How many have played/been in same room as a Dumble or Trainwreck?

[omahaaudio]

Expensive? Sure. But if you sold it now for $200,000 you'd have increased your "investment" by almost 175%/year.

 

[PARCO]

While others here have remarked about how clean Dumble amps are and that they have a good overdrive channel I'll say that aside from how good a Dumble sounds they have a certain response that I've rarely felt from another amp. When you really get it going it's like you can feel the tubes pumping and it's almost like the amp fights back a little. It's hard to describe but it forces something out of your playing. You are playing the amp every bit as much as you are playing the guitar. The only other amp I've ever felt this way about was a Marshall Major.

 

[Dan German]

I spent four years in the same room as a Trainwreck, but this isn’t the place to discuss the first Mrs. German…

 

[unixfish]

There are a lot of amps I have never played. When I say "played", I mean more than 5 minutes of low volume plinking in a Guitar Center.

I would still love to play a Twin Reverb (only low volume plinking), Super Reverb, Princeton Reverb (I just don't see them around me - go figure), anything Marshall, anything Vox, anything Dr. Z, etc.

Dumble? Nope. Get in line, buddy!

 

[chris m.]

While others here have remarked about how clean Dumble amps are and that they have a good overdrive channel I'll say that aside from how good a Dumble sounds they have a certain response that I've rarely felt from another amp. When you really get it going it's like you can feel the tubes pumping and it's almost like the amp fights back a little. It's hard to describe but it forces something out of your playing. You are playing the amp every bit as much as you are playing the guitar. The only other amp I've ever felt this way about was a Marshall Major.

I agree. My best friend, Danny Gill, is friends with Doug Doppler. Danny, Doug, and I all grew up in the Bay Area during the early metal scene that eventually led to the rise of Metallica, Testament, and some other seminal Bay Area metal bands.

Nowadays Doug does a lot of YT videos and gear-marketing/gear review stuff. Sometime in the 90s we went to his house in the Bay Area and it was filled with gear, including the Dumble in the video below. We set it up for a nice overdrive grind, and I have to say it sounded great and the response to player input and touch was pretty phenomenal. But I also agree on the Marshall Major, which I've played, too. I will also say that my black-faced '72 Super Reverb with CTS Alnicos has a similar, almost magical response to the player's hands. It won't get quite as distorted unless you goose it with an overdrive pedal, but man, when you do, IMO it sounds as good as the Dumble, for sure. I've also had this kind of semi-religious experience with a good Marshall JCM800, plugged straight in.

Doppler is a Marshall fan, and has said that he has never found a Marshall that he couldn't get a good sound out of, including the cheaper solid state models.



After a crazy touring life in a metal band in the 80s, Danny now makes his living doing guitar lesson videos for Lick Library as well as doing private guitar lessons, recording studio work, and the occasional side man gig. I took the safer route and focused on the day job, just playing guitar as my main hobby...

 

[Peegoo]

I've played through a Dumble and a Trainwreck. I sounded exactly like...

[drum roll]

ME

 

[Lynxtrap]

Oh, there is a poll?

Poll or troll, or perhaps both?

 

[sinecrafter]

Just curious, how many people have played or been in the same room (not with a band or at a concert, just the amp) with a real Dumble and/or Trainwreck. Honest question and not looking to start a war.

I've been playing guitar since 1990, and I'm pretty into the vagaries of amplifiers, but I honestly never heard of a Dumble or a Trainwreck before about 5 years ago, when I started rebuilding my pedalboards for both bass and guitar. I definitely have never played either, and I definitely don't feel like I'm missing anything. I've owned and played some pretty awesome amps in my life, and my current main guitar amp is a early serial number Mesa/Boogie F-50 narrow-chassis 1x12 combo, of which I am told by Mesa only about 400 exist. I have zero desire to own a Dumble or a Trainwreck, or any number of other unobtainium-grade amps that cost as much as all the gear I've ever owned in my life put together.

The three guitar amps at the top of my "would like to own" list are:

1. Groove Tubes Soul-O 45 1x12 combo. I stupidly passed on one of these for $650 used in mint condition about 20 years ago, and I will be kicking myself for the rest of my life for that mistake. As it happens, there are supposedly only about 400 of these in existence, as well. I actually could have bought it at the time, but it would have put a serious crimp in my finances at that particular moment, and I was forced to forgo it.
2. THD Univalve head. I used to own serial number #1031. I sold it because I needed money badly at the time, figuring I could one day buy another. These are built like tanks, sound amazing, and give endless possibilities for tube-sniffing.
3. Marshall Astoria Classic 1x12 combo. A modern take on a 30 W JTM45, top grade handwired turret board construction, and only made for about 2-3 years in the mid-late 2010s. It's the only Marshall amp I really want to own.

