The Official Guitar Thread

pharmakos

pharmakos

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funnily enough, when i first started tuning my guitar down i did it so i could cover tracks from Rust Never Sleeps by Neil Young. i do a lot of metal too, but i started going that extra half step just so i could play "Snuff" by Slipknot (acoustic track) and "Which Will" by Nick Drake.
 
Tolan

Tolan

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Heriotze said:
My dad grabbed one of those when he was trying to re-teach himself to play electric, nice little amp. Have an uncle wanting to get into playing that bought a 90's american std tele about ten years ago that has been collecting dust and I recommended it to him but he's insisting on going solid state for the cost savings.
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Playing a std Tele through solid-state is sacrilege, especially when tube alternatives are so cheap. Your uncle can probably find a perfectly fine used super champ for $250.
 
Alex

Alex

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Yeah solid state is trash for a tele. For my city apartment I played a vintage Vibro Champ for years. Great little 5-watt amp. Sounds pretty bad with humbucker guitars though.
 
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Tolan

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Gigged this week with the SC-X2 for the first time. It was an acoustic/electric classic rock duo in a medium-sized restaurant bar. Tried a few of the voicings and settled on the clean 65 Princeton, spring reverb at 2.5, with the gain and master both around around 5. Sounded great. This amp has an impressive amount of head-room for a 15W 1x10". I wager it's loud enough for any smallish gig, including full band arrangements. I normally play through a gen-2 tweed blues junior, but I'll be sticking with the super champ for anything that keeps the volume at a medium level or below. Where the blues junior shines best when the power stage is pushed, the SC seems to deliver quality tones through the entirety of its volume range. Cool amp.
 
Melvin

Melvin

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Tolan said:
This amp has an impressive amount of head-room for a 15W 1x10". I wager it's loud enough for any smallish gig, including full band arrangements.
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Just out of curiosity, what brand of 6V6 is Fender using stock? If they're not JJ 6V6S already, you might want to give them a try. Looking at the SC-X2 schematic makes me think the power amp section might possibly stay fairly clean. The JJs are a little more powerful (14 watts vs 12), and stay clean a little bit louder than other 6V6 (takes a bigger input signal to push them into distortion). They almost sound like 6L6, but in a smaller bottle and run on lower voltages like 6V6 should. That seems like the kind of thing that could work well in that SC-X2. Unless my assumption about the already cleanish power section is just completely wrong.

Also, I'm not trying to sound like a dick, but I have to say this just in case you don't already know: the power amp tubes in your amp will need to be re-biased every time you change them.
 
Tolan

Tolan

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Melvin said:
Just out of curiosity, what brand of 6V6 is Fender using stock? If they're not JJ 6V6S already, you might want to give them a try. Looking at the SC-X2 schematic makes me think the power amp section might possibly stay fairly clean. The JJs are a little more powerful (14 watts vs 12), and stay clean a little bit louder than other 6V6 (takes a bigger input signal to push them into distortion). They almost sound like 6L6, but in a smaller bottle and run on lower voltages like 6V6 should. That seems like the kind of thing that could work well in that SC-X2. Unless my assumption about the already cleanish power section is just completely wrong.

Also, I'm not trying to sound like a dick, but I have to say this just in case you don't already know: the power amp tubes in your amp will need to be re-biased every time you change them.
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Not sure. I will inspect when I get home. Thanks for the reminder about the biasing. Is re-biasing required even with a matched pair? I'm much more of a mechanical guy than electric, so any pointers from an EE are always welcome.

In any case, the clean channel does break-up a few ticks before max volume. I'm more of a fan of early break up anyway, since I don't gig often. I have yet to try the clean channel with any pedals. I'll get around to plugging in a turnip greens pretty soon. I also have a black star HT boost that works well as a stand alone boost or with the TG (needs a proper sequence though, and I can't remember which pedal goes first).

Do you know anything about 10" cones?

Edit: Just remembered. There are two all-clean voices that seemingly don't break up. One that mimics a solid state and another that's supposed to be a clean channel Twin Amp (of which I have one, haven't compared yet though). I haven't cranked those two voices to 11 yet, but have played them rather loudly without any breakup. All others noted as "clean" break up nicely. #8 and #16...

