jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I'm shocked that they ran EL84s in fixed bias because, yeah, to get the tone that way running them hard witha hot bias is wise and if I recall it also requires more parts to set up an EL84 in fixed bias as the tube really lends itself to cathode biasing... now i wanna go abck and look at the pwoer section. Sounds like an oddball. I can only think they did it because EL84 production was really sketchy when that amp was released. I can only think of 2 current production amps that are worth mentioning that use fixed bais 84s, the jet city 20 watt and the Fender Blues Jr and the former was done for tone reasons while the altter was done for reliability reasons (and coes with a cold bias from teh factory to this day that really holds the amp back tonally). Upshot is that even run hard with tubes having a considerably lowr idle point instead of being at full or near full plate dissipation when the signal swings to the other pair you are going to drastically reduce the heat, so maybe you can use plan B. I still always worry about tube sockets arcing if a pentode fails though. Brian May's former amp tech, greg fryer, has this overengineered solution where every tube is indivdually fused. Pain in the ass to implement, but its kinda brilliant. Anyway, tube failure is the only reason to go abtshit and go with plan A now that I know its a fixed bias amp.... you know, ebing fixed bias I suspect its got a whole lot in common with the 80s hiwatt Lead 30. That's a single channel, but it has a high gain biacrown preamp that's clsoe to an 800 in conceptions tapled to a fixed bais 30 watt EL84 pwoer amp. They're very well regarded for non-highlight hiwatts. That explains a lot about this amp! I bet they amde the followup more of a high gain ac30 based on user demand and also beign able to source better quality 84s by the tiem they decided to create a new model... with low cost and affordable 84s you cna save a few cents on aprts going cathode bias.

I'm not surprised there are a few components being run close to their ratings, that's the crate curse... they were notorious for that on their early ampeg amps after aquiring the brand.

if you wanna get a bets of both worlds you could also cathode bias one pair and mimic the mesa 'simulclass' thing, a very cool trick in 4 power tube amps

Tbh i reckon building a metal plate i could mount tubes vertical under vents without any issue (even if its just the el84's) though if going to trouble may as well do pre tubes too. would mean very little valve heat anywhere near board.

Alternative is a metal plate over where old holes were on standoffs from amps case to reduce heat transfer plenty room to move valves out 3-4cm and again it gets them closer to underneath vents.

I would go with plan A and I would do it in the near future while the amp is still performing perfectly... better to work to prevent a problem then to repair as wella s modify an amp that's acting funny! I like plan A because EL84s radiate a LOT of heat in cathode bias and every centimeter will be a big help in prolonging part life and board integrity. I also know modern EL84s are built pretty poorly,e ven JJs. They tend to fail ebfore they go dead and that has a chance of a socket arcing. You want that away from the board as far as you can get it. Its not guaranteed it will ever happen, but if it does I am telling you, you want that nowhere near a PCB. I have seen some shit go down with tube failure where the fuse doesn't blow in time. The survivors are hand-wired amps and early marshall PCB amps. You probably know this bit but I'll say it anyway; if you tackle this project (and I think if you love the amp as much as you say you should go for it) make sure to pay attention to lead dress, especially on the heater lines. You may wanna put thought into wire type. This effects the sound of an amp more then people think. Ken Fischer of Trainwreck spoke about this at length , look it up.

Don't hear a relay clicking and can't see one on circuit diag...

http://www.blueguitar.org/new/schem/misc_amp/crate_vintage_club_50.pdf

there have been silent relays for ages, but it doesn't appear to use relays... it looks like a mechanical switching system which makes sense on a 2 channel.... I always think 'relay' when i think channel switchers because I run into people's broken mesas and other 3 channels with verb and lots of junk that has footswitch controls and panel overrides and needs a crazy analog logic circuit to keep it all going... I don't have a lot of truck with channel switching in my personal life though. Last switcher I had in my mits was a Sodano and I never looked inside, never needed to.