Beyond that, I have some ideas for custom amps based on mashups of Fender tweed and black panel schematics, with the addition of modern feedback, resonance, and output stage controls (triode, ultralinear, pentode). Like a single-channel 5F6A front-end matched to a cathode-biased 2x6L6GC push-pull output section with a single 12" driver, as opposed to the 1959 Bassman's fixed-biased and 4x10 configuration.

After three decades plus of chasing after a silly number of ideas about how to get "my sound", my tastes in amplification have evolved over the years to the point where I now prefer to have two (because I usually run a stereo rig) single-channel amps with no effects (because I get all my tone shaping and effects from pedals), with a gain range that goes from "clean pedal platform" to "low gain overdrive" in the 2x octal Class AB push-pull configuration of about 30-60 W output (powerful enough for as much headroom as I need for my tastes without being too untameably loud).

 

[ElvisNixon]

Poll or troll, or perhaps both?

Why do you say that? I put a poll up and said two different times that I wasn’t trying to start a flame war in my first post.

You came in and immediately questioned my motives for posting my topic. Then after I don’t justify myself to you, you call me a troll??

I would like to get a few more responses which so far have been well said and useful except for yours. Is it okay with you if I get a few more people to share their thoughts? Jeez.

 

[NoTeleBob]

<snip>
Anyway, I would like to hear from someone who has played or been in a room with someone playing a Dumble or Trainwreck. I’m not talking live at a club with a band. I mean in the room playing or listening to just someone playing. Not through a mic coming through studio monitor speakers.
<snip>

I've seen the very valid argument made that all the music we listen to now, except what we might hear live in a small club, is coming through a microphone. So that magic tone we're searching for out of an amp... rarely matters. We might even be better off with a modeler that simulates mic use.

It's an interesting point.

 

[Robert H.]

I saw Robben Ford years ago play through a Dumble amp. He sounded amazing. Fast forward to a few years ago - he played through Fenders I believe with peddles (probably his Zendrive was one) and he sounded amazing...and the same.

 

[Red Ryder]

Never played one, been around one, or even seen one. And there's no reason to spend a nickel on one. I'm happy with what I've got.

 

[Maguchi]

Just curious, how many people have played or been in the same room (not with a band or at a concert, just the amp) with a real Dumble and/or Trainwreck. Honest question and not looking to start a war.

It’s just an interesting topic for me (and I hope others). I have owned my studio since 1990 and was fortunate to collect vintage studio gear and mics when they were reasonably expensive for the times, but dirt cheap for what they go for now.

I think the room, mic, monitor speakers, compressor/limiters and lastly, EQ, I would say has way more difference in sound than the difference between say a nice modded blackface with gain and a Dumble. I have never recorded a Dumble but had the pleasure to record a Trainwreck Express and Liverpool (owned by the same player) in the late 90’s. I’m on the East coast and Dumbles generally seem to be less common than TW’s. I would guess that there were more Dumbles made than Trainwrecks?
I have also had the pleasure to record several different Cesar Diaz CD100’s which were Cesar’s version of a high power tweed Twin (what an amp!).

Anyway, I would like to hear from someone who has played or been in a room with someone playing a Dumble or Trainwreck. I’m not talking live at a club with a band. I mean in the room playing or listening to just someone playing. Not through a mic coming through studio monitor speakers.

Again, not trying to start a flame war, just trying to say that the recording and control room and signal chain makes a HUGE impact on the way any amp sounds. More so than the minutiae of the mods that Mr. Dumble did specifically for a certain client.

For those of you that are lucky enough to answer “yes” in the poll, What was the experience like?

My old guitar teacher use to have a Dumble head and single 4×12" cab, Don't remember if it was a 50 watt or a 100. He use to gig with it. I never played through it, but he played through it while giving me lessons. He had another combo amp that I played through during lessons. Don't remember what kind, but it wasn't nothing special. Never even seen a Trainwreck amp before yet, except for pics.

 

[uriah1]

I remember seeing a trainwreck in a shop years ago. Was less than $2k, but, I never heard of it
before..I didn't even try it.

 

[chris m.]

