jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

not as much... I don't think it'll tank Gibson whereas fenderhas been sof ar intot ehm that they HAVE to keep giving them new merchandise onc redit in order to keep them afloat in the hopes that GC will start to boucne back, get bought out again and then pay up

such a scam

they're just an enormouse collection of debt to Fender... they would be gone now if Fender wasn't being forced to give them more prouct on credit because if GC goes udner it will likely take fender down with them

you're like the master of internet music-info finds

I ahd an expandora V1 int eh 90s for a while... did so much that itw as overwhelming... kinda like a mesa rectifier... there are tones int ehre somewhere but who ash time to find them, I want to play... if I want to do sound design I'll use a synthesizer

best cheap amp I've ever heard... pretty versatile too for onyl having 3 controls... and I own some nice as amps so I'm not praising it with only a line 6 spider to compare it to. When I bought it I thought it wouldn't be that good in person and that it would be 150 bucks wasted on a long shot... but it turned out to be sweet. I'm not selling my voxes, but its pretty cool and its great for traveling on the subway and stuff.

2 speakers is not twice as loud as one. all thigns being equal it only has a perceived volume bump on stage, from teh audience the sound diffuses and as long as the speakers are the same efficiency then once you're a few meters out the sound will be about the same volume with one disconnected as both. 1 speaker will eb a tad more directional, aprticularly in a closed abck cab, but an open abck because it elaks sound out the back pretty much evens that out.

The problem you have with your amp is not the sinlge speaker, its the low wattage. you don't have enough headroom to drive that speaker with clean guitar sound. Before you're really getting the speaker pumping your amp will be dirting up. Youmay enver have ushed it that hard and if you have you may find a distorted sound gets swallowed by horns unless you have a ton of pwoer behind it. 5 watts of tube power is a lot as long as you are okay with having lots of power amp distortion and a classic rock sound. It great for playing rhythm in a small rock or blues group and I always advocate people in rock bands try a single ended 5 watt amp so they don't kill the audience with volume. For clean jazz playing it ain't enough. The little output transformer and 10" cone are not a great combo for high fidelity bass response. Can be nice for distortion but when you need clear articulation of allfundamentals then you're just not getting as much as you need off the low strings. playing in a big band and ina rock band are very different. I got away with a pricnetonr everb ebcause those old blackface fenders have great output tranformers with tons of iron 9the reissue transformers are a joke comparitively) and I ahd that very Hifi JBL speaker. Like i said, my backup princeton with a jensen was not grea tin a big ensemble for a clean jazz tone. Speaker.

here's what 2 speakers does give versus 1: DAMPING. This is a platying responsive high end attenuation you get when you wire 2 speakers in parallel (the norm for everyone but Vox). Its soothness, You also get some smoothing from phase cancellation sicne not 2 speakers are exactly the same and its impossible to mount them perfectly flush in the real world. Certain frequencies come out at a delay from one or other speaker and they will cancel as they cross. This is a helpful feature for playing distorted as it smooths some harshness. Its great for nasty british amps and fuzz pedals... 2 speakers also gives you the chance to mix and amtch different speakers to make a blended tone with the ebst of both worlds. Also good for ROCK. But the truth is there are lots of killer single speaker rigs that perform well for rock. Its a little detail. I happen to like 2x12s because I like to mix speakers, but my back ahtes them and I am thinking ofgetting anotehr 1x12. I also have a 1x15 Fender Pro. It soudns great. I don't wish it had a different speaker configuration. its loud at about 30 watts, hangs with an ac30 even though the ac30 'moves more air' as people who only sue multi-speaker cabs will say. The real air mover is a clsoed back. The speakers are pumping all their jjuice right out front, however those cabs are HIGHLY diretional and tend to be too loud for anyone in line with them (including you sometimes) but will need to be miced to be ehard from people off to the side unless you're blasting a ton of wattage. There's a reason you don't see a lot of amrshall rigs on bandstands and its not ebcause a superlead alcks ehadroom... the setup is directional and will drown out the band from some seats but will get swallowed from others... closed abcks also need to 'bloom'. With no sound diffusion out the back, when you stand close to your cab to erpform you will NOT be eharing what the audience is hearing. To get an idea how tos et the amp it helps to walk away from teh thing, off stage if needed. The sound waves need space to develop and half of them will go right past your ear at soundcheck if you stand right enxt to the thing.