I'ma nominate one more amp... the quilter microblock45.... its the size of an mxr pedal, it does a good 45 clean watts. its bulletproof solidstate with a drive circuit that's very tube-like, more tube like then anything else I've ehard that's not digital. It costs less than $150 US new. You can fit it in a coat pocket or in your guitar case/gigbag and take it on the subway. It also sounds VERY good with fender cleans and a drive sound all its own that harkens to the dirt produced by various 50 watt non-master UK amps. Takes pedals like a dream. And also? it costs less than $150 new with warranty. Did I say that already?

marshall used thsoe sockets in the notorious JTM30 and 60 amps too... ugh! I gave my JTM30 away ebcause Iw as sick of fixing it. When it worked? the clean channel souned great turned up and the dirty channel had its charm, but man.... as it got odler and older every bit of that amp started failing piece by piece. FUCK THAT... I took the sockets off and chassis mounted them but it didn't help that much in the long run. It probably prevented CATASTROPHIC melt down, but the PCB was just getting too much heat... not saying that's the way with the crate because the chassis looks bigger and you might be able to get the tubes further away from the PCB then on the little JTM30, but how far you can get those sockets mounted in the space allotted becomes a real concern, especially with those EL84s! Still, point taken, the Club is a good bang for buck amp, especially if you're just looking for something for casual gigging and home use. If just tone is the test you have a good one, I remember those crates sounding really, really good... but when I'm talking abng for buck I'm looking for tone beast coupled to ROAD beast.

Having her really cleaned up and putting the stock brilliant channel next to the normal on the new HW2 with the bright switch engaged for similar voicing I realize that the new ones aren't markedly inferior to the old ones. In fact, they sound really good in a smilar way and either one might trump the other based on the situation. The difference is not NEARLY as drastic as the tone snobs who go around modding their HW2s to "JMI spec" would have you believe. They're subjectively comparing before and after by memory and with all the work they did changing caps and resistors I guarantee their brains want to hear a huge improvement. I put my amps on a switcher and even ran them through the same speakers on sunday just out of curiosity. Fact is, its not worth voiding the warranty on your expensive new vox, for real. I suspect some of the difference is very much the transformer set. They don't make 'em like they used to... well, maybe mercury does, but that's a huge investment and its the law of diminishing returns because I thought this was more of an apples-to-apples comparison then I even remembered. The new amp is a hair brighter and tigther and the mids are maybe a smidge less swirly and magical. The new amp is a teensy bit louder too... the old amp starts distorting earlier but its really subtle. The new amp distorts later and the distortion is less subtle. The new amp would actually probably be to a lot of people's liking. Its ahrd to say which one sounds better. it would depend on what type of music you were doing and what guitar you were playing. With a tele the old one definitely owns it... it can confure isntant brad paisley actually. With an SG or LP? I think I kinda like the new one. Cork sniffers be damned. both do different shares of brian may with a treble boost... and those 2 shades of queen are equally awesome but equally ear splitting in a small townhouse.

this amp has never sounded BAD, but she's out because me and my buddy just gave her a going over and finally improved vox's messy 60s ground issues reducing the self-noise as well as making her safer... the top boost module on the back was acting up and sadly that had to go for now due to deteriorating wire, solder and the termindals it was built on so she's not a top boost right now until I rebuild that module, but the brilliant channel is pretty fat and ballsy without the tone controls and its WAY less noisy! Those rear top booosts were a dealer add on so they were only as good as the store-tech who installed them (and when looking the thing over it really seemed like the guy who did mine hooked it up wrong and the lead dress was ATROCIOUS)

also, alll the original plastic is deteriorating and I need to replace the knobs, feet, etc... needs new brass vents too, those eventually warp and fall out. Obviously its already been recovered and regrilled ages ago. The sock is gone now, I got some feet on her for now while I find vintage correct ones.... Its got marhsall knobs on it right now because as it turns out, none of my spare chicken heads are the right color or the right shaft LOL. I kidna want proper repros in the old plastic anyway.... need the vents anyway so I will probably have to just make a big aprts order from North Coast and eat their inflated pricing because it'll be one stop shoping. I'm thinking about putting her to my prefered blue/H30 combo for ac30s too, the 60s G12S speakers (basically early 20 watt greenbacks like what EVH prefers) that the previous owner replaced the blown alnicos with used to do it for me but now I'm not as into them or perhaps they're just wearing out. My 70s vox is out for MAJOR service I can't do myself with a toddler running around. I'm trying tog et all the amps in fighting shape this year and decide if I want to keep all of them.

