Properly overdriving a tube amp

[mathias]

I've never really had tube amps that I could crank. What should I do to dial in sweet overdriven sounds? Or rather, how to get the best sound out of my amp? I've only got treble & bass EQ knobs, and I keep those fairly low. No separate gain on my amp, so it's just crank the volume and hope the neighbors don't complain.

Typical amp knob setup: (left to right: volume, treble, bass knobs)


Reference sound: Nels Cline (the dude playing the Jazzmaster) at 2:09
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r8onitYt9c[/youtube]
Granted, he's playing an amazing Jazzmaster (pretty sure his is imbued with secret magic) into either a Crowther Hot Cake or a Klon Centaur into a vintage JTM45 (pretty sure that's what he was playing on this tour, I'll check the DVD again.)
Edit: Nope, he's playing the Schroeder DB7, which Schroeder designed with Nels in mind, to be a loud 45-watt clean amp with high headroom. It uses 6L6's while my amp has EL84's. The DB7 does have a "boost" knob that may work like a top boost -- there's not enough info online to let me know. Because of this amp, I'm guessing most of the sound is from pedals driving hard. Sadly, the cameraman in Ashes of American Flags is like most music doc cameramen: he never gets close to showing the guitarist when he's doing important stuff like switching pedals or playing a solo

[Noise...]

[Officer Bukowski]

Crank it or spank it.

[mathias]

I can't crank it, in my current living situation

[Officer Bukowski]

Attenuator?

[devnulljp]

Get a decent attenuator -- a proper power soak, not one of those $20 volume pot in a box that some people like to call attenuators. Then you can crank your amp and not blow out your ears.
I've got a Ho attenuator, so I can crank my AC30 at home when my 5 year old is asleep.
Works great -- the Ultimate Attenuator is the same design. Weber makes some cheapish OK ones too.

[mathias]

Just got notice that my Weber MiniMASS 50w shipped. It has a headphone tap, which will be perfect for playing and the neighbors not hearing it! This is the best attenuator for the money given the tech it's using, IMHO.

[Psyre]

Let us know how you like it, and maybe post sounds clips??!! I am thinking about getting one as well.

[mathias]

Let us know how you like it, and maybe post sounds clips??!! I am thinking about getting one as well.

Not sure what clips would show it doing. My Ampeg has yet to prove that it can actually get overdriven at any volume. Otherwise the demo may just show a quiet amp. but I'll try.

Edit: Related:
I'm thinking about a mass sell-off of my gear to finance buying an amp that has a master voltage control built in. Something like the 65amps Lil' Elvis or Tupelo, both of which are kind of American-sounding and can get bedroom-level quiet while still rocking out. They're just expensive hence considering selling everything off to get one.

[univalve]

Edit: Related:
I'm thinking about a mass sell-off of my gear to finance buying an amp that has a master voltage control built in. Something like the 65amps Lil' Elvis or Tupelo, both of which are kind of American-sounding and can get bedroom-level quiet while still rocking out. They're just expensive hence considering selling everything off to get one.

the 65 stuff is sounding fat and huge. i played three of them in our rehearsal space: soho, lil'elvis and london. lil'elvis was my favorite. awesome tremolo and great sound (only one!).but to my ears all of these amps are set up a bit too fat for a band context... and for your idea with the master volume: i liked the sound of the lil'elvis when master was full cranked. if you turn it down it looses the intensity and gets flat. those amps love pedals in the front.
tupelo is interesting, 'cause it has 6V6. That said, 6V6 are more bassy than EL84 (lil'elvis). I'm not sure if the amp needs this...
but nevertheless 65 amps are top notch. there is not much better out there. just different tuned.

btw, i have very good experiences with thd hot plates for playing amps at volumes that don't kill you. for me this works at home quite good (yes, it sounds not that good as if there was no hot plate).

[mathias]

I got my Weber MiniMASS 50watt (with headphone tap added, and it has a line-out to go to laptop or whatever for silent recording) but my phone is refusing to take pictures until I fix something with the SDcard.So for now just imagine this thing on top of my Ampeg amp! Going to rock out when I get the chance.

[htsamurai]

I believe this is the technical terminology

[hbombgraphics]

My Ampeg has yet to prove that it can actually get overdriven at any volume. Otherwise the demo may just show a quiet amp. but I'll try.

.

I had an amp like that
Plush Tube head and 2x15 did not want to break up, even tried recording it in a seperate room because we couldn't handle the volume, but it just stayed clean and got louder.

One of the worst decisions to sell I ever made.

[mathias]

Image of my setup and some thoughts:


I cranked this amp in the guitar store for a few minutes but that's the only time I've heard it distorting. The Weber attenuator is actually a great match, because it has the treble cut switch (0dB, 3dB, 6dB) and I found that the attenuator is really killing the treble when it is really turned down (which I need for headphones.) So I can let a little more treble through with the treble switch on 3dB and it balances it.

