Jump to content
Gibson Brands Forums

Big Tone Small Amps

Californiaman

By Californiaman
in The Gibson Lounge

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 99
  • Created
  • Last Reply
ledzep59

ledzep59

Posted
Posted

This is an excellent thread. I have a Fender stage 112 that has always done the trick for me since I was like 15. If I was going to do it all over again I probably would have bought a tube amp, but for a solid state it is very loud and has a very good clean sound (better than my Marshall MG). Great tips, though!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jefleppard

jefleppard

Posted
Posted
[YOUTUBE]
[/YOUTUBE]

 

I think this guy has a killer tone working...These amps sound great with humbuckers too. And I think that I've read sometime back the page used a Princeton in the studio...one of the Zep fanboys will jump in with an answer on that one.:-s[cool]

 

thanks for that. this guy's tone, coupled with his innovative playing is soooo tasty.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
gizeh68

gizeh68

Posted
Posted

i personally hate low-wattage amps in a band situation. I bought a VOX ac 15 and have regretted it to this day. They just don't stay clean. In order to crank the volume loud enough to be heard, you kill your clean headroom and have a purely overdriven amp.

 

I have plenty of dirt pedals to make my tone overdriven. But the majority of the stuff I play is clean, and my vox just sounds dirty all the time, never clean. I'm trying to sell it but no one wants it... because it doesn't do clean. I'm going to have to get probably a Fender hot rod series, something with at least 40 watts -- plenty of clean headroom.

 

my only solution was a fulltone fat boost pedal. it makes me louder, but retains a bit of clean, more so than simply increasing the volume on the amp. It helps, but not really enough.

 

 

But if I never left the house, if I never did shows, then it would be the perfect amp.

 

 

I've never gigged' date=' so just out of curiosity...

 

Can you really pretty much just mic up a small combo if you're playing a larger gig? I mean, I'd imagine that, say 15W or so would be fine for anything from clubs up to medium-sized auditoriums even without micing it, but...I don't know. It just doesn't sound right to me.

 

I mean, if you can mic a small, low-wattage combo for a large gig, why would Brian May need a wall of AC30s? Why would Kerry King need a wall of JCM 800 cabs? Why would anyone need a 100W amp? Is it just because it looks cool? Sorry about my ignorance. Maybe I'm just not thinking about it right...

 

It's just that, if you can really just use a small, low-power amp for any gig, I'd be pretty pleased with that, and I could spring for that Fender Blues Junior 15W combo without feeling weird about it, or thinking about what-ifs.[/quote']

 

You can mic a small-wattage amp, but you have to make sure your monitoring is adequate. In a live situation, a small-wattage amp is going to be drowned out by everything on stage so the mic feed needs to be boosted enough in your monitors to be heard.

 

You also have to remember that the reason why people use AC30's is because they sound so flippin' sweet. they have 10 tubes in them, 4 for the power section, 5 for the preamp, and one for the phase inverter. 10 tubes versus 4 in my AC15 makes a huge difference. All of those tubes are adding subtle harmonics and tonal characteristics that amplify one another, making the tone deeper and richer. There's just no substitute.

 

And one more thing you have to consider: People use a "wall" of amps because they use all of the amps for different reasons. For instance, Clapton travels nowadays with four Fender 57 Twin amps. All four are on during a show, two are active, two are backups. He doesn't use pedals for distortion, he uses one amp for clean tones and one amp that has the pre-amp cranked for overdriven tones with an A/B footswitch to change between the two. And, if one amp blues a tube during the show, he hits another footswitch that sends his signal to the two back-row amps.

 

Most artists do this, have multiple amps for multiple sounds, plus backups because tubes run very hot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
brundaddy

brundaddy

Posted
Posted
i personally hate low-wattage amps in a band situation. I bought a VOX ac 15 and have regretted it to this day. They just don't stay clean. In order to crank the volume loud enough to be heard' date=' you kill your clean headroom and have a purely overdriven amp.

 

I have plenty of dirt pedals to make my tone overdriven. But the majority of the stuff I play is clean, and my vox just sounds dirty all the time, never clean. I'm trying to sell it but no one wants it... because it doesn't do clean. I'm going to have to get probably a Fender hot rod series, something with at least 40 watts -- plenty of clean headroom.

 

my only solution was a fulltone fat boost pedal. it makes me louder, but retains a bit of clean, more so than simply increasing the volume on the amp. It helps, but not really enough.