I could eplain more but I'm tired of typing. You wanted a light cab and a 1x12 with a highly efficient neo-dynium speaker will fit the bill. It will be easy to tote around and your amp will be so small it can go in your guitar case. Its ideal for your needs as far as transportation. I really don't think there will eb a noticeable volume difference in the band, thoughs tanding next to the cab a 2x12 may seem a bit louder to you. You should get a book on electronics and acosutics for guitarists to get your head around some ideas about wattage, speaker sensitivity and the correlation of volume of moving air to decibel level. Its not linear. Its not intuitive.

if you want to know how a vox can sound for jazz I have a little chord melody thing ehre that's a 335 neck pickup into an ac30 normal channel set really clean but still at band level (basically where it comrpesses when you dig in but it doesn't actually distort, a fine line on voxes). There's a wonky effect but its a demo from the EDQ transmisser review I wrote:

I don't think a modern 15 will do this since its just a top boost channel if I'm not mistaken. The mids won't be there unless you really fidget with the tone controls turned way down. Plus the ac30's extra wattage really helps it hang clean when playing loud while a 15 tends to give up the dirt at band levels, great for rock and blues but maybe not ideal for jazz. But dig the sweet compression, the notes hang there for days even clean. If you can get a second hand ac30 it can do jazz and pretty much anything else. It will probably have just enough power to stay clean for you and the normal channel will be ultra jazzy. As with all thigns guitar, the higher end the mdoel the better the tone. I wanna say that the amp I used for this was either a handwired or a vintage one. Not sure which at this point. The article might say.

I also really like the bigger fender tweeds for jazz. My pro can sound really good with the big, smooth 15" speaker, but being about 30 watts its right on the edge of having enough clean headroom for big band, just like an ac30 and the osnet of distortion si way less subtle than a vox. For blues and country that's a good thing but for jazz it can be overbearing and that will be true of a lot of the amps thata re related it to it in teh fender line like the bassbreakers, hot rods etc. A tweed twin is a better choice for tweed flavored jazz being a bit louder and firmer. Anyway, there's your last abrage of info.

oh! bassbreaker cab... I thought you were talking about an amp. I told you, your original link didn't go to the right item at the fender store for me so i didn't know what fender cab you were looking at. RIGHT! got it no, its a bassbreaker 1x12 extension cab. Good idea.

I would go with the fender cab if you can't look at the DV mark in person... even then if they painted the inside you can only guess at why. Usually a black painted interior means cheaper materials, but it doesn't mean its particle board, the thing might just be sub par plywood or something.... you never know. With a Fender you pretty much know that the cab is amde of exactly what it says on their website. If its got paint isndie its just out of a sense of tradition sicne a lot of the balckface cabs were paitned inside (and filled wth foam, don't do that unless you get a solid pine closed back LOL even then... NO). In your shoes I would do a Microblock and the fender cab to start and if the speaker is too rock n roll for you, pull it and flip it on ebay to recoup some of the money on a more jazzy speaker. like i said, can't go wrong with a Jensen Neo. if the Bassbreaker 1x12 is light with a ceramic magnet it'll be insanely light sporting a neo. Go Jensen if you wanna go with my experience. i know what they sound like and the Jensen Neo will probably work really well for your needs. People also really like Weber's Neo which is meant to sound kinda-sorta like a Vox 'blue bulldog' celestion (so maybe not great for a big band, more of a vitnage30 of Neos) and the Eminence Tonker-lite which is loosely based around the Hiwatt cast-frame Fane sound so a little more neutral but still pretty rock oriented and aggressive. I have some Fanes aorund, they are dark and loud, but they defintiely break up when you hit them with some power. Still very British. YMMV. Pretty much every other Neo out there gets panned by players of all styles. I remember being in a band with a guy who got some Neos and we just hated them in an avatar 2x12. Forget the model and brand now but god did they suck for guitar... then we put them in a 2x12 bass cab and they were great for bass LOL. Pint being, most Neos just aren't guitar voiced. jensen, Weber, Eminence or bust. I wouldn't foola round with anything else unless I ahd money to burn and wanted to evaluate every new neodynium magnet speaker on the market so i could edify the world.

