Here are some things to keep in your head when you are going out to buy your first guitar amp. There are different amps to suit different styles of guitar music. Blues, jazz and blues based rock are best served by the so-called "vintage" sound. This is the sound of the sixties, brought to the world by the likes of Led Zeppelin, Hendrix and Cream. You can get that authentic sound by getting yourself an effects program that can replicate many of the vintage amp sounds. For playing heavy metal high gain amps are the way to go. These amps give you greater distortion than the vintage amps.
Let's go onto the possibility that sometime in the near future you are going to be a professional or semi-professional guitar player. You will be getting paid to play the guitar on stage. People will enjoy hearing you play at your gigs but don't get the idea that your family will be enjoying listening to your guitar practice. The message here is to get a practice amp or an amp that's small enough to play through without making your family and neighbors mad. Either that or make sure the place you practice is separated by distance or thick walls from the rest of the world. If you must practice in your bedroom, get some headphones.
To use for practice or for small gigs you need a low wattage amp. It's best to go for a good tone so that your relationship with your amp will always be one of mutual respect. Don't let a guy in a guitar store sell you a big bad amp with a boatload of effects. You won't be needing any of that for quite a while, if ever. You will eventually become disenchanted with loudness but a good sound is a joy forever. So get a thirty watt amp and start working on being a serious musician.
The thing that makes the sound of your electric guitar into a nice tone is your pre-amp. You plug your guitar into it and it works on the noise from the strings to give it bass, treble and a number of other qualities that go into a great tone. You will find some pre-amps using MIDI technology to generate your tone. Using this kind of setup you can save your settings and access your preset effects with a pedal. It is best to get yourself a separate effects box. This will give you better quality effects and greater versatility.
Newbie guitar players are flocking to Guitar How-To for the free articles, tutorials and videos on every aspect of guitar playing you can think of. Fast track your guitar expertise now at http://guitar-how-to.com/
Showing posts with label Laney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Laney. Show all posts
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Friday, 23 October 2009
Make your own Tube amp, book review
This article is a book review on a series of six books that is the most comprehensive and lucid explanation of guitar tube amp architecture, circuits, tone, components and construction technique for DIYers I have ever found. The review deals with each book separately and recommends purchasing them in a specific order to grow your knowledge in step with your building experience.
Kevin O'Connor of London Power has created a series of books under the main title of "The Ultimate Tone." These books are truly unique and carefully tailored for the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) guitar tube amp hobbyist and boutique amplifier builder. The books have a home-made 'feel' as well... all the illustrations are done by hand and the books are photocopy-printed on 8.5″x11″ paper and bound with plastic spines and clear plastic covers. There are six books in the series now with the most recent being released in the late spring of 2008. You may want to buy the entire series all at once and get a modest savings, but I think you should consider buying them one at a time and digest as you go, building projects along the way. A key point though... you don't necessarily want to buy them in numerical order. I recommend the following sequence:
The Ultimate Tone Volume 3 - Generations of Tone
The Ultimate Tone Volume 5 - Tone Capture
The Ultimate Tone Volume 2 - Systems Approach to Stage Sound Nirvana
The Ultimate Tone Volume 4 - Advanced Techniques for Modern Guitar Amp Design
The Ultimate Tone - Modifying and Custom Building Tube Guitar Amps
The Ultimate Tone Volume 6 - Timeless Tone Built for the Future Today
The Ultimate Tone Volume 3 - Generations of Tone
This is the most important book in the series for the beginning tube amp builder.
Chapters 2 through 4 lay down the foundation of good DIY tube amp construction, filling you in on good electrical connections, grounding technique, lead dress and other wiring techniques, and mechanical layout including assembly methods like terminal strips, turret and eyelet boards.
The subsequent chapters each pick a particular 'iconic' amplifier, each iconic amplifier being a prototypical example of amplifiers of its class, and they are examined in detail as to the circuit topology, peculiar tonal characteristics that result and fatal flaws that the product is notorious for. Kevin provides the original schematics and then shows how you can apply the techniques detailed in the earlier chapters to improve the performance and reliability of the icon without harming the tone. The schematics are redrawn, layouts are provided and mechanical solutions are worked out to make each chapter a complete, self-contained, build-it-yourself amp project.
