All those Marshalls on stage and what we're hearing is a miked up Fender Squier 15 hidden in back of a road case! I love it. Sounds good; looks like a fun band regardless of what you were playing through, but I can relate to expanding the role of SS practice amps.

Hey, if you have any Squire tone recordings, or whatever, that aren't up elsewhere, I started a thread in "Player's Corner" for stuff like that...post some stuff there!

Thank you for the suggestions. I will look into that and report back when I have progress.

A-ha, I see R220 and C208 now that you point them out. I do not know about Zobel networks or what they do, but had I noticed that the resistor and cap were present on both sides, I might've at least figured out that they weren't part of the tweeter circuit. Thank you for pointing that out.

I would still like to have the tweeter's output be variable from 0% to 100%; can an L-pad work with a piezo tweeter, even if it's "overkill?" I get that the switch would be the simple solution, but I wonder if I'd find use for the amp in certain settings with the tweeter "dimmed?" Is there another way to do this?

Nobody's taking a crack at this one, huh?

I'm asking because I don't understand the effect on output wattage the two resistors and the capacitor will have. I'm assuming they reduce the 40 watts available from the left-side power amp to something less before it hits the tweeter, along with acting as a high-pass filter, but I don't know this for sure. So I was wondering what wattage of L-pad to select.

And if anyone had a fairly short explanation of how the cap and two resistors filter out frequencies/affect the wattage, I'd be interested to learn that info.

Anyone?

I'm refining my long-titled post below into a new thread, after a thrilling and successful experiment.

I removed the tweeter from my Fender Acoustasonic Jr. and tried it as a slave, fed from my Peavey Audition 20's line out, and WOW!!! Exactly what I wanted! Using just the two 8" drivers, it reproduces everything good about the Peavey's gritty almost-clean sound, and it can get much louder.

But I may want to use it for an actual acoustic guitar or full-range portable PA again, so I think I want to install an L-pad in the back so I can adjust the tweeter level down to 0% for slave duty, or varying levels up to 100% for other duties.

Acoustasonic schematic:
http://support.fender.com/schematics/guitar_amplifiers/Acoustasonic_Jr_schematic.pdf

In the lower left of the diagram, more or less, you can see where the "HF horn" taps into the L speaker output with a 22 ohm resistor, a 47 ohm resistor and a .1 mf capacitor. I think I could drill a hole in the back of the chassis and install an L-pad and tap it into this HF horn feed...right?

If so, where in the HF horn's wiring do I insert the L-pad, in relation to the resistors, capacitor and the horn itself?

If the left side speaker is fed by a 40-watt power amp, how much of the wattage am I attenuating to the horn; in other words, what wattage rating of L-pad do I need to buy? Initial searching has shown me 8-ohm L-pads that look like big potentiometers an are rated at 15, 50 and 100 watts.

Thanks in advance.

Quote from: erokit on April 04, 2012, 10:22:50 PM
My friend plays a pedal steel through either a Peavey 400, or a Evans. Both have 15" speakers. He and his steel buddies have preferred 15" for a full range sound. Typically an EV?

With the 10" or 8" do you get more of a mid-range honk?

I think so; I tend to like to focus on the upper mids and some highs, since I play with my bare fingers instead of picks and like to accentuate the sliding steel glistening aspect of the sound (rather than the George Thorogood slide guitar beer commercial aspect). My lowest note is equivelent to a guitar's 3rd-fret G, plus the scale length is a lot shorter...not too many snappy lows to reproduce.

The biggest, best, full-range super-detailed lap steel sound I ever got was running my lap steel through my pedal compressor and chorus (just to split the signal, chorus switched off) into a SS red-knob Fender Princeton Chorus (2 x 8? 2 x 10? can't remember...think it was 65 watts stereo) and a Fender BX200 1 x 15 bass combo, together.

I ran through a pedal compressor into the Fender PC and cranked it as loud as I could without it breaking up or getting harsh...clean channel, waaaay up. Then I tried to do the same with the BX200, which required more EQ cuts to get rid of weird lows and lower mids from the 15 and closed cabinet. It wasn't as open/airy as the PC, so I ended up bringing it up until it made a noticeable volume increase without overpowering the PC sound and at that point my little off-brand 1940s lap steel was LOUD and BIG. It was like a lap steel superhero, for a few minutes there. They weren't my amps, but it was fun while it lasted.