So eyah, Microblock, Bassbreaker cab, maybe a Jensen Neo as a replacment speaker. problem solved. And if you use a epdalbaord you can justmount your amp on it. You'll be good for most situations with 45 watts of clean power and a speaker that weighs nothing and that won't grit up unless you pummel it witha REAL Hiwatt that does a conservative 100 watts!

which bassbreaker is it again? those amps are probably too gainy for your jazz needs unless you get the biggest one. The 15 watt will have more apparent breakup at lower volumes then soemthing like a princeton even though tis in about the same wattage rating. The preamp design is all around gainier in those tweed derived amps and long-tailed pair phase inverters have gain versus the princeton's cathodyne that doesn't... also, EL84s actually have a little gain in voltage ebfore amplifying into wattage wheres 6V6es do not. So the signal is pretty hot and has some audible distortion of its own before it even gets to the pwoer tubes and the speaker in a bassbreaker whereas the blackface design was designed to reduce rpeamp distotion and give a wider frequency response than the tweeds that came before it. Comparing soemthing tweed/vox/marshall inspired to a princeton is a really unfair comparison even if they're both around 15 watts. Apples and oranges. A tweed deluxe has more in common with a abssbreaker then a princeton reverb or deluxe reverb which are descendents of the oddballs of the small tweeds, the tremolux and vibrolux. Firmer, fixed bias, pretty big headroom, the balckfaces gow ith an even leaner preamp and the result was small amps that do boe clean jazz really well, making great use of all 12 to 25 watts. Now, my personal preference is definitely an AC15 or 18 watt type of EL84 amp, but I enver play straight jazz anymore and I want the grunt.

the fender link won't load, it just takes me to all their cabs... the DV Mark cab sounds like a winner for lightness and speakers, however they are not very forthcoming about cab materials. You don't want a particle board cab. Even though modern high density MDF doesn't fall apart like the silvertone particle board cabs of the past, its still not know for its good sound. Birch plywood or pine is well established for durability and musicality. Other woods will also have their own sound, but the marine grade plywood and solid pine favored by the brits and fender respectively will eb the msot readily available and affordable. youa re looking for at elast 3/4" sides and you also want to avoid a particle baord baffle in yme xerpience. Some folks swear particle baord makes a great baffle, but I don't hear it. Its good for studio speakers, but not for guitar cabs. And it doesn't save you all that much money. Better to just go with something classic int eh first place. now, in ply or pine cabs you will also runa cross different baffle types. There's thin floating baffles like tweed fender used and then tehre's the british style fixed baffles that tend to be as thick as the sides... let your ears decide. Both are good. You will mostly see fixed plywood baffles in affordable mass produced cabinets though. You get a mix frm new fender cabs,d epending on teh series.... a good thing to look at is Peavy cabs from the classic or delta series. They are generally very well made and pretty cheap. You might need to swap speakers. The speakers will be celestions or similar most of the time and they aren't terribly jazzy or lightweight even iwhen the wattage handling is high. Celestions tend to be brighter with an upper mid hump, lots of comrpession when working hard and early speaker breakup in relation to the amount of power hitting them, what we call 'agressive'... whereas you want something darker with late breakup. The high end american sound pretty much. JBL, Altec, some old CTS speakers and later EV were the whole jazz sound. In current speakers look at weber California, the venerable EV 12L or any of the Eminence Patriots that say they are mellow with alte breakup... also look at the Jensen Neo, its veryw ellr egarded by people looking for high pwoer handling and neutral tone. Pedlabaord guys, jazz guys? love that speaker. Its also the lightest high pwoer speaker I've ever tried that sounds really musical.

