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Bludojai: based on Bludotone Ojai
This model is based on an amp owned by forum member @austinbuddy.
Austinbuddy reviewed this article before publishing. Thanks Austin! I'm sure he will jump in with more information and tips.
The Ojai is an exact copy of a specific Dumble Overdrive Special amp, used by Robben Ford. When you Dumble, you say Robben Ford, and vice versa. It’s sort of an authorized clone: Robben Ford owns and sometimes plays a Bludotone Ojai, in addition to his famous “Tan” Dumble ODS.
A Dumble is THE most expensive amplifier available, no.1 of Vintage Guitar’s list of most valuable guitar amps. There’s a combo on Reverb.com at the moment with an asking price of more than € 80.000.
Other famous Dumble players include Larry Carlton, John Mayer, Carlos Santana, Keith Urban, SRV, Eric Johnson, Joe Bonamassa.
There’s always a lot of talk on the forums about Robben Ford's Dumble tone. It’s an elusive tone, worshipped by a lot of jazz / blues / fusion players. It's a thick, mid-heavy, smooth lead tone, very touch-sensitive. The “note flip” is a certain tonal characteristic attributed to the Dumble and some of its clones. So what’s the note flip? Quote: “It sounds KIND of like its starting to feed back, but its not. It flips the note up so that a different harmonic order is heard, or something like that”.
That trademark tone is not for everybody: hit a power chord and it may terrible to your ears.
By the way, there’s more to Dumble than the Robben Ford sound. Each Dumble was voiced specifically for its buyer, by Alexander Dumble.
That trademark tone is not for everybody: hit a power chord and it may terrible to your ears.
By the way, there’s more to Dumble than the Robben Ford sound. Each Dumble was voiced specifically for its buyer, by Alexander Dumble.
Replicating an original Dumble amp is hard. The amp’s circuit often has goop all over it, hiding the electronics.
The Ojai is a 100 watts amp with 6L6 tubes. Ojai is the name of the city where Robben Ford lives. The Ojai is part of Bludotone's line of Bludo-Drive amps.
From The Gear Page:
"The Ojai is an exact copy of Dumble #102. Robbens tan Dumble. It also requires the Dumbleator and specific capacitance cables to run to and from the Dumbleator (about 180-200pf per cable). This due to the large bright cap on the amp master. All controls are marked in silver sharpie for the exact settings of Robbens tone. The pot tapers are all 30% audio taper, except the treble control, presence, and the OD in/outs which are linear. Robben sets his mids at about 70K from ground.”
The Ojai has two inputs: FET and normal. The FET input has a different impedance. The models are based on the Normal input.
The amp has two channels: clean and overdrive.
The Clean model is based on the Ojai’s clean channel with Preamp Boost (PAB) turned on, which makes it kind of crunchy. To get the equivalent of the clean channel without the PAB, change the Tonestack to: Skyline. Also dial back Input Drive to about 1.5 or 2.0, or dial down the Input Trim to .500. You might also want to increase Preamp Dynamics from the default value to 0.5 for more “touch responsiveness.”
There are two models of the OD channel: one with the PAB engaged (Lead 1), and one without (Lead 2). If you are on a quest for the Robben Ford tone, start with Lead 2.
The controls on the original amp are: Volume for each channel. Shared tone controls: Treble, Middle and Bass. Overdrive on the OD channel. Master Volume and Presence.
The switches work on both channels. "Bright" adds spark, it's less noticeable when the volume is turned up. "Mid" boosts mids for more gain, like the FAT switch in the model. And there's a "Rock/Jazz" switch. "Rock" means no filtering is applied. The "Jazz" setting applies high-pass filtering for a darker tone.
On the real amps the first two switches are often turned off, and Rock/Jazz is set to Rock, so the models were created like that. There's also a footswitchable Preamp Boost (PAB). It boosts some mids and adds gain.
There are two gain controls for the OD channel: Volume and Drive, modeled as Input Drive and Overdrive. On all amps like this, including those by Engl, Fryette, Carol-Ann and Mesa, the first control sets the “sensitivity” and the second one sets the amount of distortion. Cliff:
“Input Drive increases the gain amount as you rotate the knob clockwise. As the gain increases the tone is shifted from a treble and upper mid emphasis, which produces an up front sparkling tone, to a lower mid and bass emphasis, which produces a thick meaty tone.
Overdrive increases the gain amount as you rotate the knob clockwise but with no alteration of the tonal balance.
Different combinations of Input Drive and Overdrive settings will have a dramatic effect on the response of the amplifier and the personality of your instrument. It is easy to get familiar with the action of these controls and you’ll be amazed with your ability to make any guitar sound mellow, fat, soulful or aggressive.”
Models with Input Drive and Overdrive controls always feel “elastic” and spongy, a real joy to play.
