. At that point the cosntruction emthods had gone wya down the toilet for doing this sort of thing.

but from scratch the transformers will be about 300 bucks, the chassis to build it on is about 100 for 9 or less. Defintiely not going to order 10 when i'm not actually a company LOL. about 200 bucks in electrolytic caps... 100 bucks in loose resistors and signal caps, 100 in potentiometers and the bias trimmer, 200 for sockets, switches and switching jacks... then there's tubes, a 1 channel will be whatever a JJ retube set for a marshall costs, so maybe $150? Not sure. and Im running low on suitable wire so throw in 50 bucks in solid core hookup wire and shielded wire for the tone section... so about a grang in aprts without a headhsell or any controls panels. I also forgot the cost of a board.... but that's a few bucks if I just get some genereic eyelet stuff. if you want anything fAncier like turret or terminal boards it'll cost you because those have to be customed toa certain extent.

the tone controls aren't that clever, they're just a classic type of 2 band setup (really 3 band, but the mids are shared out between the 2 controls) carefully engineered to suit my aesthetic. You can sit with the Duncan toenstack calculator and punch in different values all morning while you have your coffee until you get something that behaves exactly as you want in every conceivable control position, then you just rustle the aprts out of your bin and see how it works in practice. As logn as you're sticking to a classic tone control design that's in the software's library you can chnge the values around and simulate to your heart's content instead of sitting and doing tedious amounts of algebra like they had to back in the 50s and 60s. Although you still ened to know some basics like what the impedance is coming out of the driver stage and like what the resistance laod is on the output of the tone stack... but you know, that's not rocket science and if you have something built up you can just get your meter and check if you didn't do any of those calculations while designing the amp. Its not as versatile as you're thinking,t he amp has a very specific voice and any added features are more like fien tuning. It sounds like it sounds. If I wanted a mesa I'd build a mesa. I have a like it or lump it approach to design. I designed this for ME.

right now the control set is really basic, the 1 channel verison would be Gain, defeatable Master, TAreble, Bass, Presence.... optional bright switch, option between a fully adjustable midrange control or a clickable 3 way midrange center frequency control. I think the way I designed the amp the center frequency control would be a lot more useful. THe tone controls are passive but as you turn them up the way they act is like they boost everything on either side of a specific mid frequency where both knobs turned down is like a dead flat frequency gain cut. They do effect eachotehr. Bass can boost more lows with treble turned down some and vice versa. The stock notch is centered at 350hx so like if you put both controls to 10 you have close to flat gain with a strong mid scoop centered at 350hz, taking all the mud out of your signal, but by about 800hz you're getting abck to full gain so the amp still barks. If I put ths one capacitor on switch with 3 different values instead of the one I chose you will be able to click through thoe 3 different vlaues and move the midrange dip up higher. I designed a circuit theother day that will click you from 350hz to to 1khz (the metal scoop frequency) to 3khz (which will allow you to get brighter and drivier with less of the sizzly upper midrnge zing if you want). I could put a wider range than 3 caps, but I think those are the three caps that will jump out as different. Its a aprt that absically controls what frequencies the treble control'hears'. In my design (and some early hiwatts) the treble control is designed to 'hear' a lot of midrange whereas using smaller caps like vox or some fenders with these types of tone cotnrols causes the treble control to hear elss midrange and the midrange capacitor/resistorlimiting network on the 'bass' control to hear mroe of those frequencies. I can give you a combination of indpendent midrange and a midrange 'center' cotrol too with a push/pull midrange pot, but you cna onyl get 2 frequencies then. For my own use I like the crazy low midrange dip and the ncie full amount of upper midrange hitting the treble control isntead of the abss control, but for more modern styles I'm not sure... this design has the micrange that people boost into vintage amps that have a scoop there like fenders.