Its hard to believe but my amp is still more stock then any AC30 I can find for sale of this approximate vintage... and the asking prices on some of these amps with replace transformers and none of the old signal caps left are exorbitant! 3.5k and up. I can't imagine what my old girl is worth now.

its got board mounted 'valves' (tubes for my fellow americans)... see that's what i'm on about. THAT is a recipe for failure in this type of amplifier evne with the larger vents then even a reissue ac30. You've just been lucky sofar. Pretty much all amps with PCB moutned sockets will have some big issues eventually, I always see it happen, but man, the cathode-biased 4xEL84 amps with board moutned sockets? ticking time bomb!

Years ago when i first got my 1962 ac30 it literally blew up and even ahd a small fire in it. Previous owners bad maintenance (wrong type and value fitler caps, super dangerous) coupled to higher wall voltages than 1962 and lower grade power 'valves'.... long and short, a stressed tube shorted and arced a socket. There were sparks and fire, a fuse blew, and the choke got jacked.... but, put the fire out, replace the choke, add a new socket and recap the pweor sectio properly and the amp was good as new and hasn't given me a lick of trouble for over a decade. If you have a problem liek that with a PCB mounted socket the CB will be toast. The way vox is alyed out seems rpettys tupid for ehat dissapation with the separate section split up in the L shaped chassis but its brilliant inc ase of catastrophic failure! eachs ection is isolated by metal so the preamp is still 99% original (I think there's like 1 replaced signal cap right now, the rest are 1962 Mullard mustards still)... for real, on a PCB the whole power section woulda toasted. And the amp shouldan't have failed like that anyway, it was my own fault for not investigating what the previous owner had done to the poor old girl... I guess in the sub $300 price range you're getting baord mounted sockets these days but it really scares me! That causes me to say 'bad build quality'. I'm not entirely against PCB, when its done right its bullet proof, but its ahrder to get right then more traditional ahnd-wiring methods. And its especially ahrd to do when you're trying to keep the price WAY down.

I think they compicated the circuit enough that only an amp guru would wanna point to point wire it... and doesn't it have channel switching? I eman, if its relay based you'll need a PCB for that, the good relays are all designed to be on PCB, you can't flying-lead them to a turret or tag strip. You'll need to make a small floating PCB for the switching crcuit and then flying lead the whole thing to your actually preamp circuits

EQD gave me a Transmisser to review. iw as totally stoked to try it. Its a cool thing... its a studio tool. I imagine the Descent is the same. Some stuff is just too out of control for anyone outside a noise/drone band to use on stage. If you cna afford to have boxes of gear sitting round for when you record then keep it. If you're on a budget sell it and find soemthing more tame.

maybe I don't kow what the doom sound has evolved into, but msot of the enw oranges, especially the terrors are not what I'm thinking... the OR50 and OR100 are literally JCM800s with a darker voicing and that could work, but nothing else in the line seems right to me.... I eman, other than the custom shop ehad all the new designs from orange either voxes or amrshalls with different preamp voicing, and I generally like what they did with the line and all, but if you want a jcm800 for doom there are cheaper routes to that sound like the Laney GH and VH heads thata re all 800 based (as is the Iommi sig model). Or just buy an old 800 and watch it retain its value for an easy resale when you tire of it. I would think the pumpkins trick of a JCM800 into the low gain input with an opamp big muff in line might be pretty doomy. My doom setup was generally pretty Iommi based when I was in a band that did that sort of thing (many many years ago), but I happened to own Marshall superleads back then as well as voxes and fenders, so I just ran with what I had.