But this is just a guideline.... jazz guitar has a stereotypical sound, that ultra-clean west coast wes montgomery and lee ritenour thing. But lot sof great players have used whatever gear in any era. So if you wanna try some celestions of crusty jensen alnicos then go for it. They may not be that clean, smooth and open jazzbox tone though, you'll be getting into Grant Green territory. That ain't a abd thing but your band leader might not dig it.

I have the same disease!

yes, if its a high efficiency speaker.... my princeton had an upgraded JBL in it, big and efficient K series, made the thing nearly twice as loud as if it ahd a stock oxford, utah or jensen... that speaker was also VERY clean and had 10 times the pweor handling I needed for the amp so it was a perfect jazz speaker, no speaker breakup whatsoever... it also ahd a darkish tone and a little comrpession from the big alnico amgnet that gave a stereotypical warm, sustaining jazz sort of sound to the whole setup regardless of how Is et the controls. When i used the amp for rock though it was less than satisfying unless I ahd the amp at 10 into pretty gnarly natural breakup. I was never totally happy with my sound through that amp for rock and vastly preferred the non-reverb princeton I alter aquired in that role. it was a non-reverb version which amde it punchier if not gainier, it was a bit brighter and the stock jensen broke up great. Worthless for a big band though ebcause at big band volume it was too dirty and it was very bright with that speaker (in a good rock way). My dad tells me that his 60s school jazz band rig of choice was a bassman setup. I beleive he originally had a jazzmaster but at the bandleaders behest picked up a gibson before graduating. They also asked him to play no louder than 2 because the rig was pretty loud and directional. He felt the setup never rocked, but was great for him because he's not a rock guy, just too loud. So that goes to show you any fender cna handle some jazz, and small might be best inf ender with the right speakers. That sub-40-watt range can really cut a band with the right speaker for the job. But enough about fenders, you probably cna't afford one.

I know nothing about DV Mark stuff... seems like a less versatile quilter? no idea really.... try it, elt your ears decide.... try a quilter... try a blues cube too.... I like the quilter... tis also spit ass cheap and tiny. Whyw ould i want a solid state combo amp that weighs as much as a tube amp of simialr size? seems silly, give me a decent cab and soemthing that fits in my guitar case... this was nto even an option when iw as a kid! everything was relatively heavy and solid state didn't usually sound good unelss you really spent on it. We live ina golden age

if I were you I would seriously drop 150 bucks on the Quilter pedal-sized microblock (return it if you don't dig it) and then put together two different cabs, an open backed 1x12 or 1x15 for the big band, maybe throw a weber California or EVM12L speaker in it... and then I would load up a closed back 2x12 with some decent celestions or clones. Maybe get a couple Warehouse Reaper 55s or a reaper 55 and their Veteran 30 or soemthing mix and match like that so you have a loud rock/blues band cabinet too. Your little Hiwatt (lowatt?) will probably benefit from being run into a decent 2x12 with good british speakers as well. I think that the little quilter will surprise you. For twice as much quilter makes more fully featured amps that are have two or three tiems the pwoer, but I have a microblock and its plenty loud for everyday gigging situations assuming you match it to the right cab and speakers for the job. lots of headroom but a very tube like drive when you gun the gain up... blah blah blah. I would go this route in your shoes. It'll give you some flexibility rather than ivnesting in a 1 trick pony amp just for your big band at school. I would probably get like a tweed cab so it looked like I ahd a hip tweed amp or maybe get an ac30 extension cab so you look cool and then secretly the amp you use is on the floor next to your stompboxes! If you wanna get really light look at neodynium magnet speakers. People really like the Jensen Neos. they're supposed to be loud and neutral sounding in a good way.