I think a production amp would be a 1 channel isntead of my 2 channel prototype to keep costs down with 1 less preamp tube and way less of the big electrolytic filter caps needed as a result, honestly the channels are only a few parts difference in the signal path but the support circuitry for the dual channels is a pretty big expense particularly because it uses 2 triodes for mixing them isntead of a couple resistors, a much mroe hifi way to do it versus fender, marshall and vox amps...

options would be a bright switch to revoice the normal channel into a brilliant channel (not to be confused with a typical bright switch or bright cap, the changes a couple of parts to change the voicing and gain structure a little and with the gain at 10 bright mode will still be brighter or rather less bassy with a few more dB of extreme high into the next stage, unlike a fender type bright cap on the knob that passes more treble at low levels and goes out fo the circuit as the knob reaches 10), and an option between an independent midrange knob or a midrange cener frequency 3 way switch (more useful, trust me, but if you must have a midrange knob, why not? Ic an give you either or)... I could also give you a marshall style presence control instead of my presence circuit, which works really differently in a different part of the amp. Personally I think my presenc circuit is a lot more useful. I could also give you an alternate master volume control and an effects loop, but again, that's going to cost a lot more. lots more parts. It also won't sound as good

it would be built ona 50 watt marshall JMP master volume chassis with heyboer tranformers

if you really wanted I could build a full on 2 channel and even give you a 'bridge' input but that would run the cost up considerably due to the extra power fitlering and larger power transformer needed and make the build take longer. If you do a 1 channel I can use an affordable Classic Tone marshall replacement power transformer, but for a 4th preamp tube I will need something more robust and therefore more expensive.

I could also make a small version, like a little 15 watt one with EL84s or 6V6es if you really wanted.

Build turnaround would be about 30 days including the wait tiem on the big parts.

hand made to order I guess... 1 off features could be available... I could probably make you one for about a grand? make that 2 grand, good quality transformers can get pricey

tht's my oldest friend.. its a weird bass he built himself and an old ampeg b25 I think... just a beta57 on a 15" speaker

50 watt EL34 beast built on the bones of one of my traynor PA heads from the 60s. Hiwatt inspired with some vox and amrshall thrown in as well as a few of my own ideas. Recorded at a jam session 2 weeks ago. First half is the solo guitar, no EQ. 2nd half is the same recording mixed in with the rest of the band. Mic was a lowly sennheiser e609 into whatever rpeamp is in ym buddy's itnerface. Nothing special. Played my SG with old t-top humbuckers. Speakers were two 8ohm EV SRO alnicos ins eries in an open backed cab.

once you have everything saved up at home you should be able to assign the same MIDIpatch change command to change both simualtaneously... you will of course then need a controller to send those commands over to both keybaords. if you want to use your feet a behringer should do the job. its a bit of bear to program, but you're only changing 2 devices and you're doing it simultaneously, no continuous controller changes I assume? although the behringer fcb has a tredle and momentary switch that can eb sued tot ap tempo, but I diguress.... I'm sure there are also simpler devices, maybe tabletop ones, out there with buttons to change patches, just doa google search... anything that cna send a patch change will work fine. You can make life easy and assign both keybaords to MIDI channel 1 and then just send 1 command on 1 channel to change them simulataneously

there's a zillion rangemaster based treble boosters besides the naga viper, that one is just very consistent unit to unti and has a selector switch for the voicing so it cna get really midrange focused. It seeme dlike your thing. Personally I just have ones I built. Its simple to make a rangemaster if you cna wield a sodlering iron. Simplest circuit, you just need a suitable transistor. You can find them pre-tested at small ebar electronics. So there's another option f you want to join the old schoolt eam and use a devie that was invented in the eearly 60s.

