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Post guitar wander:
– expensive mandolin – specially designed, luthier made mandolin – electric mandolin (again luthier made, expensive) – solid body electric mandolin (under $1000) – 1980s Squier Telecaster
Still haven’t uncased an acoustic anything in months, but I am playing guitar again. Singing with it, trying to learn riffs, copying the riffs and double stops I play on emando –some of which are kind of a stretch.
Then I plug the emando back in and it feels so fast…
I suppose I’ll keep doing both. Assign different songs to them and keep rehearsing that way.
But let’s not talk too much about Daniel’s home for cheap, needy amps! I have one amp in good working order. The rest need new caps or someone to trouble shoot them.
Just rambling tonight after enjoying my Esquire…
Daniel
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Well, Ok. I dusted off the Ampeg reissue Jet II (1×12 w/tremolo) this weekend. It does need to be cleaned up: dirty pots, and a 2nd channel whose volume varies randomly. But the first channel sounds better than I remember. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I have to use an external transformer to step down the voltage from 240 to 120? It’s possible that the voltage is a both touch higher and more consistent than regular wall current in the US.
Rehearsed using the Hathway octave mando, the JBovier 5 string emando, and the Esquire’d Tele. Really nice. So yeah, the guitar is staying in the mix now. And the Ampeg has been more or less permanently relocated tothe living room. Claudine has yet to complain.
🙂
Daniel -
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Interestingly, this amp has both reverb and tremolo. And even weirder, 5 knobs! There are more controls for the trem and reverb than for the preamp stage! It’s like someone said, “Let’s build a dirt simple Class A amp. Fifteen watts, volume and tone.” And then another guy in the room said, “No one will buy an amp without reverb. Add it.” Third guy in the room says, “You know all those really cool old Fenders had tremolo rather than reverb. Why don’t we use that?” And finally the boss said, “I love it! One model with the reverb, and one with both reverb and tremolo that we’ll sell for $100 more.” And no one said, “Hey, what about splitting the tone control?”
To be sure, I love the trem on mine too. I usually just set it at three for both speed and intensity and leave it on. It would be nice if I could turn it on and off without rolling either the speed or the intensity all the way down.
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Hi Richard,
Nope. This is a single channel amp with two inputs. One is labeled “Guitar” and the other “Accordion”. The “Accordion” input has a small Db cut relative to the “Guitar” input.
There’s a volume knob, a single tone knob for the entire stack, two controls for the tremolo (speed and intensity), and reverb.I don’t know enough about how the tone stack is wired to say whether it’s just a treble cut (like a guitar) or something more active.
I leave the volume at 2 for the time being. It doesn’t get louder after 4, just gnarlier. 2 is clean when used gently and gets pleasantly dirty by boosting the input either by using a boost pedal or turning the volume on the guitar all the way up.
No effects loop, no second speaker output, no footswitch. It’s a “if you like it, mic it” kind of amp.
This is my actual amp…
https://www.tdpri.com/attachments/img_5749-jpg.609900/
https://www.tdpri.com/attachments/img_5751-jpg.609899/
Have been playing waltzes with the tremolo at 3 and 5 respectively and the reverb at 4. It’s dreamy sounding.
Daniel
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Amp talk always goes over my head way too fast – enjoy it, but still trying to grok it. I even spend way too much time watching the amp repair/rebuild channels on YouTube, hoping some of it sticks. Secretly, I want to be able to troubleshoot and repair old electronic equipment, but maybe in another lifetime –
I like the size and aesthetic of that amp, Daniel – but beside the voltage change, does the service frequency difference affect anything in an amp?
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Not that I can tell Tad. It’s all 15w tube driven. The external step-down transformer just makes it safe to power up in Europe, where everything is 240v. Any other effect is a bonus.
Been watching a lot of Psionic Audio on Youtube. That guy is really good. Sometimes my eyes roll back into my head because the subject is a bit opaque to me too. But sometimes I learn stuff that’s useful in playing an amp, like why stand by switches exist.
(I also learned why, when I worked at the Mesa/Boogie factory in Petaluma, we always had touring rigs coming back for repairs. I won’t be buying a Boogie.)
BTW, I tested out the tone control. It’s not just a treble cut. The lows are boosted when you roll back and cut when you pass 5. Putting the control at the top is insanely bright with an Esquire on it’s open position (bridge pickup wired to bypass the tone control). It could almost shave with it.
This is different than the Fender way of doing things, and you need to adjust your expectations a bit. But I have found a sweet spot by tweaking the guitar’s volume and tone controls in conjunction with the tone control on the amp.
Daniel
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