Everything sounds fuzzy

DrewB · November 24th, 2006, 11:24 PM

Thinking through Charlie Frey's tonal woes and doing some non-internet reading got me thinking. It's been a long time since I plugged into two amps in parallel, so I revisited that tonight. The guitar is my '76 Les Paul with Seth Lovers, and the splitter is my '91 Arion SAD-1 analog delay.

The first combination was my 5E3 clone driving a Celestion G12K-100 in a Crate 1x12 and a dimed Marshall Studio 15 that I have modded quite a bit. The "minuses" of the individual amps were gone and I had a thick tone with a solid bottom and sweet top end. The spongy neck-pickup sound on the wound strings had a more distinct attack and the overall sound was enormous and rivaled my Marshall 50-watt head in volume. Wanna keep up with a loud drummer? No freakin' problem!

After a break, I parallelled my caned 5F1 clone driving the Crate cabinet and an Ephiphone Valve Junior head (3-position gain switch and tone control mods) driving a 10" Bassman replacement AlNiCo in my Marshall Lead 12 combo. The bottom wasn't as solid as the other amp combination, but a lot better than the 5F1 alone. The Valve Junior into the 10 in a too-small cabinet is not a sound I would ever use alone, but paired with the 5F1, it was really good. Again, the sound was really thick and sweet, and adjusting the volume of the VJ and playing with the gain switch and tone control made for all sorts of variety. I would think a guy would be able to gig this combination comfortably if he didn't need clean sounds. Add a Deluxe Reverb and an A-B box and you would have a killer clean / dirty channel-switching rig, but you'd need a roadie.

charlie chitlin · November 25th, 2006, 01:40 PM

Drew!
Could you explain how you put these amps "parallel"?
Also...I'm interested in seeing how my 5E3 sounds through 2 10's, but my 2x10 is 4ohms and the deluxe is 8.
Is that a problem?

DrewB · November 25th, 2006, 03:52 PM

My delay pedal is stereo, so I just send each output from the pedal to one of the amps. I tried my DD-3, but the "Direct" output neutered the Marshall (I'm not sure what that output is for, but I'm gonna find out.) so I swapped the pedal out. The next experiment is splitting the signal with my Line6 RotoMachine.

I'm not one to mismatch impedances between my amps and speakers and I'm not 100% positive which direction the mismatch is safer than the other. You're either pulling too much current from your 8-ohm OT if you run into a 4-ohm load, or you are okay because you're not impeding the signal flow as much. Not much help, am I? I'd like a definitive answer on this one myself...

stax · November 25th, 2006, 04:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by charlie frey

I'm interested in seeing how my 5E3 sounds through 2 10's, but my 2x10 is 4ohms and the deluxe is 8.
Is that a problem?

No problem going downwards to 4ohms, after all a lot of fenders have extension speaker outs which would mismatch anyway, but not advisable to mismatch upwards ie run a 8ohm load into a 16ohm.
I think i read somewhere its the opposite for transistor amps but i'm not sure.

November 24th, 2006, 11:24 PM	#1 (permalink)
DrewB Tele-Afflicted Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Independence, MO Posts: 1,086	Everything sounds fuzzy Thinking through Charlie Frey's tonal woes and doing some non-internet reading got me thinking. It's been a long time since I plugged into two amps in parallel, so I revisited that tonight. The guitar is my '76 Les Paul with Seth Lovers, and the splitter is my '91 Arion SAD-1 analog delay. The first combination was my 5E3 clone driving a Celestion G12K-100 in a Crate 1x12 and a dimed Marshall Studio 15 that I have modded quite a bit. The "minuses" of the individual amps were gone and I had a thick tone with a solid bottom and sweet top end. The spongy neck-pickup sound on the wound strings had a more distinct attack and the overall sound was enormous and rivaled my Marshall 50-watt head in volume. Wanna keep up with a loud drummer? No freakin' problem! After a break, I parallelled my caned 5F1 clone driving the Crate cabinet and an Ephiphone Valve Junior head (3-position gain switch and tone control mods) driving a 10" Bassman replacement AlNiCo in my Marshall Lead 12 combo. The bottom wasn't as solid as the other amp combination, but a lot better than the 5F1 alone. The Valve Junior into the 10 in a too-small cabinet is not a sound I would ever use alone, but paired with the 5F1, it was really good. Again, the sound was really thick and sweet, and adjusting the volume of the VJ and playing with the gain switch and tone control made for all sorts of variety. I would think a guy would be able to gig this combination comfortably if he didn't need clean sounds. Add a Deluxe Reverb and an A-B box and you would have a killer clean / dirty channel-switching rig, but you'd need a roadie. __________________ There is no substitute for Sound Pressure Level

November 25th, 2006, 01:40 PM	#2 (permalink)
charlie chitlin Friend of Leo's Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Bucktown, Pa Age: 47 Posts: 2,355	Drew! Could you explain how you put these amps "parallel"? Also...I'm interested in seeing how my 5E3 sounds through 2 10's, but my 2x10 is 4ohms and the deluxe is 8. Is that a problem? __________________ Nil illigitimi carborundum http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm...6-bf3537901a07

November 25th, 2006, 03:52 PM	#3 (permalink)
DrewB Tele-Afflicted Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Independence, MO Posts: 1,086	My delay pedal is stereo, so I just send each output from the pedal to one of the amps. I tried my DD-3, but the "Direct" output neutered the Marshall (I'm not sure what that output is for, but I'm gonna find out.) so I swapped the pedal out. The next experiment is splitting the signal with my Line6 RotoMachine. I'm not one to mismatch impedances between my amps and speakers and I'm not 100% positive which direction the mismatch is safer than the other. You're either pulling too much current from your 8-ohm OT if you run into a 4-ohm load, or you are okay because you're not impeding the signal flow as much. Not much help, am I? I'd like a definitive answer on this one myself... __________________ There is no substitute for Sound Pressure Level