3khz is a pwoerful freq range for electric guitar. Its the 'edge'....of distorted sounds. It custs a mix like a hot knife through butter. Remove it from cleans and get more parkle and a relaxed palce in tehe band.... turn it up when distorted and you're cutting through and getting agressive. Turn it up too much and you're going to be overbearing and give everyone ear fatigue. Turn it way down and lose all your muscle. You'll see. err ehar

try boosting both 1k and 3k2 and cutting around 300hz

okay kids, a 2x12 doesn't really get that much louder than a 1x12, it moves more air but the extra air its moving doesn't translate to SPL uniformly. From a neighbor perspective all that SPL dissipates before it gets through the walls to them, okay? Its ouder on axis, int eh same room, standing close enough for the extra sound pressure to overcome air friction... the main thing is a 1x12 with a high wattage speaker is easier to move aorund.

I use 2x12s even at home because I have really great old speakers. lots of them. And in the 60s and 70s speakers didn't handle more than 30 or 40 watts other than like JBL. I have to use two of them tohandle the fury of my louder amps.

The OP is not going to be using 60s and 70s celestions and fanes though. He's on a budget. A 1x12 will be fine. His biggest problem is that msot high handling speakers are highly effeicient and will be louder than low efficiency speakers watt for watt. But if eh's not trying to push the things into speaker distortion like some of us do, then he's fine, just turn the amp down a bit if needed. THe mesa cab probably has a 75 or80 watt celestion stock and that'll breakup if you nail it with 50 or 60 watts, but those are more clen speakers with an agressive frequency response, although not as a gressive as say a vintage 30. Anyway, it'll do the business for a lot of dudes. I'm fussy, but I'm old. Anything the OP tries will e an improvement. I would personally be looking at the emsa and consider swapping the stock speaker for an ultra-light neodymium speaker to make the cab lighter if I needed to transport it on the subway or something. With the microblock that's a toneful, portable rig that won't break the bank.

I gotta go to power trio practice ina few, I'll get back to you tonight... feel free to load me with technical questions, I'll answer them.

mesa's cabs have always been great... better than their amps if you ask me

the ac50 channel switching amps are their own discussion... I'm not getting into that here

you should try doing a 3k centric boost next

the basic region you're bosting might be acheived well with a rangemaster, aprticularly a modernized one... try the catalinbread naga viper. this will deliver a really retro british blues mid-boost and also do 70s rock like sabbath and queen. Everyone needs a rangemaster type pedal. It'll also do cool things if you turn down your guitar volume rather than disengaging it to lwoer your gain into the amp's input. Downside is that it won't be a significant noise reduction from the DOD EQ... but it'll be a more classic take on the mid boost you're shooting for.

A boss SD1 will grab thsoe frequencies and just boost them with the gain down and volume up. A tubescreamer gives a lower range of mids that will eb mushy though your amp.

So stick with what you have or get a anga viper. Or a haunting mids for a bit more control and a more modern tone

I'm almost 40, you're a kid, tis okay to be a kid

look kid, as a teenager don't sweat the gear so much, focus on your playing... you have your whole life to worry about gear. I wouldn't start to worry until you were like 19 or 20 then you want some professional gear so that in your 20s you have good stuff for gigging... in europe be looking at getting soemthing rock solid like an 80s amrshall, JCM800 or something similar like a 90s laney gh50 or 100, but you have years to save. Try tog et a deal, but understand that good gear costs money and in these days of the internet everyone knows what they have and what tis actually worth. its not like when I was a kid where we bought vintage amps for peanuts. Start saving now and keep saving. hat's the smart play. Sock away a good 1000 euros, dude...

I'm telling you... forget the mgfx and forget about the joyo, get a 1x12 cabinet for your hosue with a good celestion that ahndles over 60 watts, get the qulter microblock45... done You can probably do that for about 300 bucks all in. The microblock will fit in your pocket if you're going someplace that has a speaker cabinet. Its the same size as the EHX 50 caliber but sounds better. It sounds better than pretty much ANYTHING that doesn't have tubes. $150 USD, so probably about the same in your money. NO BRAINER

oy, ehre we go

what type of amp are you driving, how much noise cna you tolerate? what sort of music do you even like? define mdirange... midrange is the frequency spectrum that encompasses MOST of human eharing. basically for guitar purposes think of maybe 200hz to 3000hz.... here's some 2 cents