This process is repeated for several variations of the Champ in chapter 5 (this chapter greatly influenced my own single-ended amp project), then in quick succession: the Bassman, Plexi, 800, Bull Dog, AC-30, Portaflex, SVT, Bass Master, Custom Special, Guitar Mate, Herzog and Laney amplifiers are dealt with.
If you can only buy one book for your DIY guitar amp hobby I'd heartily recommend this one.
The Ultimate Tone Volume 5 - Tone Capture
Volume 5 picks up where Volume 3 left off, with a project-oriented approach and some sophisticated DIY tube amp solutions for guitar and bass.
The book starts off with a chapter overviewing vacuum tube operation called 'tube tone,' followed up by a chapter on guitar electronics and pickup characteristics.
The next two chapters are small projects: Sigma for effects switching and Triple-X for amplifier switching.
Chapters 5 & 6 are on transformers... important components but it made me yawn, sorry.
Starting with chapter 7, all the stops are pulled out and you are in project heaven... Major (200W), Soma 84 (EL84 amp), Standard (the London Power Standard Preamp from 1995 coupled to a 50W amp using four power tubes), Doppelsonde (mixing power tube types), AX84 (discussion on the original goal of a very low output power amp), Kelly (50W from 4 6V6s), and several other projects of lesser scope.
One favorite project I did was based on Kevin's reworking of the HotBox tube preamp pedal from Matchless in chapter 16. I built this pedal in a truly "true point-to-point style" (meaning terminal strips) in a tube pedal enclosure from Doug Hoffman, substituting a Baxandall tone stack and reworking the preamp values to be more Dumble-esqe (non-HRM type).
What would you do to match an amplifier to Yngwie Malmsteen's style? See chapter 18, 'Swede.'
The Ultimate Tone Volume 2 - Systems Approach to Stage Sound Nirvana
Volume 2 is not project oriented. The bulk of the book, chapters 2 through 5, deals with power supply tricks and a comprehensive overview of power amplifiers, including tube, solid-state and hybrid power amps. Chapter 3, on tube power amplifiers, has some very practical information on mods and fixes to Marshall and Fender bias circuits.
I like the 1st and last chapters of Volume 2 the best. The first chapter is a short discussion of sound stages and how you might setup your gear on stage for the best audience/band experience. The last, chapter 6, is called "Pillars of Tone" and in this chapter the major contributors tone at the block-level of a guitar tube amplifier system design are discussed one by one and Kevin provides some very valuable insight into tone shaping throughout the preamp/amplifier.
The Ultimate Tone Volume 4 - Advanced Techniques for Modern Guitar Amp Design
This is the book you'll want to buy if you feel the need to get deeply involved with the power scaling technology that Kevin has developed. Power Scaling, coined and trademarked by Kevin, is the way you can get aspects of power amp distortion (as opposed to preamp distortion) into your tone at bedroom volume levels. Volume 4 is not DIY project oriented but explores the issues, including attenuation, power scaling (both down and up), sag, and power management, tackled by modern guitar tube amp designers.
That said, the second-to-last chapter in Volume 4 might be important for a broader group of enthusiast builders... design philosophy. In this chapter Kevin provides a hierarchical design process that could be used to make key decisions on how you approach your next project.
The Ultimate Tone - Modifying and Custom Building Tube Guitar Amps
There is no volume number in the title of this book, it was the 1st. Personally, I bought it for completeness. I specifically wanted to have the 'perfect effects loop' information, although the loop itself is incorporated into a project in Volume 5. TUT also has some excellent material on reverbs and signal switching methods that is not explained in the other volumes. The first half of TUT introduces/overviews tube amp systems, power supplies & grounds then focuses on preamp and power amp modifications to commercial amplifiers (e.g. Marshall / Fender)... if you are totally new to tube electronics you may want to buy this 1st volume at the same time as Volume 3.