Thank you!

I would like to send a line-level signal from one amp's 1/4" mono line out jack to another amp's stereo FX return, which is a single 1/4" TRS jack, with the tip being one stereo side and the ring (pretty sure, anyway) being the other. I guess the sleeve is common...anyway, I want to have this mono signal drive both sides of the stereo power section equally, and I'm really shaky on knowledge of line level signal measurements and impedance relationships in that realm.

I have tried plugging a mono 1/4" instrument cord into the TRS FX return partway, until I heard the signal coming out of both speakers. It seemed to work well, but I'm not sure if there's supposed to be some sort of transformer isolation DI signal splitter doodad you're supposed to use for this kind of thing, versus just connecting the two hot terminals of the TRS to the one hot coming from the source amp. Thoughts?

Do I need to post a schematic to get an answer to this question?

Quote from: phatt on April 06, 2012, 05:31:20 PM

Yes there are a couple of low quality clips posted here somewhere.
But not sure which ones.
Here's one I quickly whipped up while breadboard testing the Valve boost circuit.
I had to manually stop to engage the OD which was not set correct but no matter it gives the idea.

So the signal path is ; Guit > Valve > PhAbbTone > OD (DDC) > GEQ > Amp.
Delay is on the side chain built into the Laney and of course some onboard Reverb mixed in.

This is a direct line out recording straight into Cakewalk on my laptop with nothing done except MP3 conversion.
No doubt you can't hear the speaker influence but it's close to what you get.

Obviously a lack of bass if playback thru small speakers.

Guitar is the same elcheapo Casino strat copy,, LOL you can purchase these fake Scoils for about $15 AU each.
I also own another Strat which has genuine Strat PU's and those are just a bit darker.
I did have to wax pot the fake ones to stop them squealing but for a $150 Guitar I was impressed.

Have fun,, Phil.

Wow, that's nice and sparkly...very lively, and goes well with what you're doing on the instrument, which sounds like it's combining a lot of fretted notes and open ringing strings. I like the Bigsby-esque shallow trem-bar dives and quivers in there too.

I'm reminded of the Phantom, Rocker and Slick song "Men Without Shame," combined with Montrose's "Rock Candy" and various songs by Walt Mink. Cool tone.

Erokit: that's interesting about the watts/ohms relationship. Does it then follow that halving the ohm load increases the wattage by 31%, until the amp smokes?

I hear you about limiting frequencies; doing more with less, etc. I don't think I've followed that path to the extent that you describe, but I've gotten a lot of mileage in a full-band context with a little 12-watt Peavey...in the right setting. It was enough by itself for basement practices and it could cover live club gigs with one other similar sized amp (old tweed Valco 1 x 10, Crate GX15...I tried various things in that size range) to double the wattage and speaker area.

The right setting: a drummer who could play with attitude but didn't necessarily have to hit hard with giant sticks, a bass player who liked a middy sort of R & B tone from a smallish amp (sized to work with the controlled drum volume) rather than a giant megawatt thundering explosion, and an amplified acoustic guitar. Against that backdrop, a lightly distorted and sort of cutting tone could come through without having to be that loud. And by being cutting (some might say "thin," but I thought it was "good") it left room for the other instruments to do their thing without being too loud.

Once you experience a group of people who have that kind of awareness of what you're trying to do and operate with that kind of chemistry, it's addicting! It would be hard for me to go back to everyone having 100 or more watts and cranking them over monster drums. You can bring the rock at lower levels if everyone's on board with that concept.

Say, phatt, got any recorded stuff to post up in the thread I started yesterday in Player's Corner? I'd like to hear your rig in action, if you do...

Cool rig! I'd like to hear it in action. Is the Laney keyboard amp a 1x15 + horn/tweeter? 1 x 12 + horn/tweeter? How many watts?

I'm experimenting with an Acoustasonic Jr. as a slave amp and considering disabling the tweeter, adding an attenuator to it or just eqing excess frequencies out of the sound between the source amp and the slave. Does the graphic do everything you need for that, running your front end through a full-range amp?