It’s a Master Volume amp. This means that the amp’s distortion is created in particular by the preamp tubes, not the power amp. The Master Volume, which works in the power amp section, is still very important to the tone and feel. You have to decide for yourself what setting in the model works for you best. The default setting is a good point to start of course. Master Volume has a bright cap switch on it: if you turn it down, it gets brighter to compensate.
Austinbuddy’s comments on the Ojai models:
"The model is of a 100w 6L6 BludoDrive Ojai by Bludotone amps. The Ojai has the same schematic as the famous "Tan" boutique amp played by Robben Ford (Rumble)."
"The Bludojai is a Robben Ford voiced amp. The clean channel is pretty gainy. So here are some tips, some of this is in the Amp Wiki too.
For the Bludo CLEAN amp, take the tone stack from "default" and replace it with either the Skyline or Skyline Deep tonestack. Next, set the master volume to 5 (it has a brite cap on it, so the louder the master, the less trebly; Ford sets his around 5). Next, set the Drive control to literally 1 or 1.5 - pretty low, and the guitar input gain control to 0.5. (Think about how Robben constantly uses that volume pedal to control the amount of guitar signal going into the amp...this gives you some room). Now you have a very nice sounding Dumble Fender on Steroids with mids clean, with Bass at 5, Mids at 3-5, treble at 5, presence at 3-5. Jack up the Level output volume to compensate for the lower gain settings. Pair it with a G12-65H speaker. Cab Pack 17 has many choices (full disclosure, I produced 5 of the 6 Cabs in that Cab Pack). The BludoMix Cab in factory firmware is a 1x12 Alnico dual port cab, and will sound good but perhaps a tad darker (great for Jazz) on clean sounds than the G12-65H will. Now, if you like, put a Zen drive in front on the BludoClean amp....or a boost...and listen to how that clean channel wakes up fast for grittier leads and touch-responsiveness.
For BludoLead, take the Lead default amp values. Put the Master Volume on 5. Put drive at 4-5 and Overdrive at 4-5, and experiment with the tone stack swaps above. If you want the amp to feedback effortlessly on a note, raise the overdrive setting higher combined with the gain, provided you have sufficient volume coming out your speakers to hit your guitar pickups in a reinforcing loop, it will do it! Throw a boost or Zen drive on that, if you like...”
For the Bludo CLEAN amp, take the tone stack from "default" and replace it with either the Skyline or Skyline Deep tonestack. Next, set the master volume to 5 (it has a brite cap on it, so the louder the master, the less trebly; Ford sets his around 5). Next, set the Drive control to literally 1 or 1.5 - pretty low, and the guitar input gain control to 0.5. (Think about how Robben constantly uses that volume pedal to control the amount of guitar signal going into the amp...this gives you some room). Now you have a very nice sounding Dumble Fender on Steroids with mids clean, with Bass at 5, Mids at 3-5, treble at 5, presence at 3-5. Jack up the Level output volume to compensate for the lower gain settings. Pair it with a G12-65H speaker. Cab Pack 17 has many choices (full disclosure, I produced 5 of the 6 Cabs in that Cab Pack). The BludoMix Cab in factory firmware is a 1x12 Alnico dual port cab, and will sound good but perhaps a tad darker (great for Jazz) on clean sounds than the G12-65H will. Now, if you like, put a Zen drive in front on the BludoClean amp....or a boost...and listen to how that clean channel wakes up fast for grittier leads and touch-responsiveness.
For BludoLead, take the Lead default amp values. Put the Master Volume on 5. Put drive at 4-5 and Overdrive at 4-5, and experiment with the tone stack swaps above. If you want the amp to feedback effortlessly on a note, raise the overdrive setting higher combined with the gain, provided you have sufficient volume coming out your speakers to hit your guitar pickups in a reinforcing loop, it will do it! Throw a boost or Zen drive on that, if you like...”
About the cabs: for the Robben Ford tone, you'll need the G12-65. There isn't a recent, good-quality near-field IR of a G12-65 among the stock cabs. But you can get them in Cab Pack 17: Buddy's Boutique, which was produced mostly by Austinbuddy. Austinbuddy:
"Cab Pack 17 also has the oval-back 2x12 cabinet with Celestion G12-65H speakers which Robben uses live. Be sure to play with the speaker resonance in the amp block (lower it to around 75-85) to compensate for the open-back cab and get your bottom end correct!"
Cab Pack 16 ML Suhr also has G12-65 IRs. OwnHammer has some too.
Alexander Dumble himself liked the EV-12L. Check out stock cabs #008 and #105 if you prefer that sound. There are more EV-12L IRs in Cab Pack 17.
Alternatively try stock cab #011. It's the IR of Buddy's dual-ported 1x12 closed-back cab. While Larry Carlton uses an old EV-12L in his, this one uses a modern replacement for an EVL-SRO, a Blackhawk AlNiCo WGS. There are more IRs of this cab in Cab Pack 17.
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