might i suggest an Avatar cab?

The G110: available with the 16 ohm Celestion G10 Vintage. $189. plus $29. shipping.



http://www.avatarspeakers.com/

ORIGINAL: mike_mccue

ORIGINAL: pistolpete

Instead of ruining a potentially classic amp like a champ with some Frankenstein-like modifications. You'd be much better off using a high quality amp-sim equipment (line-6, Korg, etc.) It's more flexible, cheaper, more portable, more reliable, and less chance of electrocuting yourself. Also you won't look like some half-assed dork with a rig that looks like it came out of a flea market.

:-)

LOL - nice one Mike

Completely wasted on that imbecile though

LOL - nice one Mike

Particularly given that that dork got laid more in some weeks than I'll probably manage in my life.

Well, in the end, after much scraping and selling a couple other things, I made a move. Though, in the end, I had to really crank it down to the bare minimum. I ended up getting the Ephiphone Valve Jr. head/cab. It's a very simple design, not at all unlike the Champ designs, 5 watts, just a volume knob and that's it.

Since it is so simple, it's very amenable to lots of simple after market mods, which I may do some of, though the most recent ones have incorporated some of the ones that people were commonly doing, so it requires fewer of them. At some point I may replace the speaker with soemthing better. I got a better 12ax7 tube for it. I'll play with upgrading the power tube later perhaps.

And I got an e609 for micing, a TS9 tube screamer pedal, which will also act as a gain and tone device since this amp has no tone control, and a passive Radial A/B pedal that I will use when tracking bass, so that I can send in a DI signal through the P-1 pre-amp, and take the e609 through the Great River (or vice versa as the situation dictates.)

The whole thing was $554, no shipping costs, no local taxes. So that's stripped down to the bare bones, but it'll be a good upgrade. Considering I started out looking at $2000 solutions or $1500 solutions, that's a huge reduction in costs. I really can't afford even this, but I've worked like a dog all year long and haven't had any new toys of any sort since like Feb or so. And I really want to get the quality up a bit. Hopefully I can sell Amplitube, in which case I'll put that towards a new pre-wired faceplate for my Strat to get the tone much improved on that front as well. The LP has DiMarzio Virtual PAFs in it and it sounds pretty nice already, and should make for some good natural crunch with the Vjr.

The Valve Jr. is actually nice sounding little amp from what I've heard and read, at least in the most recent incarnations. It's going to be too loud to crank up fully for that natural crunch without some help. I'm first going to see what I can do with just building a pseudo ico box around it with bass traps. I have plenty of 3" and 6" traps laying around. If that doesn't work, I'll have to spring for oe of the Weber attenuators or something.

There have been three versions of the Valve Jr., so if you owned an earlier version, it wasn't as good an amp as it is now. A lot of the mods folks were doing have been incorporated. Also, did you have the combo, or the head? The combo of course has a wee speaker and would be limited because of that.

But there are still lots of inexpensive mods you can do it, and it's a very simple and pure signal path, which appeals to me more than the bells and whistles. I bought the standard set of replacement tubes that are so commonly used withit that folks sell them as a Valve Jr. tube kit (a Tungsol 12ax7 and JJ EL84), and suposedly they make a large difference as well.

I'll look into some of the other mods once I get it and get accustomed to it and see if I want to change anything.

droddey-
the model i had, i bought at the same time as the mini-
this was about a year and a half ago, for whatever that is worth to know....

it was a head, stock.

we ran both amps (bypassing the crummy little speaker in both) into a Avatar 2x12, miced with a AT4033, and recorded on Sonar for a comparison session.
we spent quite a bit of time experimenting with them both, and recording each.

i can say that the harder you push the Epi, the more flabby it sounds.

best to use it for low and medium gain sounds...

also, it works better to drive it set at low gain, with a boost of some sort, preferably, a clean boost along the orders of a Barber launch pad.

If it was that long ago, it was probably a V1. It's been much improved since then. One of the simple mods is a brightness switch that's easy enough that even I (a software guy) would feel comfortable doing. And of course you can use various pedals. I orded a TS9 Tube Screamer, which lots of folks use, either as a distortion pedal, or just as a clean drive/tone control for the amp. And the replacement tubes are supposed to make the breakup smoother as well.

I've heard your stuff of course, and we are probably shooting for a different sort of sound for the most part. I'm interested in something with a fairly vintage sound. Once I hear it and get a feel for it, I may opt to do the brightness switch mode, which is basically just for what you indicated, to remove more low end as the drive goes up. And it may be affected by the difference the speaker you used vs. what I'll have, so I'll see what it sounds like first and then see where I may want to go wrt to mods. Most of them are very easy and cheap to do.

