For all the bass player out there I though this new little amp form Ampeg was a pretty cool piece of gear. Fairly practical also.
Tag Archive for 'amps'
Tech 21 has come out with there character series. If you are not that familiar with Tech 21 there are the company that came up with the SansAmp which was one of the first and most successful amp modeling products. They have a pretty good rep. You have a lot of choice when it comes to amp modeling these days both hardware and digital but these are worth a look. If modeling hardware like this though needs to go out to a transparent system for them to work well in my humble opinion.
Metanonix makes “different” gear. Different meaning insane. N.O.S in most cases means “vintage” or “classic” in their case once again means insane. They have out done themselves this time with the G-1000. Pricey and probably not very practical but defiantly original.
From the site:
There is nothing like the G-1000. Not even vaguely. It is arcane and radical. It is 100% vacuum tubes, from input to output. It contains 100% new-old-stock (NOS) tubes. Types never seen in guitar amps.
The G-1000 consists of two totally independent amplifiers, with very different preamp sections. One channel is called the HAPPY channel. The other is called the ANGRY channel.
For damn good reason. One sucks your face, the other gnaws your foreskin off.
The HAPPY channel is a more-or-less conventional instrument amp. It has plenty of gain and distortion (if desired), it has a conventional guitar-amp tone control section, and it has reverb. Everything else about it is DEVIANT. It has a PHASE control, which allows mixing of normal and inverted signals—or it may be adjusted to cancel out the original signal and pass only the distortion products….and, it’s all made of unusual tubes. Mostly pentodes, ha ha ha.
The ANGRY channel is well-named. It is designed for instability and raw, berserk distortion effects. It, too, has typical guitar-amp tone controls and reverb. It uses a 6BN6 and two remote-cutoff pentodes. Ask your mother what those are. She’s already tasted your foreskin anyway.
Despite the identical output stages of the two channels, they sound TOTALLY different. In ALL settings.
The output tubes are 6BK5s. Obscure, yes, but great and forgotten. Phase inversion is done with 6GU7s. Various types are used throughout the preamp stages: 6AU6, 6BJ6, 6CB6, 6BN6, 5BQ7, 6AK5, and others. No 12AX7s, of ANY brand. How many tubes? TWENTY-THREE tubes in total. Including eight 6BK5 outputs. It might be the most complex tube guitar amp available today….
The output tubes are in a special self-balancing, self-biasing circuit. It is unique to the G-1000 among guitar amps. It does NOT NEED matched tubes, nor is any kind of bias adjustment needed. Output power is 15 watts per channel, and two speakers (or a stereo speaker) are needed.
Vast ranges of tone are available from the G-1000. We cannot even begin to explain its flexibility. The G-1000 is NOT intended for middle-aged “tone questers”, who believe that they will be able to play like Eric Clapton by simply spending a lot of $$$ on equipment. We HATE those people. The G-1000 is intended for the intrepid experimenter, not the pathetic imitator. Tone questers are invited to DIE.
No, you moron, it’s not available in combo form. Head only.
Speakers are available from other suppliers.Artwork on the amp’s front panel by Dave Lovelace, of “Retarded Animal Babies” infamy. (http://www.umop.com)
Oh, the amp’s name? The idea came from Mike Brown of Livewire Synthesizers. Blame him. (It came from one of Dave Lovelace’s cartoons. Yes, the Fucking Fucker is a real, live cartoon character. A super-villain, come to think of it.)
G-1000 is made on a custom basis only and should be available in late 2008. Expected retail price is US $ 5000.
Some how I have missed this Blackheart BH5H for a while. They claim it is “Desperately hoping to be modded.” It makes me want to get my soldering iron out. Of course it is just a Epiphone valve junior with a few bells and whistles. Most of those bells and whistle were mods thought up and employed by the amp tinkering community that rallied around the first EVJ’s. Some might find ‘em cheesy but I even like the tattooish graphic and color scheme.
Line 6 is the US distributer of Propellerheads software and Reason 4 came out yesterday. Last week the announced the there new X3 versions of the super popular POD model effect boxes. Which you should be able to get your hands in the next week or so. They also just anounced the TonePort™ UX8 which is a 8 input audio interface with all the Line 6 modeling power added. And if that is not enough Line 6 teamed up with Bogner to create a new series of valve amps not surprisingly named the Spider Valve. These also should be available shortly.
I saw this over at Music Thing. There is more info on at Vox. I still like my Ruby but there are still pretty cool.