2. THD Univalve head. I used to own serial number #1031. I sold it because I needed money badly at the time, figuring I could one day buy another. These are built like tanks, sound amazing, and give endless possibilities for tube-sniffing.

I had a THD Bivalve. I tried a wide variety of tubes in it-- EL34, 6L6, KT66, KT88, 6550. The take home lesson for me was that the actual output tube didn't matter much at all. The amp sounded pretty much the same regardless of power tube, even when cranked up to presumably get those power tubes "cooking". I could hear differences when I changed tubes, but the differences were extremely minor.

As an analogy, a scrambled egg is going to taste like a scrambled egg regardless whether you put a little more or a little less salt on it. It will never taste like a hamburger. And vice-versa.

I concluded that the overall amp schematic is what matters-- the tone stack design, pre-amp design, and their order, for example. And of course the speaker(s) and speaker cabinet also make a tremendous difference. Since I didn't think it sounded all that special I sold it off without the slightest regret....

 

[Jakedog]

I played an ODS combo back in the mid 90’s. It was in a high end shop. My memory is fuzzy now, but I want to say it was on consignment, and they told me the original owner (before the guy who consigned it) was Joe Perry. It was a 1x12 combo, covered in black and white cow pattern stuff.

The shop guys were all “you have to play this amp, you may never get another shot to play one in person.” At that time, I was still fairly new to electric guitar stuff, and had never even heard of Dumble amps. To me it looked just like any other amp, but kinda like a square cow, too.

Well, I played it. I remember thinking at the time it was cool. Good sounding amp. Definitely didn’t sound bad. But I actually laughed out loud when they told me it was $6500.00.

Again, I was thoroughly ignorant of Dumble amps, and to be fair I wasn’t nearly the player I am now. Which still isn’t very good. . But I’d like to play one again sometime. I’m a lot more experienced now, I better understand how to “play” an amp, and it would be cool to find out what I think of one now.

My buddy has a Ceriatone ODS knockoff, and it’s a great sounding amp. For him. It doesn’t make the sounds I like to make. But I don’t know how close it is to an actual ODS, and which sounds we like and which we don’t is highly subjective and doesn’t really speak to the quality of those sounds.

 

[Brian J.]

does being in a room with the television on while someone famous played one count?

 

[sinecrafter]

I had a THD Bivalve. I tried a wide variety of tubes in it-- EL34, 6L6, KT66, KT88, 6550. The take home lesson for me was that the actual output tube didn't matter much at all. The amp sounded pretty much the same regardless of power tube, even when cranked up to presumably get those power tubes "cooking". I could hear differences when I changed tubes, but the differences were extremely minor.

As an analogy, a scrambled egg is going to taste like a scrambled egg regardless whether you put a little more or a little less salt on it. It will never taste like a hamburger. And vice-versa.

I concluded that the overall amp schematic is what matters-- the tone stack design, pre-amp design, and their order, for example. And of course the speaker(s) and speaker cabinet also make a tremendous difference. Since I didn't think it sounded all that special I sold it off without the slightest regret....

You're not wrong, of course, when it comes to the difference between tubes, but you won't be surprised to hear that I wholeheartedly disagree with your conclusion that the THD amps "(don't) sound all that special".

The differences between tunes may be minor, but they can also be significant. That's why my Mesa/Boogie F-50 rolls with Groove Tubes KT66HP power tubes instead of the stock 6L6GCs, and 12AU7s in the preamp instead of the stock 12AX7s, not to mention a Mesa/Celestion Vintage 30 instead of the stock Mesa/Celestion Black Shadow 90.

 

[Geoff738]

Hmmm. I guess I have a different experience with my THD Univalve. Different tubes sound quite different to me but I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say EL34s are Marshall’s, 6v6s do the F thing etc. In particular the EL84 isn’t particularly Voxy to my ears, even through a Blue.

I also happen to own a Grrove Tubes Soul-O 75. It can sound good or not, depending. It hasn’t been cranked up in years. Too loud, too heavy. Tried to sell it a couple times, to crickets.

Cheers,
Geoff

 

[Lynxtrap]

Different tubes sound quite different to me but I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say EL34s are Marshall’s, 6v6s do the F thing etc. In particular the EL84 isn’t particularly Voxy to my ears, even through a Blue.

That whole thing comes from people confusing the sound of different amps with the "sound" of output tubes. The truth is probably that the circuit and the speakers account for 95% of the sound, and the type of output tubes accounts for 5%, at most...