LPD - Adventures in Tone Matching Stuff Part 1

groovenut

groovenut

Power User
Hey all! So I've been designing and building tube amps and such for about ten years. One of the designs I did about a year ago is a high voltage tube preamp pedal that uses a SMPS for power (Realistically an external hard drive power supply). It runs the tubes at ~350 volts from a 12 volt wall supply and sounds pretty good. it looks like this and I call it the Gearu Tube Overdrive.
GearuTubeOverdrive.jpg


It sounds pretty good running direct in with just a cab IR but really sounds great into a clean tube power amp. So I decided today was a good day to try and find a way to get it into my AxeFx II. Realistically I probably should have used an amp model for it, but I wanted to see if it was possible with the drive pedal block and a TMA.

I started off with the tubedriver and changed the clipping to HV Tube. Then I did a preliminary TM and started playing with the gain levels. Right away I realized I was going to have to boost the heck out of the drive block to get the levels of gain my pedal has (which is a vast amount). I dropped a null filter in front of the drive block and boosted the input ~18dB to get the gain levels the same. Then I did my second TM. At this point they were sounding and behaving very similar, so I did one last round of tweaking and a final TM.

BTW, the tone knob on both the pedal and drive block are at noon. This means that it is rolling off a good deal of highs and a slight adjustment can make it much brighter (for those of you who feel the tone is a bit dark).

Here are the direct recorded examples. I recorded these during the final TM process, switching back and forth between with a footswitch. The cab IR is the Basketweave G12M25 (RW) IIRC. During the examples I adjust the guitar volume to try and get a good tone/gain match. It's not perfect, but it's pretty close.

The main difference here is gain amount on the pedal

Pedal with gain @ 9 OClock



Pedal with gain @ Noon



Pedal with gain @ 3 OClock



Then in the Gearu Tube Overdrive preset on the AxeFxII, I put a Plexi Normal amp block, then the same cab block as before, after the Tone Match information. The amp settings are just the initialized settings with the EQ at noon, so there is plenty of room to adjust. The drive on the Plexi block was taken down to 1 so all the drive is from the pedal.

Here are those examples

Pedal gain at 9 OClock



Pedal gain at Noon



This was quite fun to do! I hope you all find this as entertaining as I did!
 
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I downloaded and tried out the preset...I liked the character and smoothness of the Drive.

Interesting about having to boost ~+18dB with the Filter; I did my first tone matches over the last couple of days and found I had to attenuate the Input Gain to 0.100 to match the gain of my Orange Rocker 30 with both Drive knobs in the same position. I could have used an initial amp with less gain I suppose, but I felt the Citrus 50 was where I should start.
 
The "having to add ~+18dB of boost" is because the tube driver drive block in the Axe only has 2 triodes. The Gearu Tube Overdrive has 4. I was actually surprised it sounded as close as it did even with the boost. Glad you like it!
 
BTW did you guys try the complete preset (amp and cab) or did you separate the pedal and try it with other amps and cabs?
 
That's just "sick" groovenut. I see we have another in our midst with some serious talent. Very, very cool and good on you. Thanks for sharing.
 
swass said:
That's just "sick" groovenut. I see we have another in our midst with some serious talent. Very, very cool and good on you. Thanks for sharing.
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Awe geez Swass you're making me blush..... Thank you for the kind words!
I do hope you can find a use for it. Having to engage/disengage 3 blocks for a drive is a bit annoying but it's easily do-able by assigning matching controller #'s to the three blocks.

I think I will do a Part 1B with a match using an amp block since this pedal is closer to that and having a full tone stack might be really useful.

All those in favor say "I"?
 
excellent work! the uses for the TMA block just keep expanding! it would be great to see some other tonematched drive blocks, like the marshall guvnor and the klon, for example...
 
simeon said:
excellent work! the uses for the TMA block just keep expanding! it would be great to see some other tonematched drive blocks, like the marshall guvnor and the klon, for example...
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I have a Klon Clone I built that I may tone match. Biggest issue with the Klon is finding an existing model that gets close to the circuit and there really isnt one yet. I may give it a whirl at some "standard" user type settings though just to see what results might be. Most people tend to use the Klon as a buffered boost, so maybe I could use the Fet boost with a TMA to get the EQ character of the Klon. I will keep you posted!
 
groovenut said:
Awe geez Swass you're making me blush..... Thank you for the kind words!
I do hope you can find a use for it.
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Hey your welcome Lawrence. Some appreciation for the talented guys here on the forum needs to be expressed for sure. And thinking outside the box to boot... Our sysex file library would be a lot shorter and somewhat redundant if it weren't for the likes of you and others.
 
groovenut said:
Hey all, I have just put the preset up on Axe-change for you to mess around with.

Axe-Change - Download Preset - LPD Gearu Tube Overdrive Pedal - by Groovenut

Let me know how you like it and what you come up with for uses!
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Edit: If you arent getting any sound, go to the front panel click layout and select TMA. In the process page highlight the ref solo and press enter, then change the source to none. Save preset. Sorry for this. I will make sure to reset this parameter before posting to Axe-change from now on.
 
Groovenut i was just reading a post of yours over on the slo forum.the one about the fish in a 5se amp.you have any clips of that? Thats gotta sound good.
 
tpruitt said:
Groovenut i was just reading a post of yours over on the slo forum.the one about the fish in a 5se amp.you have any clips of that? Thats gotta sound good.
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Hey yeah, I loved that amp! I dont have it any longer, but I still have access to it through the client I built it for. I will see if I can get it to do some clips/amp match. Just a quick run down for anyone else whos interested, I built the Bogner fish brown channel with a 5 watt single ended power amp into a small bodied amp (much like the Gearu Half Pint). It ended up being two channels. The clean was essentially a Plexi bright channel with my favorite alterations to it and the lead channel was the Fish Brown channel. It has a tube effects loop on it that is footswitchable. It's a great organic sounding amp that is loud enough to do small clubs. The owner uses it for gigs 2-3 times a week and it's his main recording amp. BTW it's known as the Gearu Alice amp.

Thanks for reading up on it and asking! I will see if I can get it amp matched.
 
That does sound cool groovenut.I've been thinking of putting the brown channel in my jcm800. I came across the schematic there looking for ideas.so i take it the schematic is accurate then?
 
tpruitt said:
That does sound cool groovenut.I've been thinking of putting the brown channel in my jcm800. I came across the schematic there looking for ideas.so i take it the schematic is accurate then?
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Mostly accurate. The modification details are in the thread though.
 
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