A lot of good info here. I got a pretty good refresher on sweepable EQ cuts when playing with the notch filter on my Fender Acoustasonic amp the other day. Subtle but powerful.

FWIW, tastes as they apply to mix quality are very subjective. To my ear, sometimes a raw, live mix with a lot of room sound carries a lot of energy and is fun to listen to, which is how I reacted to the recorded clips. It sounds more like a gig and less like a modern (over)processed studio project. To me, at least. I guess it depends on what your ears are calibrated to.

Well, you've got some avenues to explore, which ought to keep you entertained for awhile. I'll readily admit that I probably wouldn't have been too receptive to my own advice in my first band, when I really wanted a rig the size of a refrigerator for the visual and sonic impact. But even if you're in that boat, hopefully trying some of this stuff (lowering the input gain a bit and compensating with boosting gain farther in the chain--to push the output section and speaker harder with a louder, cleaner signal--and lowering all the EQ values to regain some headroom) will work somewhat in the meantime, or keep you from having to buy anything.

Along those lines, try edging that contour knob (I forgot about that feature) juuust a little farther than you're comfortable with toward the mid-peak extreme and just live with it a while while you play in the band, and listen to its effect on your position in the mix. It might be the kind of thing that you get more comfortable with as you experiment. Or maybe not.

The issue with the amp is that it turns on and you can here the hum.Do you hear hum whether or not anything is plugged into its input jack? Does the hum increase/decrease in volume when you adjust the volume control?

Plugging the guitar and strumming a chord = nothing. Even with everything to the max.
Although slapping the pickup does produce a noise. Similar to what I would expect...

I have checked guitar cable, speaker cables etc so the problem I believe is with the head.

I'm no repairman and I may be overlooking something obvious, but it seems weird that strumming wouldn't produce a sound through the amp, but hitting the pickup would. You have tried this guitar through a known good amp, right?

 

"Mexi:

Since I posted I've spoken with some other guitar players and they pointed out some of the points you've made.  The closed/open back cab is definitely a factor.  And I'm definitely with you on the eq settings - right now my Amp settings EQ wise are Bass=10, Mid=8ish, Treb=4-6 (depends on the song).  Gain wise I'm at about 6 (out of 10) so I'm not maxed out and the way I've found sounds good is to put the MV at around 8 or so and control the level with the channel volume. "

I would suggest backing off that bass. You're probably fighting a losing battle (and eating up headroom) trying to get all that bass going. But the stuff people are going to hear offstage is not the pants-flapping low-end chunk (especially with a 1 x 12 open-back), however they will hear mids and highs, and that's where a lot of the tonal character resides anyway.

I have found that while it seems counterintuitive, sometimes small amps can make some righteous sounds if you run the eq knobs pretty low and slam the signal elsewhere in the chain. For example, I have a one-channel Peavey with pre and post gain, plus bass/mid/treb. With my single-coil guitar, with pretty low-output pickups, I can get a nice rhythm grind that's bright and cutting but not harsh if I run the bass on 2, mids on 3, highs on 4...but make up the gain by pushing the post gain hard, like 6 to 10, and then setting the grit level to taste with the pre gain...in my case, I like it about 6. This makes a surprising amount of noise from a 12-watt SS amp, with light speaker breakup but it sounds bluesy, not "about to catch on fire." A similar approach might work for you; try backing all the eq down and cranking the channel's post gain and master harder and see what that does. Maybe knock the pre gain back a number or two and see if shifting the gain boost later in the chain, with less in the EQ, sounds "rootsy and organic and cool" or just "stupid." Can't hurt to try it.

From the music you listed, I think this could work for you; none of those bands relied on large amounts of chunk coming from the guitars.

Keep in mind that the bass guitar and drums have physics on their side for producing low frequencies, and if you step out of that realm somewhat you are making it easier to hear them do their thing, while keeping your efforts in frequency bands your equipment's better set up to deliver. Again, even if the sound you get is not ideal to your ear when soloed, it's how it sits in the mix that counts, if you're in a band.

Keep us posted on how the experimenting goes. Maybe you'll find that you just don't like your amp, but if you can make it work for you it's cheaper and easier to carry...