 

But if I never left the house, if I never did shows, then it would be the perfect amp.

 

You can mic a small-wattage amp, but you have to make sure your monitoring is adequate. In a live situation, a small-wattage amp is going to be drowned out by everything on stage so the mic feed needs to be boosted enough in your monitors to be heard.t.

[/quote']

 

I hear you 100%. I have a hunch the guy on the Princeton video plays all mellow music all the time - and he keeps his volume on 10 to cut through. It totally depends on your application. I doubt that amp could compete with a rock and roll drummer who hits hard.

 

Fender can be hit or miss when it comes to clean headroom (in my experience anyway), so make good and sure you test drive plenty of em extensively/loudly. They're famous for that 'slight breakup.'

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Riverside

Riverside

Posted
Posted
Interesting. Was it easy?

 

I built into a Hammond 10x8x2 chassis - so I made it tougher than it had to be. From all I read about it, I knew I didn't want to use the PCB that's being sold, and I had a small piece of tag board. If I did it again, I'd leave myself a little more room.

 

Otherwise, it's a very simple design with a cascode gain stage. It make some very cools sounds, all the way from crystal-clean to spaceship overdriven gain. You can also configure the controls to push preamp distortion, power tube distortion, or both.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Bender 4 Life

Bender 4 Life

Posted
Posted

My current rig for practice/recording...........

I'd mic it in a N.Y. minute if I still gigged.........

5w Dual Triode

1xECC83

1X12BH7A ( my WTF? oddball tube[biggrin] )

ISF knob for Bassy/Middy American tone........ Trebly Brit tone, or anything in between.......

Driving a 1x12" Fender/Jensen cab. (that I already had)

 

MEGA tone, without breaking the bank, OR my eardrums.

GarysCam104.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
RichCI

RichCI

Posted
Posted

Eh... depends on who you ask. To me, small is around 15 watts or less but even my 5 watt Champ is too much for an apartment dweller like me. With my band, I use a 100w Mesa through a 2x12 cab - not because it can be screaming loud, but because I can take it up loud enough to where the power tubes are compressing a bit but the amp still has enough headroom where I can still get that fat Strat "bloop" without it feeling too compressed. I admit it - I'm a big fan of master volume and preamp overdrive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
milod

milod

Posted
Posted

Okay....

 

My first amp was a Fender Deluxe Reverb. One of the more dumb things I did in my guitaring career was swapping it for a big mamajama tube combo amp that weighs twice as much, will blast out walls and kill small children at 400 yards, and is way too heavy for me to feel comfortable carrying.

 

The DR was fine, fine, fine - but ... nah, I don't wanna spend that much nowadays for a cupla reasons.

 

That was in the '60s that I had the DR, and lemme tell you, there were rock gigs in auditoriums where I'd get home 2-4 hours later and still couldn't really hear the water running in the shower - and I was in the shower.

 

We didn't have access at a decent price point to the quality of PA systems that is now available. So we got a tube pa with some 10-12-inch speakers, my amp, a Bandmaster and Bassman and we'd still hurt people's ears.

 

Nowadays I'm using a 35-watt Kustom acoustic amp that has about the same degree of versatility as the old DR.

 

Two plugs for two channels - one for a mike and one for guitar. It's not 35 tube watts, but it's more than loud enough for what and where I'm pickin' nowadays. Doing a jazz/rock solo guitar it fills a 500-seat theater well enough. A couple of outdoor things had it plugged from the line out jack to a PA board or was miked, depending on the sound guy's prefs.

 

I think the "look" of the big amps is the big deal, not the sound. Nowadays PA systems are far better at far less cost in "real" dollars.

 

I'd say buy the amp for the sound, not the noise, at least up to a point. It should have a line out nowadays, so use it if necessary. Otherwise, figure on getting a decent PA and plug your amp's line out into it.

 

I can use the Kustom - and used the DR - to run a mike and guitar with separate controls for solo gigs. That's enough for what I do in most places, including a theater. In a "small" outdoor venue I think the big tube jobbie with similar inputs and controls would handle a small park. If I needed more that those two, or if I only had the little one? Yup, I'd get a PA stedda a replacement "twin."

 

Were money irrelevant but my back still doing the lifting? Yeah, I'd probably replace the DR and have a "line out" and maybe another control added and... <grin>

 

m

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 5 months later...

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...