How do YOU set up your room for guitar amp recording?

dainbramage said:
All right motherfucker, what the hell did you do to Greg!?
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Haha yeah. It's true though. For bar/club gigs and regular band practice, the Marshall 1959 circuit is WAY too loud. It can't be "turned down". It pretty much gives you all it's got as soon as you turn it on. Best amp ever!
 
It's kind how my Dr Z Rt 66 is set up....it has no master volume, and it gets loud very quick.....after that, you as you turn up the volume, you don't really get any more *volume*, you just get increasing levels of tube compression/saturation.
It sounds great...just damn LOUD!
One way that I've tamed it a bit is to use it with a 16 Ohm speaker, since it has a tap for it, instead of the full-power 8 ohm speaker. Plus I changed out the rectifier from the GZ34/5AR4 to a 5U4GB...and that softened it up a tad, since it was very "hard" even on the lower levels. When you hit the strings, it was like getting punched a bit....the attack was huge.
 
miroslav said:
It's kind how my Dr Z Rt 66 is set up....it has no master volume, and it gets loud very quick.....after that, you as you turn up the volume, you don't really get any more *volume*, you just get increasing levels of tube compression/saturation.
It sounds great...just damn LOUD!
One way that I've tamed it a bit is to use it with a 16 Ohm speaker, since it has a tap for it, instead of the full-power 8 ohm speaker. Plus I changed out the rectifier from the GZ34/5AR4 to a 5U4GB...and that softened it up a tad, since it was very "hard" even on the lower levels. When you hit the strings, it was like getting punched a bit....the attack was huge.
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Exactly. That's how they are. It's blam, here I am! And it never really gets significantly louder, just more saturated as the dial goes up.

Have you tried the air brake? I hear good things about them.
 
Greg_L said:
Exactly. That's how they are. It's blam, here I am! And it never really gets significantly louder, just more saturated as the dial goes up.

Have you tried the air brake? I hear good things about them.
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Not the Airbrake, but I have tried it with the Weber MiniMass, which has the speaker motor as part of it's attenuation circuit, and I also have Kendrick PowerGlide, which is pure resistor attenuation.

I love the MiniMass stuff, and have a pair of 25W and a pair of 50W units, and at one point had each of them connected to an amp, plus the PowerGlide on another amp.....and then one day.....I just removed all of them, and now use the amps as they are, and if I gotta get it up into "11" territory and it's loud as hell, so be it. That's why they make headphones for recording. :)

Not sayin' the attenuators are useless....I still grab one occasionally when I want to dial in something a bit different, like crazy saturation, but without the huge volume....which sounds different than when the amp is allowed to "work".....but that attenuated flavor of tube saturation has its good moments too....it's just that right now, I've been doing most guitar tracks without them, and really, in my studio setup, I got no one to annoy. I can crank at 3AM, and there's no cops banging on my front door. :p
Even when someone else is is staying with me....because my studio is situated sort of off in a far corner of the house and away from everything, and the room right next to it is my room...I can just close the two sets of doors, and play as loud as I want it in the studio, and outside it's not disturbing anyone.
I get my old mother up from Florida, and her room is the next one down the hall, and I can go in there and she's watching TV and you can hardly hear my shit blasting away in the studio. I've tracked late at night, and she's sound asleep.
 
Greg_L said:
The non-master vol amps are loud as hell, and they're really "players" amps. Even on "1" a Plexi is pretty fucking loud and not all that clean if you're using a humbucker guitar. They're the kind of amps for guys that use the shit out of their guitar vol knob. A healthy Plexi-style non-master circuit will go from face melting to sparkling clean with a twist of the guitar vol.

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Exactly, the tonal options come from the guitar, unless your going to turn your amps preamp up and down on stage.

My 50watt Plexi was just right for medium size clubs, but now people really want low stage volume so I run a Marshall class 5, dimed :D

Greg, did you consider a power soak? My friend had a 100watt plexi he ran with a power soak, its more of a Van Halen sound than Townsend/Hendrix but sounds great. How is that JVM800 different from your Plexi ?
 