I was looking up info on DIY L-pads & attenuators because I could use a little less volume at home sometimes. I found this creation the Ampwell House Guitar Amp Attenuator I definitely dig the design aesthetic. I had forgotten the utilitarian goodness of the empty coffee can.
L-pads are easy attenuators to build. And being in between the speaker and output transformer the are great for tube amps. You can keep the volume down enough to keep you spouse from killing you or the neighbors calling the cops and still have the wonderful overdriven sound of a saturated power tube and OT. The is some tone and definition loss especial at low low power. There is not really a substitute for a speaker moving a lot of air. Put it still is better than for some than using a solid state or that master volume knob(you just can’t get power section distortion with it turned down.)
Here is some info on L-pads & attenuators including some calculators to pick the right resistors:
Weber
BCAE
Guitar Nuts Amp Myths (a must read covering more than just attenuators)
Amptone Attenuators FAQ
Wikipedia
You can also great L-pad ready to go from parts express. They are basically supper duty potentiometer. For those need a 4 ohms L-pad a 8 ohms stereo wired in parallel will get you to 4 ohms. There are intended for Hi-Fi speaker balancing but work perfectly for guitar amps. The can mount in almost any kind of enclosure(like coffee cans.) You should get one with a higher wattage range than you need.
There also are some great commercial attenuators that try and combat the tonal loss:
Weber
Hot Plate
Marshall Power Brake
Koch Load Box
I found the Tiny Trio cool but complicated guitar amp sim pedal the same place I found the Juicy77 in a the earlier post. It may by of interest to all you DIY’ers. Sounds pretty good but probable not the easiest build in the world.
I found these free plugins from BTE Audio. It was a complete accident one of those serendipitous search events on the Internet. Anyway I downloaded them and tried them out just a little. The are pretty good. I am not sure the world needs another Tube Screamer clone digital or otherwise but the TS Secret sounds like a overdrive pedal alright. I compared to the Simulanalog TS clone and it was pretty similar. The Secret sounds a little more “alive” maybe be dependant on the sound going in but it has a gui witch gives it an edge.
I liked Juicy77 best. I got some good sounds from it immediately. It is simple yet versatile. My kind of thing. It has the controls to give you tweakability but doesn’t go overboard. Despite being referred as a high gain amp don’t think of it only as this on goes to 11 kind of thing. Good clean sounds are there also. I am assuming it is based on the Gibson Vanguard GA-77 which had a high gain channel (lead button on the plugin.) I am not sure how closely it modeled on the GA-77 spec but even if you are not familiar with the GA-77 you might be with a Vox AC30. The high gain channel on the GA-77 is the same circuit as the brilliance channel on a AC30. How much the same read this. The speaker simulations are good but I like the fact you can turn them off. Nice detail. All around pretty cool.
more valve junior or the little amp that could
It is also is shipping with better tubes. Reportedly a jj el84 and a electro harmonix 12ax7 though i think it would be a good idea to experiment and you always should have back ups.
They changed a bunch of components also. The voltages are more under control. Before doing any mods I think it would a good idea to check and see what components are on the board first. A lot of the evj mod lists are outdated now. Some of the parts swaps no longer need to be done.
I enjoyed fixing mine up and am planning on getting another one. The improvements bummed me out at first but that was not too smart. There are still improvements to be made and now less time and money can be spent fixing problems that now can be used shaping the tone more to your liking.
I am very happy with my amp after the ot, tubes, and marshallized mods. The only thing I am still thinking about is adding a simple gain knob. I like the simple one knob look so maybe i throw it on the back i am not sure how practical that would be. the are more things to do fr sure but i am not that motivated to change anything when i like the sound. I shouldn’t mess with it because I like it but I am just itching mess with it. I think I have to get another. I would like to Fenderize one & you can’t beat the price.
A few final thoughts:
I really don’t think those bit-mo kits are a great idea. They’re expensive considering the price of the parts and have not read that flattering of reviews of them. You can do the same things more customizable and cheaper with readily available parts and information. There are better things you can do in my opinion also. On my last evj post I mentioned the mercury magnetics kit and it got a lot of clicks. I hope it was out of curiosity. The price is obscene and from what i have read from very knowledgeable people it is actually ill suited to the evj. I have not heard a sample of the amp for a buyer though. I can’t imagine there would be to many takers at that price. With the improvements now to the new version(and not having to buy a ot) you really could have a smokin’ little amp(s) tailored to your tastes for very little dough. If you need any info it is probably at sewatt.com
some useful ejv links:
sewatt
valve junior 101
turret boards
s2 amps