Everyone should try a real, old Orange and an old Hiwatt before they die, by the way.

the prototypical doom bands used old oranges, matamps, old laneys, sunns and ampeg V series amps, the odd hiwatt or sound city, tryanors... ou saw the odd marshall too. Mosnter Magnet seemed to favor 800s and JMPs of some sort and Homme used a 900 into an SVT 8x10 in Kyuss, I don't know what the cool kids are using now but it used to be a big 70s head turned up super loud with maybe a fuzz device out front but not turned on all the time. Some guys favored big muff type distortion-masquerading-as-fuzz but you saw a lot more interesting stuff too. There's a stoner rock end of it and there's a KYUSS type desert end of it... both downtune ala Iommi usually but not as a rule. Its like, anything goes with that sort of stuff as long as you tune down a whole step minimum maybe drop C? and play loud. REALLY loud. I wouldn't count on a pedal into clean amp tog et me tehre. You need a good 50 watts and clsoed back cab of some kind and you need to work the amp mercilessly at volumes hat create this painful bubble of frequency.

For the OLD orange sound, the matamp type sound in a pedal I think your main option is the discontinued Monarch by EQD. I would still slam it into a loud tube amp. but its just a facsimile, maybe you would get close if you played loud enough..

the Sabbath sound, the old sound, is a stock laney supergroup and a modded rangemaster boosting it really hard. Not even Iommi knows what was in his old rangemaster but I would suspect that it just allowed more bass through so it was more of a mid-boost. Those old laneys are just starting tog et pricey, they're basically plexis with better transformer sets... the laney Klip amps that followed the supergroup are just a supergroup with a boost built right in and are a good value in vintage brit heads. Selmer treble and bass heads do the business for this sort of music too.

Stay away from vox for doom, the lows aren't tight enough and the mids are too full, not even an old AC50 or AC100 will fit the bill. Even in marshals you're generally looking for like a superbass or 800 series bass head, not the guitar heads or if you get lucky and find a marhsall major that'll get you there if you survive the intense volume.

Imight have it confused with the V50, it looks cosmetically the same as the oens without the white tolex. I remember at the time those amps ebing a maintenance nightmare,... I've also dealt with a lot of people's st louis music ampegs from various epriods, like when they did the higher gain channel switching heads at various points from the 80s into the 90s and those suckers sounded sweet until they took a crap, which they always did. And it was always some critical place that was udnerengineered for anything but light bedrooma dn weekend warrior use. But maybe Crate threw all their resources into the VC50. I just assumed it was pretty uch the same amp... the basic design seems the same, some marshall front end ideas stapled to a 70s ac30 power section (not that there's a world of difference ebtween the abssman/marshall premap topology and a top boost... same cathode follower setup with all the gains tacked up front). Guess its a pretty underrated amp.... the design reminds me a lot of this one vox from the 80s that was kind've a an 800/ac15 sort of mutt only with 2 channels or like those 20 and 30 watt 80s hiwatts actually. Good building blocks sonically, but also a lot of heat and stress on componenets that I wuldw wanna see WAY overengineered. PCBs and channel switching in a cathode biased amp make me twitch. I guess it depends on your usage. When i toured I rpetty much went with fully bulletproof basic stuff because I knew it was taking a beating, but for home use I'm less finnicky. Amp's a deal though, you have me there. Those are some low, low prices... were I to buy one I would just score a backup right away just in case my opinion of crate products turned out to extend to the VC50 even though tis sounding like it doesn't.

as for what an ac30 sounds like, I don't think a lot of people really know what a good one sounds like, the new ones are anemic other then the handwireds which are still quite a bit brighter and tighter then the best old ones. A lot of the 'jangle' thing in people's heads is something you have to dig for in an ac30.... its more what a good ac50 did. My old ac30s spit flames, even their clean is fierce.

I love a good ac30 but find tone limited to one style but for me the crate suits the tone i want more and turns its hand to a lot more besides the everyday tone I like.

I guess, i never worry about getting one amp to do a little bit of everything. I just kinda like stuff that's like "here I am doing my thing, like it or lump it!" If I don't like it I don't play that amp. I don't think that's everyone's thing, but the odler I get the mroe it works for me. Plus I have a whole ton of aps to choose from. So that's why I threw the rare, unpopular little marshall and the traynors on. They're my kidna thing. Amps that do what they do ith a minimum futzing aorund with the controls.... but I like the ac30 versions without the top boost a lot. Who needs dedicated treble bass and tone/cut controls when the amps sounds pretty good without the tone controls and the tone cut wide open?