The absolutely classic is a tuebscreamer with the gain all the way down. The boss SD1 does this trick as well being basically the same but with assymetrically clipping and different mid frequency emphasis. Both cut your bass as part of the mid hump effect. Ibanez hinks, boss barks. All TS/SD variants do this for the most part. Though in different ways and to different extents for sure... If you want a lot of headroom, pretty much no clipping get one with a diode lift switch or get the xotic RC booster which is absically a TS9 with no diodes and a bass control added LOL. if you crank that the opamp wills tart to growl, but at anything elss than full gain its fairly clean. Mid Boost available in spades tweakable via tone cotnrols.

A rangemaster type treble booster creates a midboost as long as its the first thing your guitar sees. Apart from cutting abss and thus boosting treble it has a low input impedance that laods the down the high of your pickup creating mid-boost. If tis not the first thing your pickup sees it wll just treble boost because your pickup won't receive the laod from the transisotr. Think Iommi, Brian May etc

there is the full tone fat boost. Guess what that one does,

there are EQ pedals aplenty, these are gyrator circuits simualting inductor absed EQ... these graphics tend to be noisy and many of them don't have enough bands and the nes that do usually are the wrog frequencies for guitar. Boss' 10 bands ten to eb the best if you cna locate one... MXRs 10 sucks... anyway

Ibanez parametric EQ pedal from the 8 and 9 series.... I've ahd both. Very good stuff. Not to noisy, great sweepable mid with cut or boost and fixed frequency shelves for treble and bass... goofy, but excellent.... getting collectible... similar is the JHS hanting mids pedal, check it out

elearn to sue your guitar controls more effectively. If you play a gibson style guitar there's wealth of shades and textures available from those 4 knobs straight into a quality tube amp set to peel the paint off the walls with your bridge pickup at 10

Thank you for the info. I asked this because i tried pedal with the line 6 it was total shit. I will be getting a solid state marshall mg100fx, and i was just looking for something smaller that i could bring for example at school or if i travel and want to bring my guitar to have a mini amp that won't take much space. I'm also thinking about the PL1 fly rig witch can be used as an amp, but i'm not really shure if i would use it that way. And thank you again?!

1) are you a kid? 2) eh, I think if I ahd to pick between a marshall practice amp and a quilter microblock I would definteily take the quitler. You'll need a little cab, but still. The quilter is without a doubt the ebst sounding solid state amp for rock I've ever ehard. I love a lot of other solid state amps for jazz or new wave stuff maybe, but if you must rock? Quilter. 3) whatever portable thing you get you are going to ened speakers when you get there. Even 1x8 combo is not fun to carry. 4) the fly rig has an amplifier in it? news to me. I'm rpettys rue that's just a multi-fx unit. If you cna't plug DI into a PA no one's going to ehar it. 5) are you a kid?

you're a kid, aren't you?

yes, evilbassist, no amp that legitimately uses vacuum tubes for gain in votlage or output pwoer is liekly to run on 18v DC. Maybe, just maybe they have soe sort of solid state absed tep up pwoer suuply in there to get he tube some voltage. I know a serious engineer from europe who designs stuff like that for his tube pedals but tis unlikely joyo cooked up a clever pwoer supply like that. It really wouldn' make sense to ramp down from 110 to 140vac out of the walls of the world and then ramp abck up to 250+ for the paltes of the tube anyway. you wuld take the wall voltage straight in, split soem to an 18v DC tranformer like in a wall wart, then take anotehr supply node off to supply the 12ax7's plates.

in addition, DON'T buy the hype... do NOT believe marketing jargon! The guys who write this shit aren't the guys who designed the gear sot of the time. The marketing dudes just spin up a ton of bullshit and always have... I remember seeing a amrshall ad from teh 60s that referred to their 200 watt major ampa s the world's msot pwoerful distortion free amplifier. Wrong on both counts because the thing distorted readily and the ad was published after ampeg released the V9 and SVT LOL.

