Milos guitar clinic

[volinbham]

Any amp recommendations:

Here's my parameters

1. Need a combo - mostly play in the house

2. Guitars are Strat and Tele - like the Fender sound

3. Current amp is Vibrolux Reverb - love the warm, slightly over-driven sound but it's noisy as hell and not very compatible with anything but Fender.

4. Budget of about $600 or less.

 

[milohimself]

I don't think there's any such thing as "compatibile." If you have a decent guitar a decent amp, the sound will be decent.

Anyways, stick with tube amplifiers. Period (Roland JC-120 is the only solid state amplifier I would ever recommend for serious players -period). For cheap tubes... Pignose is my recommendation. Great for practice. Stay away from big names at this price range. Marshalls and Vox especially, under $1,000 are not very good and certainly not worth the money. Other than that, Fender Hot Rods. That's about it.

Pignose is great for what you're looking for, some lower-end Fenders are alright, too.

 

[kiddiedoc]

How do I record a loop, but bypass the initial delay time? Just like, step on the record pedal and record immediately.

There is a one measure delay if you are setting the tempo by tapping the right pedal. I usually don't do this, as the silly metronome light isn't usually the focus of my attention, and because I'm usually playing alone. If you're playing with drums, fine and dandy. Take off the guide, turn the guide sound to "off," set the right indicator to "INST & MIC" (?), and you should be good to go.

Want a great trick? Lay down a loop or two, then switch on an octaver using your POD6 and add a bass line. I have a Boss Octave pedal pre-loopstation, then on to the G-major. I jammed "Watchtower" at the New Year's party with 5 guitar parts, a bass line, and soloed over it. People were going nutso.

What a great toy. Happy playing.

 

[milohimself]

I like it. I was laying down backing tracks from Avenged Sevenfold, Minus The Bear and Clarity Process earlier. Usually just a couple lines. Fun stuff.

 

[ClemsonVol]

Any amp recommendations:

Here's my parameters

1. Need a combo - mostly play in the house

2. Guitars are Strat and Tele - like the Fender sound

3. Current amp is Vibrolux Reverb - love the warm, slightly over-driven sound but it's noisy as hell and not very compatible with anything but Fender.

4. Budget of about $600 or less.

The noise in the Vibrolux is due to fender omitting the negative feedback resistor. I'll have to check my notes, but I believe the trace is already there on the PCB. Many guys put the resistor in. It does alter the amp's tone a bit. Generally makes the amp a little less raw. The better mod is to remove the useless ground lift switch and fit a 25K pot with a spdt switch on the back. That way you can dial in the feedback to suit your taste or switch the feedback resistor out of the circuit and you are back to the orginal amp.

The Traynor YCV-40 is a good amp and not too pricey.

ClemsonVol

 

[LadyinOrange]

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[milohimself]

The noise in the Vibrolux is due to fender omitting the negative feedback resistor. I'll have to check my notes, but I believe the trace is already there on the PCB. Many guys put the resistor in. It does alter the amp's tone a bit. Generally makes the amp a little less raw. The better mod is to remove the useless ground lift switch and fit a 25K pot with a spdt switch on the back. That way you can dial in the feedback to suit your taste or switch the feedback resistor out of the circuit and you are back to the orginal amp.

The Traynor YCV-40 is a good amp and not too pricey.

ClemsonVol

Why would Fender knowingly omit feedback limiters, especially when they market the guitars with them? Single coils and even worse, lipstick p/u's. Terrible idea. Fender makes some great stuff, and some huge flops.

 

[ClemsonVol]

Why would Fender knowingly omit feedback limiters, especially when they market the guitars with them? Single coils and even worse, lipstick p/u's. Terrible idea. Fender makes some great stuff, and some huge flops.

The omitted part was not a feedback limiter. The term is negative feedback. You take a small sample of the output, invert it and add it back to the signal in the preamp. It is a sort of on the fly correction for the output. This results in less distortion, lower noise and tighter sound.

Fender omitted the feedback in order to make the amp sound more tweedy. Even though a number of tweed amps utilised negative feedback, it is low level compared to the blackface amps. The omission was a design tradeoff to achieve the tageted sound.

The presence control on most amps is a kind of frequency dependent feedback. The feedback cancels certain range of frequencies which give a presence or ambience to the sound. This is case for almost every Marshall Amp.

ClemsonVol

 

[milohimself]

Suppose a compressor pedal is a good way to correct this?

 

[ClemsonVol]

Suppose a compressor pedal is a good way to correct this?

Not really, the noise source is inside the amp. An external attempt at noise reduction will not be very effective. The noise is presented to the user as a high level of high frequency shot noise or hiss. Depending on the venue it may or may not be a problem when playing out. To me at least, the problem makes it difficult to record with the amp.

I have a list of quick fixes which are marginally effective. Things such as exchanging the reverb reovery tube or the phase inverter. These 'fixes' lower the overall gain of the amp an make the hiss less noticeable.

ClemsonVol