its really surreal to ehar someone hoenstly say they prefer the crate club to an ac30.... when they were new amps in the 90s people would buy them ebcause they wanted a vox but couldn't get one ( think when the club was released your only option was vintage or the marshall/korg joint venture reissue whichw as very expensive for the time). But if you're digging all the extra stuff crate added them more power to ya. I think Billy Gibbons used them on one tour although its very likely they were dummies... or were those crate palominos. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm getting old here.

yor pick has me beat for the money, but I have qualms with the st louis music build quality... I guess for the money you cna just buy 4 of them! But they're just full of budget cuts. I like mt shit pretty stoutly built, anotehr reason I decided to aprt with the little amrshall from the 80s. It was well made by today's standards but I wouldn't throw it off a roof, replace the tubes and go play a show with it like a blackface fender.

that crate? its a watered down ac30, not unlike the 30 watt laneys... and both thsoe amps sound good, however when you put them against a really old ac30 in good health they sound less good by comparison. All the extra features are useful, but theyw ater down the circuit a lot... and they'renot overengineered like amps used to be. I'm surprised you found a working one. I sued tos eemore Crate Clubs broken, man.... baby her. if you must have 2 channels with a master on each channel? well good call! a Crate's a lot cheaper then the channel switching ac30 based amps orange has had on the market. Everyother ac30 style amp with a master that I can think of has 1 master on the 'gain' channel or a shared master after the phase inverter (which sounds great but precludes channel switching). Versus the Chinese AC30C2 and all those amps I might go crate, the new voxes don't sound right. They have chipboard cabs and I cant remember if those crates had plywood...

its a tough one for me to contribute to this thread, because anything we say here will cotnribute to inflated secondhand prices of some amp or another that i don't own yet

I would say the msot udnerrated amp I've owned was when i had an 80s Marshall Studio15 combo. Thatw as a one helluva rock n roll amplifier. They're becoming quite expensive already second hand (which is why i sold it, HUGE profit turned) but not a lot of people know about them. A lot of dudes are collectors just buying them to be completists and own every old marshall amp. Until very recently they were Marshall's only 6V6 design. They're sort of weird batard step child of an 800 and a tweed deluxe in sound. They come in a pint sized 1x12 laoded with a 1st gen V30 (tagged 'Marshall Vintage spealer'), back when the V30 sounded good. The onl down sides are that the amster volume, though tis a cool post phase inverter design (the only amrhsall amp with that design stock) it has some clipping diodes bult onto the the pot adding dirt at low output settings and this may not be to everyone's taste although iw as surprised how good that gimmick actually sounded...the amp is also from the ebginning of Marshall's bad build quality era. The tube sockets aren't on the PCB but everything else is and the PCB isn't as sturdy or well laid out as the earlier PCB amps. 1985ish was the turning point where marhsall build quality began going down and today i wouldn't hit the road with any new marshall model without 2 or 3 backups. Anyway, that's my unknown/underrated beast of an amp eveyrone shoudl try some day.

I had thought about saing soemthing from Gibson, but its so easy to get a abd gibson from the wrong year and get turned off to them. Frome ra to era gibson ahd amps with the same name and model number that had non-related circuits. You gotta really know your gibson to go looking at their amps. There are some real dogs even in the 50s.

so my runner up is actually going to be original Traynor amps. Any of them. They're all great. But don't tell anyone, they're still cheap in the USA and Canada

https://imgur.com/a/4or5SjQ

the newly tuned up '62 in front of the AC30HW2... the '62 has a broken foot so I propped a sock under her so she wouldn't rattle.... shut up! you don't even have a 1962 ac30, asshole... I just need some new feet. Actually, a lot of the plastic parts are deteriorating as she breaks the half-a-century mark.

https://imgur.com/a/046eieE

are the modern players still amde in emxico? ebcause mexican fenders are still pretty good bang for buck even though the prices aren't as low as they once were... set-neck budget hollowbodies? stay away, its hard to find a good one.... you might play a few hundred epis to find one nice one these days, fuck that

a thinline tele if its vintage spec should have a thinner nut width then most gibsontype guitars (although that era of mid 60s to the late 70s everyone went over to thinner nuts, it was a thin that went on and then they came to their senses by 1980), but being a modern player who knows whatf ender did with it, check the specs online for nut width on all 3 guitars,, they generally list them.