the stuff people say is just nutty... 'how it works with pedals'

all amps take pedals. ya plug 'em in the jack instead of pluggin' straight in! getting the pedals to sound good is up to you. You know how in a car accident its usually the driver's fault, rarely the car... although sometimes if the car needed a recall, but that's neither here nor there. But you're the driver here and the amp is a car that didn't need a recall. Take pedals well? that's subjective. Don't crash your car, man. You'll figure it out.

lets get something straight though, the joyo is NOT, IS NOT... IS NOT? Sure as hell is NOT a tube amp... certainly not in the real sense. Its a hybrid, and a lousy one at that. "But it has a whole 12ax7 tube!" I hear you say. I can put a flux capacitor in your car, don't make it a time machine unless I power the thing with Mr Fusion, okay? Thing is, looking at the back the amp runs on 18v DC... that cant power a 12ax7 to provide legit gain. A 12ax7 needs at least 250v at the palte, man. I build amps, trust me. I like using 300+ personally. That means the 'tube' is a big gimmick. its being run in starved plate mode where its a glorified clipping section for an op amp based gain section feeding the power amp. The tube dioes a smidge of mushy amplification in the pre but it also clips real early. This is how the BK butler tube driver and most other tube pedals operate. The real amplification is from ICs and transistors like every solid state amp. Why nto just get a solid state amp. THese guys are basically selling you a pedal in front of a solid state power amp and pretending it sounds like a tube amp. In staved plate at wimpy18 volts this type of dual triode (12ax7, 1t7, au7, etc etc) is not the best choice. There are Triodes and pentodes that behave a lot better at 18v. Take it from me, tube amps use MAN voltage! The voltages inside of a vox ac30 or marhsall 20 watt? they wil straight up kill you if you poke your finger inside while the caps are charged. 18volts? might feel like a bee sting. You could put your hwang in the joyo and not worry about it getting singed... if you're into that kinda thing. But you can't get a reasonable amount of amplification from a triode unless your at penis singing voltage.

Personally if I were getting a little amp I would get a quilter microblock. In fact, I did, and I don't regret it. Best sounding solid state amp for rock and heavy music I've ever used. ANd its the size of a PEDAL sintead of needlessly large like the joyo (which could be smaller if it weren't pretending to be a tube amp)…

the joyo's a scam, why not just build a good solid state amp and call a spade a spade. HMMph

If you need a delorian that goes back to the future, save up and buy a real one or make your own... if you're cool with a regular car, get the most reliable one you can find.

define micro? like a little amp that looks like a big amp like the marshall and fender mini amps that clip on your belt? they're all the same more or less...

do you mean a tiny portable amp? Quilter microblock 45. Size of a boss pedal, sounds shockingly good and not just as a pedal paltform, it has a surprisingly tube-like OD tone. Cost? $150 NEW. Smaller than the joyo or orange microterror. Sounds GREAT. I'm a tube person. I have vintage amps... but I also own a microblock that I put in my guitar case every time I go to play just in case I need it.

the corollary is that fancy pickups ina mediocre guitar intoa junk amp or ampstitute will sound like trash....

on the other hand 99% of the people who will hear you play won't know the difference ebtween junk pickups into junk amps and speakers and bespoke guitars, high end tube amps and the finest of vitnage celestion speakers... they're drunka dn tehy don't care

cart, horse.... buy a good quality amp that ill suit your needs or at elast a higher fidelity modelling device. a mediocre guitar with stock run of the mill electronics will sound like a million bucks through a good amplifier and high quality speakers that are voiced to do the type of music you want to do...

