this is wonderful! Printing all these terrific explanations and "tips" from the thread, putting into a 3 ring binder and keeping close at hand when tone tweaking time comes!
TUTORIAL:
THE AMPLIFIER “ADVANCED” PAGE – PT. 2
MASTERING YOUR MACHINE
TONE LOCATION – Determines the location of the tonestack in the amp circuit. “Pre” puts the stack
at the beginning of the preamp circuit, “Post”, at the end of the preamp circuit, “Mid” puts it between
the two final triode stages (which we have also in our Advanced menu- Triodes 1 & 2 Plate Freq.),
and “End” which puts it after the Power amp (impossible in the real world). The farther upstream
you position your stack, the thinner the sound. “Mid” setting will sound chunkiest, with “End” being
rather dark. In real amps, Fenders Blackface’s, and Mesa Boogie “Marks” have their stacks “Pre”, Fender
Tweeds, Marshall’s, Vox’s, Hiwatt’s, and Mesa Recto’s are “Post” position, while Dumbles are in the
“Mid” position.
POWER TUBE BIAS – This is one of the most important Advanced page controls, and all programmers
should be familiar with the sonic effect it has. It ranges from 0.000 (pure Class B operation) to 1.000
(pure Class A operation). “Class A” is an ancient and very inefficient (but great sounding) amp design
which, essentially puts out full power at all times (even at idle). “Class B” is what is generally used in
modern amps, a much more efficient design which pushes and pulls current between two power tubes
(Push-Pull), with no current draw at idle. The important part for us is the sound. Cranking the setting
towards 0.000 will seem to thin out the gain, and pull the amp’s sound back in the sonic picture. The closer
to 1.000 (Class A), the more gain-y and forward the amp will sound. Modern amp designs tend to set
the power tube bias very low (to lower the strain on the power tubes, and extend their service life, and
reliability). Vintage amps tended to have their bias set much higher (and, correspondingly, were less
reliable, like the highly flammable Vox AC30).
Ok, that’s enough for today. Back soon with more “Advanced” page obsessions!
By any chance are you familiar with a band from I think the 80's call brother cane . If so can you offer any advice on achieving the tone . They seem to use some type of chorus or filter quite a bit on the rythem sound that just makes it sound huge . Any help or advice is greatly appreciated
TUTORIAL:
THE AMPLIFIER “ADVANCED” PAGE – PT. 2
MASTERING YOUR MACHINE (...)
Excellent advice, I have some pedantic comments though, which do not affect how useful your advice is:
I don't know if any guitar amps work in class B, I think it's either AB (e.g. Fender Twin) or A (Single ended ones mostly, one-valve Champs, etc)
You are correct, and I have edited my tutorial accordingly (trying not to be over-technical). Pure Class B and Class AB amps are nearly
the same operation except that in Class AB a small bit of current operates opposite the main waveform in the push-pull function.
Wiki-speak:
"In class-AB operation, each device operates the same way as in class B over half the waveform, but also conducts a small amount on the other half."
I recall reading a guitar mag in the 90's where Damon Johnson said he was using a Stereo Fulltone Dejavibe. That sounds right to my ears.
Especially at the beginning of "And Fools Shine On". You can hear a strong Rotovibe/Univibe device set with a fast Rate to get a rotary speaker
sound (which the Univibe was originally intended to copy), below:
Brother Cane - And Fools Shine On - YouTube
I made a "Stereo Dejavibe" patch as well, to give you the general idea of how to go after that sound.
Hope this helps.
okey doke, just spreading the bits of info I have a grasp on...
I am interested to speculate whether a cathode bias switch or a dumble HRM OD stage might appear one day in the mk2
Cheers
Tone
John Mayer's Dumble Steel String Singer
Forum members, Smilefan and AustinBuddy present Fractal Audio Forum firsts!
A full patch collaboration between two of the experienced patchmakers on this
Board, plus the first patch designed to take full advantage of Firmware 5.0 sonics!
AustinBuddy and I got to talking about a very famous amp. The Dumble
Steel String Singer. We discovered, we both have heard the real thing,
up close and personal (a rare thing since there are no more than 20-30 in the
world). So we reasoned, we were the right guys to try to make a patch
of this seldom seen unicorn.
