Marshall Note Decay Sizzle

ruso

ruso

Fractal Fanatic
What causes Marshalls to emit that oscillating sizzle at the end of the note as it decays? It’s literally the last thing you hear before the note dies completely.

Any idea what parameter I can try to dial it out?
 
A couple of things could be involved:

Crossover distortion. The tubes in the power amp share the load. One pair of tubes handles half of the cycle; the other pair handles the other half. The sharing isn't perfect. There's some distortion at the crossover point. As the signal decays, that crossover distortion becomes a larger portion of the signal.

More likely, you're hearing interference from the guitar itself. The signal decays, and the interference becomes audible. The signal dies when the nose gate kicks in. Try disabling the input noise gate. I bet you'll hear nothing but interference when the signal finally dies by itself.
 
Rex said:
A couple of things could be involved:

Crossover distortion. The tubes in the power amp share the load. One pair of tubes handles half of the cycle; the other pair handles the other half. The sharing isn't perfect. There's some distortion at the crossover point. As the signal decays, that crossover distortion becomes a larger portion of the signal.

More likely, you're hearing interference from the guitar itself. The signal decays, and the interference becomes audible. The signal dies when the nose gate kicks in. Try disabling the input noise gate. I bet you'll hear nothing but interference when the signal finally dies by itself.
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That makes sense, although it doesn’t seem to be as prominent in other amps like Mesa Mark series amps for example. I’m going to try and capture it.
 
Tube amps do that. Built my own for years. The decay buzzing can be tamed by killing off high end. Tube amps use snubber caps across the plate supply resistors. This is something I love about the Fractal modelers. They really do act like real tube amps. All the artifacts and harmonics and oddball overdriven tube noise are there.
 
ruso said:
That makes sense, although it doesn’t seem to be as prominent in other amps like Mesa Mark series amps for example. I’m going to try and capture it.
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The Mesa’s are more modernized designs that have circuitry to tame the fizz. Whereas the older Marshall’s are more naked. Modern Marshall’s all have the same stuff all the other amps use these days. Listening to old AC/DC songs you will hear a lot of the decaying fizz.
 
skolacki said:
The Mesa’s are more modernized designs that have circuitry to tame the fizz. Whereas the older Marshall’s are more naked. Modern Marshall’s all have the same stuff all the other amps use these days. Listening to old AC/DC songs you will hear a lot of the decaying fizz.
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Exactly. Cliff talks about this here and there in the Amplifier listings.
 
Hi-E on my Carvin was recently oscillating at decay on gainy patches - scratched my head for quite a while about it - was about to change strings when I noticed a tiny piece of crud on the string around highest fret. Washed it off - no more oscillation - go figur
 
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Increasing the negative feedback (i.e. turning that knob clockwise) may clean this up a tad, making the amp "stiffer", however, there is a trade-off, in that the behaviour of the power amp (distortion) changes, which you may, or may not, like.

Cheers,
Bob.
 
ruso said:
What causes Marshalls to emit that oscillating sizzle at the end of the note as it decays? It’s literally the last thing you hear before the note dies completely.

Any idea what parameter I can try to dial it out?
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Go to the Amp Block and pick one of the Friedmans. :)

Seriously. Let a Marshall be a Marshall. It's what they do, and it is awesome!

Check out this iconic Rush song with Lifeson using a Marshall and you can hear that
same sizzle and rawness in the top-end. It is f'ing GLORIOUS!!!

 
Thank you for all of the suggestions. I’m going to have to record a clip as an an example of what I’m trying to describe. It’s not “fizziness” in the tone per say, but a characteristic of the decay. I could easily pick a model that doesn’t exhibit this, but I’m after the Marshall sound and just want to dial in that last 10%.
 
ruso said:
Thank you for all of the suggestions. I’m going to have to record a clip as an an example of what I’m trying to describe. It’s not “fizziness” in the tone per say, but a characteristic of the decay. I could easily pick a model that doesn’t exhibit this, but I’m after the Marshall sound and just want to dial in that last 10%.
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Be sure to do some tests with the noise gate off. That'll tell you exactly how much of it is the amp model and how much is interference.
 
ruso said:
What causes Marshalls to emit that oscillating sizzle at the end of the note as it decays? It’s literally the last thing you hear before the note dies completely.

Any idea what parameter I can try to dial it out?
Click to expand...
Likely it is crossover distortion like a number of real tube amps have. Try increasing the power tube bias a bit....
 
Rex said:
Be sure to do some tests with the noise gate off. That'll tell you exactly how much of it is the amp model and how much is interference.
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I forgot to mention that I leave the gate almost completely off most of the time. I really work my volume knob when playing.
Joe Bfstplk said:
Likely it is crossover distortion like a number of real tube amps have. Try increasing the power tube bias a bit....
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Yeah, I’m going to mess around with it more this evening.
 
I'm pretty sure I know what you're referring to. You hit a chord and just let it ring. And it starts crackling or fizzing, or oscillating as the chord decays. If that's it, then it's just the way it is with some amps. The 1st one I built was a Hi Octane, from a tube amp project site, AX84. It was a hi gain preamp with a single output tube. I really liked it and of course starting screwing with the design to my tastes. A lot of fun. Then one day I started to really hear the crackling or fizz as notes and chords decayed in volume. Same amp, same guitar, but now the amp was driving me nuts and that was all I could hear. So I started adding stuff that I saw on SLO's and Boogies, which brought it down to acceptable levels. But it was always there to some degree. It's funny about that site. The guy that originally ran it admitted to giving in and buying a Fractal modeler. And I was surprised! A modeler, WTF! But that stuck in my head and actually had some influence on me deciding to take the leap.

Also as mentioned, it doesn't have to be a Marshall. Many amps are just modified or individualized Marshall's. Like Marshalls that evolved. Or use later Marshalls. Lately I'm into the Hook.

You can hear what I'm referring to to on this old ACDC song, Down Payment Blues
 
Cliff is only human and misses an error once in a while, and those that are real familiar with that particular amp will chime in, and it gets sorted right away. But I've become so trustful of his work that when I come across an Amp model that has something strange (IMHO) going on, I always assume that the real amp just sounds that way and move on to another model. :cool:
 
FractalAudio said:
Took me a long time to figure out what makes Marshall's crackle like that on the decay and how to model it.
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Dude, and I totally love the way all the models behave like their physical counterparts. My primary preset is the Plexi model. For this particular project, I'm just trying to some deep tweaking to create something completely different. ;)
 
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