The Ultimate Tone Volume 6 - Timeless Tone Built for the Future Today
In many ways, Volume 6 is a continuation and extension of the material in Volume 4, where Power Scaling is introduced. In Volume 6 a new 'direct control' version of Powerscaling is featured which was introduced in Vol 4 but flushed out with comprehensive circuits and applied to 'sag' and sustain control as well in Vol 6. The new scaling circuits have many advantages for a DIY builder like greater noise immunity and less sensitivity to layout, etc.
I applied the new DC Power Scaling to a Trainwreck clone project and was really impressed with the improvement in 'playability' at lower volumes... the unmodified Trainwreck Express circuit is just too loud for domestic use, needing to be cranked to get the sweet tones it is renowned for.
One of the chapters in Volume 6 is dedicated to the Dumble amplifiers... something I was really looking forward to since many of my hobby projects focus on those circuits. I found this short chapter to be a good introduction to the overall architecture of the Dumble amps, written from the point of view of the evolution from the early modified standard amps that Alexander Dumble started out doing, but I felt the chapter fell short in discussing some of the more important subtleties of the later Dumble models.
Volume 6 also has lots of other material in it, including a great tutorial on designing really high output power amplifiers and a great chapter on high gain amplifier designs with real-world circuits referenced and detailed.
In Summary...
Kevin's books have a very empirical approach. He encourages you to set aside convention in some instances or not be afraid to try combinations of tubes or even pulling tubes and in all cases clearly explains why it is o.k. and points out any reasons why it wouldn't be o.k. All the examples in the books are very practical and he certainly has the DIYer in mind as he is writing.
Kevin's body of work is truly encyclopedic in nature, and considering that, one feature sorely lacking from his books is any kind of indexing... this is aggravated by the fact that Kevin constantly refers to previous writings rather than repeat himself in a new volume, and it is very difficult to put your finger on the reference even with the other book in hand. Perhaps search engine technology, like Google's ability to search protected content, could be put to good use in this case and provide a kind of 'auto-index' on the web of all of Kevin's books without actually giving away the book itself. Or better yet, how about an e-book format of Kevin's entire collection of TUT books... I think all of the e-book readers include searching capabilities... and Kevin's hand-drawn schematics would probably scale adequately and be very readable on the e-paper displays these devices feature.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mark_Douglas_Roberts
Kevin O'Connor of London Power has created a series of books under the main title of "The Ultimate Tone." These books are truly unique and carefully tailored for the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) guitar tube amp hobbyist and boutique amplifier builder. The books have a home-made 'feel' as well... all the illustrations are done by hand and the books are photocopy-printed on 8.5″x11″ paper and bound with plastic spines and clear plastic covers. There are six books in the series now with the most recent being released in the late spring of 2008. You may want to buy the entire series all at once and get a modest savings, but I think you should consider buying them one at a time and digest as you go, building projects along the way. A key point though... you don't necessarily want to buy them in numerical order. I recommend the following sequence:
The Ultimate Tone Volume 3 - Generations of Tone
The Ultimate Tone Volume 5 - Tone Capture
The Ultimate Tone Volume 2 - Systems Approach to Stage Sound Nirvana
The Ultimate Tone Volume 4 - Advanced Techniques for Modern Guitar Amp Design
The Ultimate Tone - Modifying and Custom Building Tube Guitar Amps
The Ultimate Tone Volume 6 - Timeless Tone Built for the Future Today
The Ultimate Tone Volume 3 - Generations of Tone
This is the most important book in the series for the beginning tube amp builder.
Chapters 2 through 4 lay down the foundation of good DIY tube amp construction, filling you in on good electrical connections, grounding technique, lead dress and other wiring techniques, and mechanical layout including assembly methods like terminal strips, turret and eyelet boards.
The subsequent chapters each pick a particular 'iconic' amplifier, each iconic amplifier being a prototypical example of amplifiers of its class, and they are examined in detail as to the circuit topology, peculiar tonal characteristics that result and fatal flaws that the product is notorious for. Kevin provides the original schematics and then shows how you can apply the techniques detailed in the earlier chapters to improve the performance and reliability of the icon without harming the tone. The schematics are redrawn, layouts are provided and mechanical solutions are worked out to make each chapter a complete, self-contained, build-it-yourself amp project.