welcome

if you feel like roadtripping to philly you're welcome to bring your tunes to my buddy's garage/studio space he's dubbed 'the party.' people come in and do their thing and do other people's stuff and I would do your stuff there for beer.

best is a relative term with guitar sounds....tuner first is the only rule... accepted wisdom would probably be: tuner ---> wah ---> dirts ---> chorus

a lot of people really prefer modualtion ebfore their dirt and I cna get with that for flange and phaser stuff but chorus and trem I like near the end if I'm using a bunch of stuff... the roder you put the dirt in could eb addressed with some crazy guitar logic but it probably isn't too important... you may need to have the fuzz early depending on teh design ebcause a lot of fuzz face type epdals don't play well in the middle of a chaine, they wnna get hit be dry guitar signal, first thing to work right. Its an impedence thing

but just experiment, move thema round until you like all the combiantions where you have them. A lot of what I could tell you work for me might suck for you because I'm using different amps then you are and I'm probably using them in a different way then you do. my shit is vintage and I turn it up hella loud and that's the guts of my tone. Any devices I add in are really subtle usually. I have a billion effects, but I just sprinkle 'em in real lightly if I turn anything on at all. If you took away my ac30s and gave me like a jazz chorus it wouldn't work the same

you coulda performed them better, but if someone did the engineering for you and coached you a little your voice would kill it... you probably didn't comp takes, the phrasing is loose and unrehearsed (but the band is loose, so it musta been hard to focus your timing) and it sounds like you were all stressed out (maybe about hitting record yourself and jumping in front of the microphone?) BUT the core is there. You have a good voice and you really emote when you sing in a natural, unforced way. If you lived in philadelphia I would just engiener your next one for you on spec because I think I could get soemthing incredible out of that voice and the rest would follow.

Iw as not expecting to hear the vocal I ehard, irreally wasn't

Yahmaha Rev star, they have a whole range, but the Korean-made one with buckers that goes for around 700 is the best made sub-1k guitar I've played. So nice I bought one. It doesn'te ven need to be modded.

Freddie Mercury, Queen... next question

Unsolicited advice? there's a lot of sonic stuff to address next time but I would focus on pre-production hader... you have a potentially strong vocal style that shines through everything else there. I was not in love with the songs and didn't like the recordings but the vocal delivery brought me back for a 2nd listen on 3 out of 4 songs. If you can get the slop out of the performances it'll be good.... a little looseness is good, this much is holding everything back. it made the vocal sound sloppy and the vocal is what you've got, make it sound good. If you work harder at song craft and think a ltitle harder about what needs to there behind your vocal to make it shine, the tightness and sonics will follow (to a certain extent) because even a scrappy performance and recording of a good arrangement with a strong vocal ought to mix itself pretty well. Think about playing less. Space is good.

You should be asking yourself "is this the best lyric for the spot rhytmically and verbally? am I showing my voice to the ebst advantage and pushing the idea of the song ahead with every note? and how is the band highlighting the vocal? because I'm a good singer!" If I had a voice as good at your age I woulda taken over the world. Okay, maybe not, but the sky is the limit if you focus all your talents and really inspire the other musician to do the ebst they can with whatever level of ability they have because the audience wants a great vocal and I think int he right song you could deliver soemthing world class.

dude, how often do you even come on this forum? pot, kettle,black... and I just agreed with you a month ago, why are you flaming me?

ya finished one, now make another one

that's the sound then? yeah, the old ones do a good job, but you may wanna go to a store and try the nano to see if you hear or a difference or you think I'm insane... on the cheap you could try any of the pre-digitech multi knob DOD phasers. They're OTA circuits like the EHX ones using similar FETs to cheive the phase stahges. They take logner to dial in but are somewhere between a smalls toen and bad stone in design so they have THAT sound when you get those knobs dialed in right. The on knob DOD phasors though are more like MXRs. I'm nto sure what's inside the early DOD phasors with the huge boxes and the built in AC cable but they will likely be outside your price range these days. The early DODs in the MXR style box sound great and are still a great price (and might even be reissued now), don't get me wrong, but they're more focused and less sparkly like the phase 90 tone. The soudn you want will coem from teh smaller box DOD pahsers with the shitty plastic footswitch.