The kind that sound good?

what kind of music do you like to play? What kind of amp do you have? Do you use a lot of pedals? c'mon, throw me a frickin' bone here.

its small and therefore cramped inside.... I would like to see how tis bult before I could venture an opinion since in my view road worthiness has always been more important than tone.... and clearly a hybrid in a pedal is all about gigging. If the thign ahs a class D poweramp its on a PCB and if it has a PCB I want to see how the tube and pots are mounted. It doesn't look well ventilated either.

Similar concept from demeter has been out for years now and is built more like an amp then a pedal.... its proven not to fail when mounted on a pedalbaord for fly gigs, but my jury is out on the milkman. I think the demeter has a super-protective carrying case for taking it on public transit , what's the milkman offer for inner-city travel protection?

I feel like I wtched a demo of this amp though and was surprised at how nice it soudned for a hybrid, however youtube deos can be misleading. I don't trust 'em.

Your profile says worship leader and that's a weekly gig at the least. Personally I would not rely on this amp for a weekly gig. Certainly I wouldn't rely on it until its been road tested by other people for about 6 months and there are reviews and testimonials I can read. And you still ened a speaker cabinet for it.... might as well have a well made, old tube amp at your church. Save your beans, buy a 70s Princeton or deluxe... those silverfaces are getting pricey but they will be going strong long after you and I are dead. If you plan to truck this milkman amp around your city to various little gigs but NOT sue it at church every week then sure, check it out. Just make sure you're careful with it on the train or whatever. PCBs they don't like heat. Tubes get hot.Its a small enclosure, do the math. Tubes don't like being shaken or banged into and this amp is something you would put in a backpack so you don't have to drive to your bar gig and you can drink with impunity. Its a cool idea and all, but I think the amp's convenience and portability are actually its achiles heel. Tube amps aren't big because its fun to lug heavy thigns around to gigs, they're big because they need to be for ventilation, component spacing, and durability reasons.

a PAF is like smooth, but bright and when it distorts its got like thsi extra ghost note harmonic if tis made right... but tis ahrd to generalize. Original 50s pickups are so inconsistent.

I think there are 2 schools of repro PAFs. SOme guys get the most vintage correct materials possible and then copy an original PAF they have on hand, usually one that's busted that they took apart.... other guys take the general formula and then use their own combination of wire gauge, windigns and magent grade to hit a famous benchmark PAF tone from a record like the pearly gates tone or the peter green tones or like kossoff from free.... but there's a lot of other factors in those tones. Early marshall gear with the good old tubes and sweet speakers, microphones, compressors and Eq... Tape artifacts... my experience is that all of them sound good, but none of them sound the same.

most PAFs aren't 'sharp' sounding. the things that make for that upper mid cut are wire turns, magnet type and magnet size. More turns rolls off the treble a bit and gives a mid emphasis.... different alnico grades have different emphasis... alnico 2 being the mellowest and also the classic paf magnet material.... short abrs tend to sound different than long bars. PAF style pickups have long abrs. A short A5 bar will sound a lot more bitey, maybe even abrasive, then a long A2 bar....

its a lot to absorb.

if you can program an 808you can program fruity loops as a beat bx.... it can be its own sampler.... it has some built in patterns and if you use the internal akai styled smapler plugin for drums it ahs LOADS of realistic patterns and a built in tama kit and I think a gretsch that's wells mpled and scaled right dwn to overhead mic samples.... its not real drums but it doesn't suck... I'm not sure if it rbeaks out to individual tracks though, it didn't the last time I sued it but that was a million verisons ago, whereas the basic sampler each one can go to its own channel with ease...