IMG_4161.jpg
 
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Melvin

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At least one company (Groove Tubes is the one that's famous for this) relabels and resells other companies' tubes with a bias rating that they claim lets you not re-bias as long as you use the same specific type and rating. Never tried them, can't say how tight of tolerances their ratings are. Other companies (like www.tubesandmore.com and www.thetubestore.com) match sets of tubes themselves without re-branding them, which is what I prefer. I never use the same type of tubes twice in a row though, there's so many good tubes out there that I want to try all of them. But if you find something you like you can always buy a matched set of 4 or 6 or 8 or whatever

The Turnip Greens looks like a cool pedal, Klon clones are everywhere for a good reason. I'm willing to bet the HT Boost isn't going to do work anywhere near as well for the SC-X2 as it will for your Blues Jr. There's a ton of solid state circuitry in the SC-X2, and a huge clean signal from the HT Boost probably will overload something in a way that doesn't sound good. Probably. Or maybe running it with a really low boost setting will help the SC-X2 preamp voicings sound more authentic, since the Blackstar is all tube. There's only one way to find out. :) I personally use a Black Forest pedal for a big clean boost.

And 10" speakers are something I'd love to try more of, but can't really justify spending the money to try every 10" myself right now. I have a '59 Bassman reissue with 4 super cheap Celestian 10"s that I'm not happy with. But I prefer my 8" Orange speakers for practice at home and a 4x12" for being loud, so the 4x10" is gonna keep being a red-headed stepchild for a while.
 
Tolan

Tolan

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Melvin said:
At least one company (Groove Tubes is the one that's famous for this) relabels and resells other companies' tubes with a bias rating that they claim lets you not re-bias as long as you use the same specific type and rating. Never tried them, can't say how tight of tolerances their ratings are. Other companies (like www.tubesandmore.com and www.thetubestore.com) match sets of tubes themselves without re-branding them, which is what I prefer. I never use the same type of tubes twice in a row though, there's so many good tubes out there that I want to try all of them. But if you find something you like you can always buy a matched set of 4 or 6 or 8 or whatever

The Turnip Greens looks like a cool pedal, Klon clones are everywhere for a good reason. I'm willing to bet the HT Boost isn't going to do work anywhere near as well for the SC-X2 as it will for your Blues Jr. There's a ton of solid state circuitry in the SC-X2, and a huge clean signal from the HT Boost probably will overload something in a way that doesn't sound good. Probably. Or maybe running it with a really low boost setting will help the SC-X2 preamp voicings sound more authentic, since the Blackstar is all tube. There's only one way to find out. :) I personally use a Black Forest pedal for a big clean boost.

And 10" speakers are something I'd love to try more of, but can't really justify spending the money to try every 10" myself right now. I have a '59 Bassman reissue with 4 super cheap Celestian 10"s that I'm not happy with. But I prefer my 8" Orange speakers for practice at home and a 4x12" for being loud, so the 4x10" is gonna keep being a red-headed stepchild for a while.
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Good stuff man. I honestly never bothered with tube replacements. I have a Twin Amp from like 2000ish, too. It has this weird crackling thing that happens very intermittently if I don't use it for a while. Anyway, I love the sound of both amps but the reverb in the twin amp is just like the best (ever?). It is so god-damned loud though. I've pulled the center tubes to reduce the wattage (per the manual), but it was still too much for just about everything. Some downright growly tones can be dialed-in though, if the loudness can be withstood.

You're probably right about the boosts. The BJ can definitely handle whatever I put into it. Great F'n amp. Wouldn't trade it for anything. It has a Jensen C12. Supposedly the same circuitry as the black face version. I played both BJ's with my Epiphone (ES335 style) and the tweed "NOS" model with the Jensen wins easily. The reverb has an issue though. There's like a sizzling effect when I play certain frequencies. Might be a tube thing, I suppose, but it's only noticible with reverb active. Other than that: no complaints.
 
Tolan

Tolan

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In the super champ, the tubes are Groove Tubes: 2x matched 6V6-C premium and 1x 12AX7-C. They appear to be manufactured by GT without any relabeling on them.

The blues junior has 2x Sovtek EL84/6BQ5 that were relabeled by Groove Tubes as matched GT-EL84-R and 3x Sovtek 12AX7WC relabeled as GT-12AX7-R.
 