one more option is the line 6 M series.... the smallest one does one effect at a time and where it really shines are the modualtions. In the phaser library you'll find a digital modell of every phaser the pumpkins ever used. I have one of these boxes and its more than good enough for stage work and I've even used some of the chorus, flange and phasing while mixing (everything is stereo in and out, so it trumps analog untis for mixing which are at best just stereo out and more foten aremono or dual mono wet/dry)... versus all myold analog gadgets it sounds pretty decent with a quality guitar and amplifier. Disregarding the distortions its a pretty imrpesive unit from trem to verb and even the compression is pretty decent. its an affordable, multi-purpose investment. I would say I prefer the smalls tone model to a modern small stone LOL

here ya go, this is my old band... the sound that comes in carrying the main verse lick around 15 seconds is a coil tapped humbucker on a semi hollowbody into a really old small stone amplified by a fender Showman driving an oversized 4x12 miced with a 57 (or an audix) and a ribbon mic close up to the best sounding old speaker. Very little EQ or studio trickery. If that's one of the soudns you're looking for then a small stone is for you. Even an RI will ge tin that ballpark. A green russian will do it better and 70s NYC one, any graphics will do it exactly.

https://soundcloud.com/james-marchione-1/piss-on-my-parade

If that's not the sound then try the Phase 100. It can get soemthing LIKE that but it also does a lot mreo stuff. Most of the smalls tone's other tricks are really limited application due to the derth of cotnrols but the Phase 100 does a lot of cool stuff including a passable phase 90 impression. If Ic an remember which tracks form that record used the mutron gear I'll post them here too.I brought my mutron phasor to some of those sessions and borrowed a rare mutron flanger with the wah tredle too but I can't remember if we used them in the end. We were staying away from a whole lot of modulation and mostly just used cool amps and the odd fuzz box.

are the less desireable mutrons worth a lot now? I've had mine for a good 15 years. I think it was 200 bucks back then and I almost didn't wanna cough that up for a stomp box.

the big box is the same circuit as the nano as far as I can tell... I'm unsure why the old oens sound better... they are OTA type phasers and each Operational Transconductnce Amplifier that creates the phase shift stages contains a couple of FETs so it might be the sound of the older FETs (even the same part number will have changed at elast in tighter tolerance sicne the 70s, modern computer aided manufacturing is a whole enw world of precision)... the new badstone sounds better tome than the new smallstone, but its a totally different phaser with a different number of stages and even the OTA building blocks are a smidge different... old small stones don't go for a lot. I think I sold my 2nd edition, early 70s one for about 300ish? A green Russian should be about 150USD...

its sad, I sued to get stuff like this on trade or buy it for $20 out of the sued pedal bin at Bob's Rt13 music back in the day

they used every almost every phaser known to man at one timeor another... solos on siamese dream were (as far as I know) phase 100 or a badstone (which are both great pedals that sound differnet then their 1 knob cousins, I have a 100 and it does the business for siamese dream solos when I feel nostalgic)... complex switly-warbley parts were often,a s you surmised, a mutron biphase (good luck there), they used some sort of univibe on MCIS in places like through the eyes of ruby... a lot of clean pahsed stuff was in fact a smalls tone. If you want to be nitpicky the new ones don't sound right. Drop a little mroe money and get an odler one, preferrably 70s but 80s russians sound pretty decent too. i've ahd a lot of smalls toens form every era and they're all different and they all suffer from tone suck except thenew MXR sized ones whicha re tru bypass with no volume drop (a mod you can do on an old one with like 2 parts)... iw ould say the mayonaise tone could be either the smalls tone of the phase 100. I have both and either willg et in that ballpark. The EHX is pretty much there with the right gutiar and amp with very little fuss apart from putting the switch in low position and turning the rate/depth knob down low enough but not too low... the MXR would take more dialing in but with tis extr a features culd probably get that thin and wirey phase sound without any special amps ettigns, weird pickup combinations or studio EQ later... but tiw ould take dialing in, the epdal is hugely versatile....