he mentioned Loopmaster in his OP

you cna play jazz through ANYTHING with some ehadroom

that said, the go to jazz amps of my jazz band days were tube Fender combos (old ones, blackface or silverface for the 60s, bluesy jazz guitar sound), Ampeg Geminis (tube, classic affordable combos that ahve huge headroom and just teh right volume for clean and warm ensemble playing,standard equipent ine ast coast studios for jazz guys who did studio dates but the gemini II will DEFINTIELY cut the biggest of abnds without breaking up much) Standels (solid state ones for the 60s hyper clean solid state sound, pretty loud), Polytones (these are all solid state, loud as hell, clean, warm, no drive to speak of, in a good way, the 70s standard for big band guys in NYC), Roland JC120 (the otehr JCs are also good at the roland 70s jazz sound... doubles as a ost-punk amp for your Cure/New Order needs), Yamaha G series and JX series amps (look like fenders, super clean, Gs very much a solid state version of the 60s/70s fender lyout, really clean sound, also used by the cure etc... JXs are their own thing, specifically designed for jazz and keybaord purposes as far as I know), and then my favorite jazz amps are the larger old 50s gibsons like the Rhythm King and GA50T.... totally unique tube sound. There's also the Gibson Lab amps designed by Bob Moog when Norline owned Gibson and Moog in the 70s. Highly udnerrated ecause they don't rock very well, but they supplied many a jazz guy with plenty of juice back then and were BB King's amp of choice for a long, long time....

the Yamahas can be ahd for VERY little money and are great when it coems to headroom and warmth versus a lot of today's soldis tate amps that sound colder to me unless they're modellers and then are maybe not so suitable for serious jazzing... the rest of the amps I mentioned are rpretty esteemed and will cost a little more or a whole lot more depending on the amp and the amrket on any given day... also consider a quilter. The Microblock pedalbaord amp is a 3 knob beast in an MXR pedal enclosure. does a solid 45 watts clean, does some good british rock sounds with gian up... its a knockout at only like 150 bucks US. Shockingly good sound and a huge range of versatility. Willd efintiely produce a plenty-loud big band tone warm and clean, and it may outperform your bedroom hiwatt in a rock setting. I was shocked by the quilter when i bought it. It holds its own with votnage tube amps that are more than 10 times more valuable and is one hell of an all-arounder. Not my favorite amp I own but I am not ashamed tot ake her to a jam session. Fits in your guitar case too... but you will need an extension cab. versus roland's blues cubes I prefer the quilters. The blues cubes sound good and amost like a tube amp but the quilter soudns ebtter and does more with less controls.

I think a fender hot rod will have the volume but not the clean headroom and probably not the right bas response for a big band and probably not even for a little quintet... even though its got twice the eprceived pwoer of the old fender pricneton i sue dto do big bands with the princeton has a ton of clean headroom while the hot rod seems tog et furry very early unless you fool around with the preamp tubes. I lso don't think the hot rods sound very good but msot people will disagree. If you're playing ajzz through a fender you pretty much want a blackface or silverface amp. I thinkmy favorite fender model Ie ver owned for playing ajzz with a humbucker guitar was the silverface pro reverb I owned briefly but I also really liekd my balckface bandmaster in that role, it was bitier than the similar pro reverb.... the Twin and Super Reverb are really the all time jazz greats of the fender line though.

but but... knobs?

its taking forever for me to get through this due to total lack of free time, but so far I would say this is way funnier than lbini's little treatise on dealing with the majors as an indie band... maybe even funnier than Mixerman. I've ehard of this, but in all my years I've never actully read it. Thanks!

so you're saying that being the forst to do soemthing that irritates me cooupled to their ability to get what I assume were porcine noises from a depressive junky who wrote memorable tunes means I should respect them regardless of me general distaste for the whole idiom they apprently inspired?