This process is repeated for several variations of the Champ in chapter 5 (this chapter greatly influenced my own single-ended amp project), then in quick succession: the Bassman, Plexi, 800, Bull Dog, AC-30, Portaflex, SVT, Bass Master, Custom Special, Guitar Mate, Herzog and Laney amplifiers are dealt with.
If you can only buy one book for your DIY guitar amp hobby I'd heartily recommend this one.
The Ultimate Tone Volume 5 - Tone Capture
Volume 5 picks up where Volume 3 left off, with a project-oriented approach and some sophisticated DIY tube amp solutions for guitar and bass.
The book starts off with a chapter overviewing vacuum tube operation called 'tube tone,' followed up by a chapter on guitar electronics and pickup characteristics.
The next two chapters are small projects: Sigma for effects switching and Triple-X for amplifier switching.
Chapters 5 & 6 are on transformers... important components but it made me yawn, sorry.
Starting with chapter 7, all the stops are pulled out and you are in project heaven... Major (200W), Soma 84 (EL84 amp), Standard (the London Power Standard Preamp from 1995 coupled to a 50W amp using four power tubes), Doppelsonde (mixing power tube types), AX84 (discussion on the original goal of a very low output power amp), Kelly (50W from 4 6V6s), and several other projects of lesser scope.
One favorite project I did was based on Kevin's reworking of the HotBox tube preamp pedal from Matchless in chapter 16. I built this pedal in a truly "true point-to-point style" (meaning terminal strips) in a tube pedal enclosure from Doug Hoffman, substituting a Baxandall tone stack and reworking the preamp values to be more Dumble-esqe (non-HRM type).
What would you do to match an amplifier to Yngwie Malmsteen's style? See chapter 18, 'Swede.'
The Ultimate Tone Volume 2 - Systems Approach to Stage Sound Nirvana
Volume 2 is not project oriented. The bulk of the book, chapters 2 through 5, deals with power supply tricks and a comprehensive overview of power amplifiers, including tube, solid-state and hybrid power amps. Chapter 3, on tube power amplifiers, has some very practical information on mods and fixes to Marshall and Fender bias circuits.
I like the 1st and last chapters of Volume 2 the best. The first chapter is a short discussion of sound stages and how you might setup your gear on stage for the best audience/band experience. The last, chapter 6, is called "Pillars of Tone" and in this chapter the major contributors tone at the block-level of a guitar tube amplifier system design are discussed one by one and Kevin provides some very valuable insight into tone shaping throughout the preamp/amplifier.
The Ultimate Tone Volume 4 - Advanced Techniques for Modern Guitar Amp Design
This is the book you'll want to buy if you feel the need to get deeply involved with the power scaling technology that Kevin has developed. Power Scaling, coined and trademarked by Kevin, is the way you can get aspects of power amp distortion (as opposed to preamp distortion) into your tone at bedroom volume levels. Volume 4 is not DIY project oriented but explores the issues, including attenuation, power scaling (both down and up), sag, and power management, tackled by modern guitar tube amp designers.
That said, the second-to-last chapter in Volume 4 might be important for a broader group of enthusiast builders... design philosophy. In this chapter Kevin provides a hierarchical design process that could be used to make key decisions on how you approach your next project.
The Ultimate Tone - Modifying and Custom Building Tube Guitar Amps
There is no volume number in the title of this book, it was the 1st. Personally, I bought it for completeness. I specifically wanted to have the 'perfect effects loop' information, although the loop itself is incorporated into a project in Volume 5. TUT also has some excellent material on reverbs and signal switching methods that is not explained in the other volumes. The first half of TUT introduces/overviews tube amp systems, power supplies & grounds then focuses on preamp and power amp modifications to commercial amplifiers (e.g. Marshall / Fender)... if you are totally new to tube electronics you may want to buy this 1st volume at the same time as Volume 3.