Well I got it in today. I've got to go get some new strings and a 9v battery. I gave it a very quick test, just to swap out the pre-amp tube (new power amp tube won't arrive until monday) and make sure that it came up. It's LOUD. I'm definitely going to have to get the Weber attenuator if I want to do the cranked up natural crunch thing. With the LP it's REALLY LOUD because of the higher output pickups.

Definitely though, even with that quick test, and even with such a low cost amp, the difference between a real amp and a sim is obvious. It's hard to even quantify what the difference is, but it's clear. I've been working with sims for a couple years now since I got into this thing of ours, so I know that sound very well. You can definitely tell this is one of those 'all tube, very simple path' type of amps. Unlike going through a DI to a sim, every little thing is amplified. I'll have to get used to that, because every movement of the fingers on the strings and such is much more obvious.

I think it's going to be GREAT for bass. Either by itself, close mic'd for proximity effect, or further back for a brigher sound and mixed with a simulataneous DI'd input. I think it's going to add a lot of realism to the bass, and be a sound that I'm going to really like.

Of course this is all with way overly old strings (which was a good thing when DI'ing to avoid excessive high end), one tube still to replace, and just hearingit in the room, not what the mic is going to hear. So I've still got a lot of experimentation to do.

It does have a fair amount of low end, at least in the room. So I probably will do at least one of the simple mods to add a switch to roll off some lows when not wanted. I don't want to get rid of them altogether, because for a jazzy thing it would be great. And I want to hear awhat I can do with the pedal's tone control as well.

It's not like you can't do good work with sims. I'm going to have a good comparison because I just got finished tracking the basic backing tracks for a tune, and I'd worked hard on getting a good sound. I'm going back now and re-tracking them with the amp. So I'll have a real world tune, at least the core tracks of one, with the only difference between sim vs. amp. And I know the sim thing well, so the sims won't be getting short shrift, they'll have a fair chance, actually an unfair chance since I've never mic'd an amp before yesterday. I'll post the two versions for comparison.

On the other side of things, setting up to record is a major production compared to using sims. With the sims. I just plug the guitar or bass into one of the pre-amp DIs and put on the headphone, and I'm tracking. And it's hugely flexible in terms of adjusting after the fact. With the amp scheme there's a lot more to do and not nearly so much chance to change it after the fact.

So they both have their pros and cons.

I got the Bitmo Trio mod done tonight. A couple moments of semi-terror, but mostly it went quite smoothly, and I'm hardly a whiz with the soldering iron. It adds a three position gain swith plus tone control with boost (pull it out for boost.) And I've got the replacement tubes both in place now as well.

It really makes it a completely different amp, I have to say. Far more flexible. I've just played a bit with it so far, but clearly it's turned it from an uber-simple amp to a pretty dang flexible one. It also gets rid of the kind of farty tone and excessive mid-range. It's going to be a far better recording amp for sure, with a lot more range. I can lighten it up now for that soft, thin soul/funk sort of sound really well now, which I couldn't before at all.

I've got the Weber Mini-Mass on the way, so that I can crank it up for some more natural tube breakup, which will make a lot of difference I'm sure. Some of the new tones I'm getting, I can tell that if I could get it cranked up to light breakup with harder attack, it's going to be into a nice 'Little Wing' sort of territory with the Strat. With the gain switch on high and the boost out, and the ability to crank the volume, it's probably going to give some serious overdrive as well.

So, coming along pretty well, still for a quite minimal investment. The whole thing is still only at $400 with the Mini-Mass. I'll post some results before too much longer hopefully.

Hey Tom,
Thanks for those samples.
Could you give me your impression of the guitar sound in this clip?
NHISG
Thanks.

Hey Tom,
Actually I used this red Kramer on that song.
Never Had It So Good
You can see the Strat on the chair. I put in EMG's and went to volume only, no tone knobs.
This is the chain I used... Kramer>VOX>BeyerM69>Behringer DDX3216>ADAT out to PC.
The VOX is a modeler, but it has a pretty convincing sound, no?
I live in Renton...I'll have to stop your shop one day.

I think what's really hurting me now are pickups. I bought my Strat used, and the price was a little suspiciously low. It is an American Strat, but I'm suspicious that someone swapped face plates and put some el cheapo electronis on it. They don't sound paritcularly good. All of the replacement pickups that everyone seems to think are the shiz are $220 to $250 a set (Frailin, Lohlar, Kinman, Suhr, Duncan Antiquities.) That's as much as I paid for the amp, which I could barely afford.

Yeah,
I straighten out a JCM 800 100 watt lately, delivered it yesterday, and of course we had to lite it up.
Ouch!

can't go wrong with Bill Lawrence replacement pickups, many varieties..

http://guitarsbyfender.yuku.com/forums/11

http://www.billlawrencereview.com/L-500

http://www.billlawrence.com/