I really don't know what squeal like a girl even means... when it comes to small children, little boys squeal just as frequently and in teh same exact register.... if you mean 'little girl' in the sense of a petite young aldy? that's confusing.My wife was a diminutive 5'1" and did NOT squeal. EVER. not even when tied up and spanked. Moan? Scream? sure.... but tiny though she was, squealing never occured.

oh, dan, what brand 12AY7 did you buy? an EHX?

there's no explicit rule against shilling stuff on our forums (I once sold a vox ac4HW to another Moderator through the guitar forum and a couple phone calls and we all post our music on here once in a while for feedback or just a apt on the back) HOWEVER (and I love the conunction however), its pretty bad form to make your first post somewhere a sales pitch unless the site is explicitly dedicated to the sale of musicor booking engineers/producers/ programmers/etc. Where on earth did you come up with $1k as a price for a hip hop backing track? no, don't answer. Anyway, it won't kill you to go to the hello sticky in the general forum and introduce yourself and make nice with the regulars, moderators and admins.

whatever floats yourboat

The iron horse version 2 is great for distortion, however again its expensive like all of there pedals. Look at spending a cool 200 for a brand new one. Again, a good amp distortion can't be beat although you may have to drive your amp in order to find that sound.

while there are somemaster volume amps that sound good for amp drive, most sound ebtter with the amster wide open or damned close to it like the JCM800... so your almsot ebtter off just cranking something 50 watts or less comapred to channels switchers where both channels suffer unless you really trn up to get great dirt and wind up with a not-so clean channel... that's been my experience anyway. Unless you're talking Soldanos or soemthing simialrly expensive. But for that money I am happier with a Matchless. Fairly functional master if you nhave no choice, half pwoer switch, etc. If you need a cleaner tone you can run 2 amps and switch or use soemthing to add some hair out front and a little gain boost as most guys do. In that department I am really intot his whole aprallel thing and like the TC I emntioned. Given my druthers I like to use my ehad switcher with a whole scad of different amps hooked up like an IRL Line 6 POD LOL. Still haven't gottent o do that in a band setting, too much hassle to lug all thsoeamps.

Wish I could afford some of those pedals I've heard some walrus audio demos and they sound amazing.

most pedal demos sound amazing, get a good microphone, speakers, amp guitar and player all set just right and you're off... I will say this, overdrives sound pretty damned good these days in general and there's nothing wrong with old designs to begin with, the new ones are mainly riffs on the old ones anyway. The OCD is absed on the Voodoo Lab OD (not the spekle drive, the dscontinued OD). And that's not so far off from a DS1. Each version gets a little cleverer then the last and the component values get dialed in a little better for a response that jives with more amplifiers well... quite a bit of Walrus and EQD stuff in teh dirt camp is reptty openly based on other designs, just teaked or with tons of options. If you can wield a soldering iron it might behoove you to buy a bucket of parts and soe bud boxes and throw some pedals together for yourself.

and for the record right now my favorite pedal for low to mid gain dirt is the discontinued TC NovaDrive (though it also does great full bore distortion and borderline fuzzy tones)... a voodoo lab sparkle drive type TS9 thing with a modded proco ra, all analog, buffered or true bypass, digitall controlled so it has presets and can respond to MIDI messages and the drives can be stacked parallel or series in both directions. Its great when you start running them side by side with some clean blend into an amp that's just breaking up. You cna kinda add dirt and boost to real specific frequencies so it'll push an amp that's already breakin' up real well. If you don't have a tube amp you won't get o much mileage out of it and you're ebtter off with one of the many amp in a box pedals available now that can make any ampifier sound pretty rockin', but if you are running a loud non-master amp of the old style and want to go from a little hair into a well focused dirt that doesn't drop your low end then the Nova Drive is the shit. You cna really dial it in to suit, save the repset and forget about it. Even without a MIDI system you can have that push as well as blast off solo sound set up in rpeset mode on the 2 buttons so you can swap ebtween them and bypass and have 3 solid sounds going. I've not used anything better when it comes to various levels of dirt from one box. Wish TC still made this one.

changes the mid-bump from lower to upper mids by swapping a few cap and resistor values... very similar to the subs switch on some z-vex pedals or the 'bump' switch on the mxr custom-badass OD

1. Zaq, I was unaware that elgowelt had all those, cool! totally just DLed them all. Like much of the stuff I download I probanly won't sue it in anything I play for people, but still, super cool.