PDP said:
Exactly, the tonal options come from the guitar, unless your going to turn your amps preamp up and down on stage.

My 50watt Plexi was just right for medium size clubs, but now people really want low stage volume so I run a Marshall class 5, dimed :D

Greg, did you consider a power soak?
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No I don't need no attenuator. I had a PPIMV (post phase inverter master volume) installed. It works great. I costs some tone if I reel it way down to bedroom levels, but so would an attenuator/power soak. For live use and slight attenuation, the PPIMV works awesome. It's very transparent and a must for using the amp live in bars and clubs. For recording I can just crank the PPIMV out of the circuit and the amp goes back to being wide open.

How is that JVM800 different from your Plexi ?
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Well, which amp do you mean? The JVM or the JCM 800?
 
Have any of you guys tried or know anyone that's tried using Variacs to lower the volume of an amp and make it sound dirtier?

There are rumors that Van Halen used a variac on his original plexi to get that really saturated tone.
 
PDP said:
Have any of you guys tried or know anyone that's tried using Variacs to lower the volume of an amp and make it sound dirtier?

There are rumors that Van Halen used a variac on his original plexi to get that really saturated tone.
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This is a true story -- not a rumor. You can hear Eddie himself talking about this a good bit. In fact, that's likely where the term "brown sound" comes from. Improper use of a variac can lead to a power outage, or a "black out," which was also known as a "brown out."
 
PDP said:
Lol, Sorry the JCM 800, how does that differ from your Plexi ?
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Well, um, their tones can actually be very similar. I would say the 800 has a brighter, edgier, more aggressive attacking kind of raw sound whereas the Plexi has a smoother, richer, thicker midrange kind of overdrive. The 800 is obviously a master vol amp whereas the Plexi is not. The Plexi has a cooler tone stack though in that the signal goes - tone then gain. Tweaking the tone knobs alters which frequencies get squashed in the preamp as opposed to filtering after the gain. So in that regard, the Plexi has a much more complex, harmonically rich kind of sound.

PDP said:
Have any of you guys tried or know anyone that's tried using Variacs to lower the volume of an amp and make it sound dirtier?

There are rumors that Van Halen used a variac on his original plexi to get that really saturated tone.
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There are lots of rumors about VH's sound. Legend has it he turned the power down to 90 volts at the mains of his Super Leads. Might be true. People to this day still chase that sound. They buy Variacs, try his trick, fuck up their amps, and never sound like him anyway. Almost all of the most legendary guitar tones of all time have some kind of rumored "trick" to them. Eddie's Variac, Angus's wireless boost and modded amps, Slash's modded 1959 Tremolo AFD amp, Mick Ronson's constant half-cocked wah, etc. The one constant is that all of those guys could play and played in their own unique way. You could plug me in to Eddie's 1976 rig with his own hand built Franken-thing guitar and I'd sound nothing like him.
 
I just roll the sucker out at least 6' from the wall and throw a 57 on it. I've never felt the need for any other prep than that.
 
A couple years ago Eddie admitted to lying about the amp mods and how he used the variac. I can't remember what he said he actually did, probably because I don't believe anything he says anymore, and partially because I don't need to sound like him in 1976.
 
I don't care about sounding like Van Halen or anyone else really. I was just curious if anyone has ever had first hand experience with using a variac and what the outcome was.
 
PDP said:
I don't care about sounding like Van Halen or anyone else really. I was just curious if anyone has ever had first hand experience with using a variac and what the outcome was.
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I command you to try to copy my 40 year old sound. Do it. Do it now! VARIAAAAAAAAAAAAC!
EddieVanHalen400.jpg
 
PDP said:
I don't care about sounding like Van Halen or anyone else really. I was just curious if anyone has ever had first hand experience with using a variac and what the outcome was.
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I tried it for a while forty some years ago on a Twin. But really all I remember was that there was nothing particularly special about it, just more distortion and at a lower volume. But looking back I'd guess most of what ended up is it was still just a stock Twin- still with a cool front end that for distortion, could have used more gain up front for example.

I also tried a hundred watt resistor on the aux speaker jack. (Whoop'de do. A whole 3dB off LOL
 
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