also check out the mutron phasors as a biphase alternative... have one of thsoe and it has that biphase timbre, you justc an't ge tthe apeshit itneractions of the bphase's dual setup, but dman does the biphase sund good. Very good for pumpkinsy type stuff

Don't be like that.

what? don't call a spade a spade? look, this is the sort of thread you psot when you're in your teens and twenties and you want to tell the world about something you're sure they don't know about thus spreading the word for your new favorite guitarist and simaultaneously increasing your cool points on your new favorite forum. Meanwhile you can figure out what bands you've missed out on to date using otehr people's repsonsea. No offense, I've been there myself back at the birth of the internet... everyone does a thread like this on a forum at some point, we've had a BAJILLION on here already, all equally pointles and random lists without a ton of actual discussion. If you want a lsit do a google search. Otherwise it would be great if someone would pipe up with soemthing intelligent like "this guy is great because of his unique vibrato and underrated because he's ina mediocre band." That might make me wanna listen to some stuff... although i'm aware of everybody in this thread but weird face blues-rock guy up top. And man you need to do some explaining to get me to use my limited free time to lsiten to more middling white blues at my age. That ship asiled in the early 90s with SRV for me. Actually, I've heard of Phillip Sayce, I've probably even heard him play, I just don't remember anything about his music... I guess it made a big impression. perhaps that's why he's underrated? Talented guy who makes a weak impression on people? Dunno. maybe I'll go hit that video up but man is that guitar face off-putting and somehow I know it'll be a bunch of white blues playing, I just know it.

Of course an opinion is very subjective to one's personal experience of a guitarist. For one person a great guitarist is one that is very technical and has a lot of speed, for another it's more about the "feel" a guitarist has and maybe for another it's more about super creative playing that makes a person tick. There's no real definition of a great guitarist, only our subjective experience.

okay, the defintiions of the words 'opinion' and 'subjective' make me wonder why you bothered to type this sentence... speaking of language, fact of the matter is that the word 'underrated' is so imrpecise as to make the question emaningless... just like you can't define what makes soemone a good player or why you might like them? well, you can't define underrated without some statistical mechanism to measure that. If we were on gearslutz this would alreayd be a flame war, thank god we're not. I'm not trying to flame you here, bt this is a certain type of thread that I don't have a lot of respect for and its also got some seriously bad wording and you cna tell that ebcause, apart from my piss taking earlier, a lot of people have been questioning how to apply the term 'underrated' objectively and I don't think anyone knows what you're getting at and therefore it not getting a lot of recommendations. you also worded the title to imply a contest, like 'who can dig deep into their cool-muso hat to suggest the most talented but least appreciated guitar player ever'. I don't think you meant to, but that's how it reads.

And for all these reasons Ic alled your thread a bt dumb, which it is. Get over it. Everyone's made a dumb thread. It doesn't eman you're a dumb guy. The secret of the interweb is admiting and being more clever next time. That's abotu as nice as I can be to someone who tells me not to 'be like that'. I'm going to be myself and say what I think... it wasn't even that offensive by my standards. I could have written a screed like this to explain myself but I thought a simple one liner would make my feelings known. We were all thinking it anyway.

welcome to you both, there's a thread for introductions stickied to the top of the general forum

welcome! post early and often...

I wouldn't say driving... pulling a apge from Marcus Aurelius (sort of), music (paying or writing) is either like wrestling or dancing. it depends on the day and the person. You can usually tell when you're wrestling, but you don't always know when you're dancing until someone tells you because really great dancing is justa s strenuous... its just in ahrmony with the isntrument, not in conflict with it.

I don't use a lot of reverb, none live, I sue a little slapback in place of reverb or a tiemd delay these days... I seldom use slap and reverb together when recording guitar... when mixing I might dosoemthing liek that with a single slap that's feeding a reveb send with little to know dry signal, but usually longer, timed delays into reverb

its a dumb thread, that's why I'm mainly piss taking

welcome.... what part of Arizona?

I have a bunch of them, classics, signature models and that baja... $500 tops... for the baja I think... 300-400 as you say is the right price

I've enver paid mroe than $500 for any MIM fender.... no one should, its madness