The Ultimate Tone Volume 6 - Timeless Tone Built for the Future Today
In many ways, Volume 6 is a continuation and extension of the material in Volume 4, where Power Scaling is introduced. In Volume 6 a new 'direct control' version of Powerscaling is featured which was introduced in Vol 4 but flushed out with comprehensive circuits and applied to 'sag' and sustain control as well in Vol 6. The new scaling circuits have many advantages for a DIY builder like greater noise immunity and less sensitivity to layout, etc.
I applied the new DC Power Scaling to a Trainwreck clone project and was really impressed with the improvement in 'playability' at lower volumes... the unmodified Trainwreck Express circuit is just too loud for domestic use, needing to be cranked to get the sweet tones it is renowned for.
One of the chapters in Volume 6 is dedicated to the Dumble amplifiers... something I was really looking forward to since many of my hobby projects focus on those circuits. I found this short chapter to be a good introduction to the overall architecture of the Dumble amps, written from the point of view of the evolution from the early modified standard amps that Alexander Dumble started out doing, but I felt the chapter fell short in discussing some of the more important subtleties of the later Dumble models.
Volume 6 also has lots of other material in it, including a great tutorial on designing really high output power amplifiers and a great chapter on high gain amplifier designs with real-world circuits referenced and detailed.
In Summary...
Kevin's books have a very empirical approach. He encourages you to set aside convention in some instances or not be afraid to try combinations of tubes or even pulling tubes and in all cases clearly explains why it is o.k. and points out any reasons why it wouldn't be o.k. All the examples in the books are very practical and he certainly has the DIYer in mind as he is writing.
Kevin's body of work is truly encyclopedic in nature, and considering that, one feature sorely lacking from his books is any kind of indexing... this is aggravated by the fact that Kevin constantly refers to previous writings rather than repeat himself in a new volume, and it is very difficult to put your finger on the reference even with the other book in hand. Perhaps search engine technology, like Google's ability to search protected content, could be put to good use in this case and provide a kind of 'auto-index' on the web of all of Kevin's books without actually giving away the book itself. Or better yet, how about an e-book format of Kevin's entire collection of TUT books... I think all of the e-book readers include searching capabilities... and Kevin's hand-drawn schematics would probably scale adequately and be very readable on the e-paper displays these devices feature.
Meanwhile, how do you get Kevin's books today? The best way to get the books is to directly order them from London Power Press. They now have a shopping cart on http://www.londonpower.com.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mark_Douglas_Roberts
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
I know it's only Rock and Roll, but I like it!
If you are like me the phrase “too many guitars” is not a concept I can understand. I mean the ladies like shoes and hand bags….and most have a similar feeling regarding the numbers involved. So why are we poor put apon men so hassled about our guitar gear?
I have a modest collection with a standard Fender Telecaster, a Keith Richards type Fender Telecaster with a Seymour Duncan Jazz humbucker on the neck and a Texas Special on the bridge, three Fender Stratocasters, a deluxe, a red USA Standard with Texas Specials and a Frankenstrat with a Warmoth swamp ash body and Hot Alnico Fender pickups and a Wilkinsons bridge….after that a Epiphone 335 with Seymour Duncan humbuckers last but not least a Tokai Les Paul (Japan) and again with a set of Seymours! Nearly forgot the Ovation acoustic!
To compliment a Marshall TSL602, Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, Blind Dog, and a Laney LC15 tube amps. With effects from Boss, Nady, Electro Harmonix, pedals modified with Monte Allums kits, a TC distortion, a VOX Big Ben, a modified RAT, Dunlop Wah, etc.….. plus two boards, one with two channels switching.
No that’s modest when a friend has 17, OK a lot are FrankenStrats and Teles…but still reasonable. What would I buy if I could, maybe a Suhr or an Anderson. Possible ENGL or a 57 reissue Fender twin..or even a Cornforth. Part of the fun would be looking and trying and deciding.
The biggest regret was selling my Fender 59 Bassman, without dought the best clean sound I’ve ever heard. The trouble was the clean was so good when played through pedals…good but suffered compared to the clean sound.
I’m currently trying to get back in to a band…..just got to join one who’s standards are low enough. I enjoy playing…..isn’t that why we do it.
We are not expecting to be playing at Glastonbury next year….a pub would be just fine!
Source GMP
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