2. OP, apart from aquiring free samples form the web that you will manipulate in the hopes that you can make them sound original, why not get a mic hooked to your phone or score a second hand personal recorder like a Zoom or Tascam or evne just go grab a Boss Dr Sample and start making your own samples. You can just walk into any garage, garden shed, attic or absement and start creating amazing percussion samples by hitting and shaking all the stuff in the room, einsturzende neubauten style... got a cheap old radioshack contact mic? stick that directly on anything you plan to hit and sample that, it'll be different than putting up a 57 or a condenser, much different, mmore like running a drum machine direct into your mixer. Go crazy doing that stuff for starters... build up tons of percussion. It may not seem useful at first, but if you know what you're doing you'll get a lot of cool stuff out of it in addition to more conventional dance music sounds... be careful though, a little clanging metal goes a long way!

when the blacktops came out I tried a bunch of them, the strat included and didn't like any... I really wanted to like the jazzmasyer, but I didn't. Dogs

Billions and billions of decibels.

I've used the hubble audio once as a drone source in a remix...

wow, 2 short scales... bold! what about a mustang or a duo sonic or something? I love the msutang, stock or modified, but I can't get out of first position ebcause the itty bitty neck ahs such cramped frets so I won't buy one... been tempted though!

https://youtu.be/oTScclm7NDs

shrimp ring, ahahaha

here's the EP:

https://shrimpring.bandcamp.com/

I tried it and I really like it... haven't kept it in a mix yet though, but I iamgine it will be just the ticket eventually.

soundtoys!!!!!!! did you get their new plate reverb yet? free!

just did soem lsitening, ic an't speak to the ambient piece, I think the piano is muffled and weak, but maybe you wanted it to belnd into the otehr sounds, its ambient music... the otehr one that you said was a pop song? Its hard to say... there's not much more sound in it than the ambient piece. I wouldn't have mixed it that way but nothing jumps out and hurts my ears either. If you gave me the pop song to mix professionally I woulda probably made the drums towards the end pop more and less muffled buts till in the background... the vocal is brutally overcompressed, but people do that and I guess the pp song is remix? You probably got the vocal all rushed to death like that. I think the piano sounds over-EQed, but tis probably a plugin, right? maybe it came that way and you left it flat? If that's the sound you were working with and you liked it then its fine. You don't really have enough music for me to give any advice. Ic an't tell what you're about.

its a great piee... and you're already going to die an old man with unpaid music gear debts... soooooo

they really wanna get rid of those Model Ds for some reason... still back breaingly expensive, you lucky bastard

I became an SG standard fanatic a little before my sonw as born. If you cna find a good one and you're willing to change pickups if the 490s aren't to your liking its a MIGHTY guitar for ALL genres and gets REALLY heavy. Stock it'll do stoner rock, you might need a bridge pickup mod for metal... SGs are also light, although you might have to try a number of them to find one that plays for you, sounds right unplugged (a good one will sing acoustically) but that doesn't have the ehadstock dive when you release the neck standing up. The current SG special isn't bad if you get a gloss finish model. Older ones tend to be better whereas I think the SG standard of the last 10 years has really hit a peak in quality...

I have a lot of otehr guitars too... I really like the Yamaha Rev Star and should spend soem time with mine again soon.

if I culd only ahve one single coil guitar it'd be a Tele of soem kind... I love teles evne though i grew up a strat guy. I ahve TONS of teles. Always do. They just pile up and whenever I sell a few more turn up? They're breeding. I have some strats too though.

