ello, as i've had my amp back from the shop, i've noticed that it doesn't seem to suit my tone taste. I have a double muff, and bad monkey, and i've been playing around with the dials and it doesn't seem to give me the grit/bite i want. It's a traynor guitarmate with 2 el 34's and 2 12ax7as and one a7u.
and when i turn the volume dial above 4 there seems to be no difference and it vibrates... would changing the speaker alter the sound? different tubes? I don't want to sink money into it and still not get the sound close to what i want. should i make the switch to getting a head and a cab?
I don't know the Traynor Guitarmate, like, at all, but your description of it seems like they use the same trick as everyone else. Likely your volume pot is linear rather than an audio taper pot, which would behave the way you're describing. It seems that a lot of the amps have linear volume pots because when you go and sit down in a music shop they want to see you turn the volume up to 2, and go MAN THIS SHIT IS LOUD and then when the angry guitar center guy gives you a look you turn it back down to 1/2.
The volume is increasing past 4, and will steadily increase up until 10, but your ears hear on a logarithmic scale and the result is that once you're hearing something say 125 dB you're not going to hear anything further than that as any real perceived change in volume.
The fender hot rod owner's guide has more details about this (the linear/audio taper pot):
http://go.google.com/?id=92b31a9844a7a102eae5605199d5f5ab&aid=61&said=v3av
And you could do a couple google searches on 'perceived volume' and other things like volume and human ear and find some pages that explain this stuff with charts and graphs way better than I can.
As far as the tone goes, my first thought was that the Muffs are fuzz pedals. I've played a Double Muff a few times and thought the tone coming off of it was fairly ratty... I have a Black Russian in my pedalboard from time to time, but don't use it with much regularity. But if you're looking for a vintage, solid, creamy overdrive sound you're using the wrong pedal, IMHO.
I've not used the bad monkey, but you're likely going to get better tone coming off of it... maybe not 'better' but more what you want. I just took a look at it and I imagine you're cranking the gain knob on it. What I would do, is put the 'Level' knob around 3 o'clock and the gain knob at about 9 o'clock.
When using an OD pedal, you're way better off putting it in front of the clean channel on your amp (I don't know Traynors, I assume it's got a clean channel and a dirty channel). You'll get much more headroom and a cleaner overdrive. I'd leave
the Bad Monkey slightly bass-heavy, and, on the amp's EQ, yank the mid-range and slowly back off once it starts sounding good. Anytime you want to really cut through in a mix with a band you've got to yank your mids.
The Double Muff, for me, would be better replaced by either the USA Muff or the Russian, and kept for solos, thrashy parts, noise, etc.