Melvin

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Oh right, I forgot that Fender actually owns the Groove Tubes brand now, so it makes sense that they use them. The best info I could find about specific GT models is their price list from 2012. The tubes that are marked as EXCLUSIVE GT are the ones that are are the most interesting imo, because EVERYTHING else they sell is also available from another company at a fraction of the price. The meaning of the most common suffixes are: -C = made in China, -R = made in Russia, -S = made in Slovakia (Slovak Republic?), any other suffixes mean something specific, like I see a bunch of -M suffixes that are attempts to reproduce Mullard designs.

So the JJ 6V6-S I mentioned earlier is also being sold by Groove Tubes as a 6V6-S, but the JJ -S suffix doesn't mean the same thing as GT's. All JJs are made in Slovakia, they're one of the few companies that actually owns a tube factory.
 
Tolan

Tolan

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Melvin said:
Oh right, I forgot that Fender actually owns the Groove Tubes brand now, so it makes sense that they use them. The best info I could find about specific GT models is their price list from 2012. The tubes that are marked as EXCLUSIVE GT are the ones that are are the most interesting imo, because EVERYTHING else they sell is also available from another company at a fraction of the price. The meaning of the most common suffixes are: -C = made in China, -R = made in Russia, -S = made in Slovakia (Slovak Republic?), any other suffixes mean something specific, like I see a bunch of -M suffixes that are attempts to reproduce Mullard designs.

So the JJ 6V6-S I mentioned earlier is also being sold by Groove Tubes as a 6V6-S, but the JJ -S suffix doesn't mean the same thing as GT's. All JJs are made in Slovakia, they're one of the few companies that actually owns a tube factory.
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Interesting stuff, thanks for the info. Do you know if JJ makes matched sets? Do you have a recommended tutorial on the process of biasing?
 
Melvin

Melvin

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Tolan said:
Interesting stuff, thanks for the info. Do you know if JJ makes matched sets? Do you have a recommended tutorial on the process of biasing?
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I don't think any of the factories take the time to put together matched sets of tubes, they deal in bulk. The resellers like www.tubesandmore.com and www.thetubestore.com (and I'm sure there's others too, those are just the ones I've bought from) do the work of measuring individual tubes and matching them into sets.

Here's a pretty thorough breakdown on biasing: The Last Word On Biasing I use the method described in the "measuring the resistance across each side of the output transformer primary" paragraph because it's the most accurate.

There are also bias probes that make the measurements easier and safer, and accurate enough that nobody will ever hear the difference. But you still almost always need to open the amp to get to the bias adjustment pot and/or measure the plate voltage anyway, so bias probes are still not 100% foolproof. There's a lot of variety with the details of how bias probes work, so tutorials for them will vary from probe to probe. I remember seeing a kit to make your own probe recently that I liked because it let you measure the plate voltage and current without opening the amp, and it used resistors do drop the voltages to much safer levels. I just tried to find that kit again and I don't see it.
 
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Melvin

Melvin

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$20 bias probe kit: TubeDepot Bias Scout Kit | TubeDepot.com

Lets you read plate volts and cathode current without opening the amp. Almost an A+ rating from me, but imo they should have used shrouded banana plugs, or at the very least included a cap to cover the banana plug you're not using at the moment. As long as it's put together correctly there's only low voltages and low current on the exposed plugs, so it's not an enormous safety issue. But if it's not put together correctly you could potentially have the highest voltage and current available from your amp right there on the completely exposed red plug tip.

The good news is the assembly instructions seem amazingly detailed and clear. Mostly. I mean, section 9 step 20 could sound like it's hand wavey bullshit, but deciding what idle current to bias your tubes at is an actual decision that you need to make, and all the other instructions really should be followed as closely as possible.
 
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E

Elidroth

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Just pulled the trigger on a custom built Mayones Duvell Elite 7-string
Quilted Maple top on a Mahogany body
Bubinga-Wenge 5-piece neck
26.5" Scale
20" radius ebony fretboard
Bare Knuckle Juggernaut pickups
Hipshot bridge & locking tuners

Should be ready around January. Can't freaking wait!
Total price shipped to my door from Poland is 3400 euro
 
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Palum

Palum

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Man B&G Little Sister just looks fantastic (other than through headstock tuning pegs). Haven't ever seen one but they sound great in every video I've seen.
 
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Elidroth

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Got an opportunity to pickup this guitar from John Browne himself.. Couldn't let it get away.. 2800EU shipped to San Diego..

Qatsi 6.jpg
 
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