anyway, if you can't make a beat in fl you're rhythmically challenged

frankly, the beatbox step sequencer editor in FL studio still can't be ebat for arranging samples in a quick and intuitive way for drum grooves... ti ash decent enough loop manipulation too for layering in soem live eprformance.... if you wanna really get into loop use, ableton owns thata arena but the one shot sample placement ain't as easy

reason is ecellent if you want some virtual drum amchines loaded with classic sounds already... although I thiknk you cna now make your own banks and stuff... I find reason is really limiting though. Even for just making quick drum tracks or hip hop backings, its irritating not being able to use VSTs and shit

like I said, 70s and 80s dimarzio PAF and PAF+ were built on brass base plates isntead of nickel... but they also were the first comemrcially available PAF replica to intentionally mismatch the bobbins like some of the originals were mismatched only larry dimarzio went so far as to use different wire on each bobbin too. So some accuracy some innaccuracy asome innovation. They tended to eb on the hot side unless you get a dewound one thatw as pulled from a hamer of the era. Dewound oens were the stock Hamer neck pickup in the sunburst and a lot of the explorer shped guitars... when I ahd a sunburst the enck pickup sounded pretty decent but the super distortion at the bridge was kidna goofy even dewound a bit. I just can't use the super distortion in most situation because tis hard to get my amp to clean up right with it... rather than hack a valuable guitar I resold that Hamer. Overall I found it to be a bit muddy and I blame the dimarzios, but that was the sound they wanted back then, buzzsaw upper mids, woofy lows, no real sparkle.... tose pickups work rpetty well like that into a sickly bright stock marshall of the era if you wanna do 70s/80s radio rock riffs or 80s hardcore punk maybe...

the new ones, I think they're anniversary PAFs or soemthing, are supposedly vintage correct construction except he still has mismatched wire gauges on screw and slug coils, not just mismatched winds. People who like his new PAF are pretty vocal about it, but they're a minority sicne most of his customers play his screamin' hot pickups. If you cna get a set of these used or soemthing I would lvoe to hear a recording of them inyour epi with some legit pots and caps.

in the past dimarzio's PAFs were their own thing... they had a brass baseplate which changes the tone a lot from a real 50s gibby pickup.... the new Dimarzio PAF repro ones are more period correct though. I have not played them.

I've never actually owned a clone theory. They have coem through my hands for repair or modification though so I'm really familiar with them. I've also had some polychoruses coem through.

I used to own a 2nd gen early 70s small stone that my buddy zach had modded a bit for unity gain and that wound up getting sold for a couple hundred bucks.... I don't miss it really, I lvoed it until I got a mutron though. I still have my stock mid 70s mistress. If someone made me a generous offer I would sell it. I've been losing old pedals elft and right because I don't use them much. The fuzzes went first and now everything else is going. Guitar wise I either plug straight in or use my MIDI setup. I ahte tap dancing and I lvoe preset recall. Its worth sacrificing some sound quality for those presets and a lower noise floor. Generally I just plug straight into an ac30 though. Bang.

the rarest and coolest pedal that passed through my hands was this mu-tron wah-treadle flanger. Best flanger I've ever ehard, even better than the ADA flanger I ahd. Those 70s effects by mutron and ADA are unbeatable for time based modulations.... although they cna eb noisy and the bypasses are sketchy....

my son Lucian just turned 5 on the 19th... time flies.

back in bensalem to be clsoe to my parents, I'm a single dad, my wife passed away while we were separated, i guess about 3 years ago. Prior to splitting up we ahd been living in DC. That's the ultra short version but it'll do.

I'm sorry to hear about your mom...

good luck with the clone theory, they do sound great when they work right although the noise is brutal.

Probably < 80 or 90 db. I saw an episode of that pedal show where they made it sound decent by putting an OCD and compressor in front of it at low levels. Also, on those occassions where I can crank it, I'd love to know it's capable of it.