Alexander Dumble, for those that don’t know, has been building custom
amps for a select clientele since the late ‘70’s (you have to send him a tape
of your work, to see if he will accept your order!). Known as a reclusive genius,
he has made only about 300 Dumble amps in total. Most are celebrity owned.
One of his models is designed specifically to make incredible rich, giant clean tones
-- the 100W (or 150W w/6550 tubes) Steel String Singer. The amp designer himself says:
“Then there is the Steel String Singer series, which is a real magic amplifier! I made it for that because it’s exactly what it does, it just singsss... with a very nice glassy steely kind of tone. And it’s one of those amplifiers that it’s so lucious it plays itself and you just want to play it.
”Mr. Dumble also notes the Dumbleland amp was a forerunner to the Steel String Singer, saying
“it was too much power and too silky clean for people. It’s perfect for Stevie Ray, though.
He has a hard time playing an Overdrive (Special).”
I was lucky enough to watch David Lindley (Jackson Browne’s guitarist) play one
right in front of me. It sounded like someone had stuffed two primo Blackface
Twin chassis’ into the same head cabinet, then ran them out stereo into two 4x12 cabs.
Jackson Browne owns the #2 made Steel String Singer, and Lindley has #3 covered in snakeskin, with 100 watts with 6L6s tubes.
AustinBuddy heard Stevie Ray Vaughan play his 150 watt Steel String Singer, dubbed the “King Tone Consoul,” standing on the front of the stage (and could not hear much else as he tells it,
no drums or bass, just giant guitar sound through a 4 X 12 with EV 12Ls). Stevie supposedly owned four of them. Howard Dumble in a 1985 interview had this to say about that amp:
“There are some different things about Stevie’s. His is set up more like bass amp, to accommodate the guitar range. It’s not the usual lead guitar “singer” approach. One thing he liked was that he could turn the volume control all the way up and it didn’t distort -- it just got louder. He does make it distort sometimes because he has about 50 megatons of pressure when he attacks the strings (laughs). He gets an incredible amount of signal out of his guitar, and most amplifiers can’t take it. He did his first album with a bass amp I’d made for Jackson Browne.”
AustinBuddy’s take is that this is the greatest amp nobody’s ever heard (in person, as there are so few). If you are a fan of cleaner guitar styles from the 70’s/80’s/90’s then you’ve heard one on record. It’s just amazing how often these 20-30 amps have made it onto famous artist’s recordings, a testament to how good they sound. Some well known SSS owners:
David Lindley – Session guitarist for Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Linda Rondstadt, Ry Cooder, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Warren Zevon, Rod Stewart, Dolly Parton
Stevie Ray Vaughn
John Mayer
Lowell George
Sonny Landreth – solo slide legend and session player with Jimmy Buffet, John Hiatt, Eric Johnson, Eric Clapton, and Mark Knopfler
Eric Johnson
Ben Harper
Dean Parks – Session guitarist for Steeley Dan, Rod Stewart, Michael Jackson (he played the melody line on “Beat It”), Madonna, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Paul Simon, and Kenny Loggins.
AustinBuddy and myself feel this is the best representation of a Dumble “Steel String Singer” that the Axe II is currently able to produce. You will get to hear our new remodelled 5.0 Enhancer Block in action in this patch. There is also an optional Fulldrive OD and Univibe that sound great together. Turn this up! Steel String Singers are incredibly loud, clean, powerful amps, more fit for stadiums than clubs. Enjoy!
EDIT: My public gratitude to Austinbuddy, without whom neither
this patch nor writeup could have happened.
+1. Awesome patch smilefan and Austinbuddy! It realy rings.Great sounding Steel String patch, but man does it ever clip on my setup even with your output level at -13.6!!!!
Wow! Thanks--Sonny Landreth and EJ are two of my favorites--didn't know this amp had so much to do with their tone. Can't wait to try it. Thanks so much.
For some reason I can't get your presets--the MIDI lights up on the AXE ii but nothing changes. I can get other presets and firmware fine using M-Audio uno straight to Axe. I don't use edit because I'm on an old MAC PPC. I use SysEx.
Smile, why did you use the fender amps instead of the Dumble for this pre set? It is good tho!