That said, I don't know how to feel about this amp. Playing with the volume on 11 is way too distorted, so I've kept the volume at 6 or 7, which is right on the edge of breaking up.

Playing through my whole pedalboard, there's a number of buffered pedals at the end. So I found that if I kick in my treble booster at the front of the chain, it boosts into each pedal after it, but that buffer basically nullifies it; I'm not getting the same as when I unplugged things and plugged just my treble booster and OD into the amp. The Boss EQ-7 at the end of my chain can boost, so I tried that, but I'm not a fan of the Boss EQ7 boosting things, and I'll probably have to spend a couple hours EQing for the attenuator on the Boss EQ-7 to get it to sound good. Just a little tiny adjustment of 2mm or so on the sliders on the Boss makes it sound too boxy or too scooped to my ears.

I've been seeking that Fender-chimey-overdriving sound right around the 6 on the volume knob, and I can kinda get it. It's not quite that good sounding to my ears, and the germanium treble booster pushing it doesn't seem to help as much as I'd hoped. My Sparkle Drive with the gain up around noon is too much gain coming from the pedal; it's actually better to just use the Sparkle Drive as a clean boost by turning the Clean knob to 100%. Which is weird, but I guess the issue is that I'm distorting the signal one way with the opamps in the Sparkle Drive, then boosting that signal into the amp which is distorting it slightly differently, and it doesn't really "work" with this amp and pedal combo.

McSpunckle built me an And Aardvarks with some crazy clipping diode switching options so I'm hoping to run that in place of the Sparkle Drive, and hopefully get a much better tone out of the rig. I'll update when I've got the And Aardvarks.

The Ampeg's distortion when cranked is weird. It doesn't sound like either a Fender or a Marshall distorting to my ears. For reference, the Ampeg is two 12AX7's into two EL84's. What it sounds like to me (and I'll see if I can capture it with my laptop on the attenuator's line out) is sort of like Kevin Shields trying to play an amp that isn't properly EQ'd. Wall of white noise, no harmonics, and if the gain gets turned down a little bit, I'm back to clean chimey tones.

That said, the Ampeg has crazy headroom, and maybe I'll just continue to learn to play a chimey clean amp ala indie rock rather that looking for that classic rock / alt-country lightly-overdriven crunch that I'm after. And the Ampeg Jet 2R is still a great amp, don't get me wrong. I also have yet to try it with my single coil guitars, which may help. The SG's pickups are really really high output relative to me (I don't have anything with active EMG's or METAL BRUTALZ pickups.)

I'm a happy Weber customer (and I have a Weber 8" in my Valve Junior "cab" -- it has a dead tube amp, I use a solid state practice amp to push the sweet sweet speaker) so I'm eyeing their amp kits. They're cheaper than the Mojo kits that the Chicago Amp School class uses, and they look like they'd be great quality. Plus Weber makes a lot of the parts they're including. I have my pick of just about any Fender or Marshall vintage amp this way, and I can buy the head kit for most of them at $500, which is not bad at all. I have the space and experience to solder up a kit, I think. Seriously considering selling off 5-6 pedals and/or some other gear and building the perfect amp.

The amp I'm considering is this guy: https://taweber.powweb.com/store/6o100_ad.htm
It's sort of a mismash of Marshall amps into a modern and cool-sounding amp that they designed for "hard rock" in their words. I don't know if the Orange tolex is supposed to slyly suggest they slipped some Orange amp design in there too. It's also a lot cheaper to build this than to buy any Marshall 100 watt tube amp I've seen for sale. I'd pair whatever head I build with an Emperor cab. (Which would have Emperor's custom Weber speakers, haha)
But I've gotta do a lot more research.

[mathias]

tl;dr version: Amp doesn't sound good enough cranked & into attenuator: Do I spend more time EQing, get a new amp? Get new gain pedals? Help/suggestions appreciated!

Edit: I played with the amp tonight for another 3 hours or so with the attenuator (and tried putting it out through the 8" weber, attenuated, too, to see what that sounded like.) Turning up the treble on the amp a lot helps. (Had treble at like 1o'clock just to get back some of that chimey-ness at lower volumes, and to get more of an overdriven lead sound when the amp is cranked. At the edge of what I kind of hear as amp breakup (about 2o'clock on the volume knob, or 8 out of 10) I can boost with my Sparkle Drive cranked to get some lead sound, but it is still not there. Not nearly. And the chords are all wall-of-white-noise distortion, balls-less, doesn't sound like an amp being pushed, which is annoying.

I also discovered that even with the attenuator running turned all the way down, so that no sound goes to the speaker and so I could play into headphones, the speaker still is making some noise. Especially if I boost the signal with a pedal. This should be OK except for playing in the middle of the night, since it is about as loud as the volume on 1, (10%, or 8 o'clock on the amp's knob. Loud enough to hear things clearly through the speaker.)

Really looking forward to the And Aardvarks. Has anyone used an OD or boost at the *end* of their signal chain to act as a "second channel" / boost into overdrive territory? (even though that might introduce a lot of noise?)