my favorite higher output humbucker is the seymour duncan 59/custom hybrid... its mismatched coils, half PAF clone, half custom model (Van Halenish) sharing an A5 magnet. Its medium-high output and has very complex mids and an openness lacking in soemthig like a super distortion. Can rock HARD. easily overloads non-master marshalls and vox front ends when compared to traditional output humbuckers without that congested, voerwound humbucker sound.... or less of it. Generally in humbuckers I like old gibson stock humbuckers. PAFs, Patent#s? Great if you cna afford them orfidn a clone that soudns like you want... but I have a lot of T-Top hubuckers in my guitars. THey are tough and eman sounding. Lowest output bucker gibson ever made... although PAFs were supposed to be pretty low output. They ahve a short alnico5 bar versus the long abrs in earlier gibson pickups and current ones. So a lot of little changes give them a mean rockin' sound that cleans up well and ahs a lot of sparkle and bite for a bucker. A lot of peopel don't like them ebcause the coils are well amtched and they don't have the PAF 'vowel overtones'. but for rhythm work they just kill... think mid-period zeppelin. When pagey's bridge pickup died on his #1 LP he sent it abck to gibson and they isntalled a T-Top. He eventually ahd duncan rewind it (whole lotta humbucker) but I like that tight and bright t-top sound. I'm not even a Zep fan LOL

I wouldn't use cans for lows, there's no air space for the waves to develop... and your bass is split whacking into both ears and there's no real 'center'. I am really anti headphones for mixing. Others disagree. I still know in my ehart they are rpetty well wrong in their thinking, but if theya re happy with their mixes that way, great. There are no rules, but the guidelines are absed on good science coupled with the experience of lots of talented people spanning the hsitory of recorded music. When headphone-mixers are not happy with their work but stilla advocate cans versus speakers I can tell the cans are the problem and they just don't want to admit it. Many people will hear your music one arbuds, but a speaker mix translates well to ear buds while a headphone mix is maybe not going to be so hot on speakers. We're not raised hearing msuical sound right enxt to our ears. We are used to it coming out of speakers when we're little, even if those are TV speakers...

Genelecs ARE JBLs

your bed cover will only absorb high frequency energy and not much more... you don't really want to absorb anyhting but bass though, that'll sound as weird as having reflections that cancel the direct sound... you want to DIFFUSE. You trap bass and diffuse mids and highs... not important... just don't waste your time with you bedcover unless you need to cover a window directly behind you and lack thick curtains. Glass needs more help with high frequencies than dry wall.

didn't mean to bust your balls... to me, electronically there aren't many passive pickup designs I would class as truly high output, especially when you look at the increased inductance and concomitant loss of treble and bass fidelity inherent in alrger coils of wire on the bobbins... its like robbing peter to pay paul. You get an output bump but not in every frequency range. And actives are generally very LOW output with a huge gain boost from their wonky preamp circuits... all descendents of the whacky Alembic Strotoblaster kit from the 60s/70s.

any time, glad you like the little tweak

you now have a little les gain than stock tweed bassman... the bassman is 2 chanels mixed at third stage (first half of V2) so each channel has half the 12ay7 followed by the high gain m12ax7 mixer stage whereas your amp is cascading both 12ay7 stages for less gain than the bassman. But with the stock 12ax7 those cascading gains tages are a lot more gain giving you a lot less usable sweep of the stock volume pot's rotation because its MORE gain than the circuit was designed for. Because of the way they implemented the tweed preamp in this amp as a single channel with a switchable extra stage for the drive circuit you have to choose between too much or too little versus Leo's original design. Given your taste I thought less would be more for you. Ideally you need a dual triode that's half 12ax7 and half 12ay7 to get a more classic 50s fender response, but I don't think you'll find a combo triode like that in current production (though that tube existed in the 50s and 60s if I recall correctly, google it).

I'm not a PRS fan, heel f death.... kinda voerly styled for my taste? more of an old hamer guy in that design school.

But if you can afford a new guitar, buy a new guitar!

and guitars aren't high or low gain, gain is an amplification factor... your guitar is a voltage SOURCE not multiplier, so the pickups might be high output (although in electronic terms only active pickups put out anything much voer 1 volt, and a volt is chump change electrically, that's why your amps eneds all those preamps tages to get signal to the power amp, dude).... when you tlak about 'high gain' guitars, just say what ya really mean, a guitar geared towards dirty sounds ;-)