those guys say a lot of things LOL if tis info on gear do NOT believe them, ut they do manage to extract some tones... keep in mind those recorded tones will either be inferior or superior to whatw as herd in the room. I have yet to hear an honest guitar amp recording LOL

anyway, the blues junior is surprisingly loud. Even set dead clean to hit with a pedal you will be getting 90db in no time

that said, the ac15 and ac10 are damned loud too and while they have less headroom they also get quite a bit louder evne when distorting pretty noticably…

the jr is fixed bias and the ac is cathode bias.... cathode bais amps, particularly without neg feedback like the vox? they tend to have more magical low volume tone. Fixed bais amps want to be hit reasonably hard to really open up. A blues Jr can be converted to cathode bias with ease by any qualified tech though and I think it sounds really good that way. Puts it into the marshall 18 watt camp. Also, the otter the bias on the fixed bias amp (within reason fo course) the juicier your low volume tone, however the hotter biasing tends to give you more headroom and a few more watts. If you start turning it up the wimpy BJ output transformer could melt down if you have the thing baised up too hot. Its unlikely but Iv've seen a lot of blown fender transformers in thee modern amps.

the blues junior tends to have a less efficient speaker than a vox stock (although there have been special version with highe fficiency celestions) which will cut some db level, but the stock speakers sound kidna shitty and restrict the amp's voice. If I were in your boat I would buy a used one and replace the speaker with a high quality low efficiency speaker like weber's derek trucks signature speakers. That'll help you keep it down at night and improve the tone at the same time.... if you want earlier breakup and a somewhat lwoer wattage from either amp you can replace the tubes with JJs low power el84s, althoug for the blues jr I think JJs sound wrong, the amp likes the more robust 84 varieties. Again i suggest the amp will sound its most fendery with TAD special EL84s or the russian military variety, both available from tube store. These tubes have really long life as 84s go too. If you go vox, either JJ is a good fit tonally. The tubes that work in the blues jjr are a it strident ina vox although I've had good results mixing a pair of TADs with a pair of JJs in a 30 watt.

regardless of what you choose ina blues jr tubewise you should have it rebiased since its one of a handul of fixed bias el84 amps and make sure the tech knows to bias it warmer. The factory bias is cold. Stiff clean tone and early, assymetrical clipping. cold bais ona preamp tube makes for cool dirt, cold bias on a push pull power amp is not a pleasant distortion because the sides sum to make it symmetrical, bringing up odd harmonics and its also rather abrupt onset too.

YMMV, I'm really fussy about tube tone and feel.

I really like the booze Jr but maybe that's just me. Crank the volume, control it with the master, and let that fucker sing.... mmmm!

its okay, part of tis problem is the small cab size and mediocre speaker selection. I've heard stock ones rehouses in a large 1x12 or 2x10 cab from mojotone and they sound substantially nicer. I think the output tranformer is pretty shitty and its the expensive aprt you msot often see burned up when they need to be prepaired... i also think the circuit would benefit from some minor component changes throughout the preamp. Also, when one coems in for routine maintenance I typically offer to cathode bias it, because el84s lvoe cathode bias and unlike the jet city, there's nothing gained by fixed bias. If the owner likes the stock bias setup I tend to put new tubes in, I like the TAD special EL84s or the russian military EL84s because both those variants have a roudner, more american tone and they will do well with a hotter bias which will sound juicier. The bias from teh factory on pretty much all fender amps these days is pretty cold. It means that a bad set of power tubes are unlikely to fail in the store, but it makes the pwoer amp pretty stiff and lifeless... I personally don't care for the way the fitlers are centered in this particularly tonestack and think the amp would have more balls with soem different values. The way tis implemented is neitehr tweed nor blackface so if I owned one I would rethink some of those cap and resistor values.

anyay, nothing wrong with it, but it can sound a lot better without actually moddifying it, and then if you wanna mod the preamp tube bias points in a few spots and change a few toenstack component values it could probably be a scorcher. I would also not gig one unless I removed the poer tubes from teh PCB and ripped the pots off and put in higher quality ones attached via flying leads. probably the jacks too. But I'm paranoid about that stuff.

what do you counsider to be ebdroom elvel? any dual el84 amp is loud as fuck by msot neighborhood's standards unless it has a amster volume that sounds good at like 1

I'm not too impressed with any fender in your price range, although the ubiquitous bles and pro jr cna be modded to sound better. Its like they were drunk when they were dialing her in.

then don't get a dsl '-)