Guitar amp - keeping the noise down

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pure.fusion

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I needed to address the noise level of my amp since I have recently discovered that my valve amp only sounds nice when the volumes are up near 11,000 - I mean, it's really loud.

I looked into an iso cabinet, where it's just the speaker driver in a box. Too risky 'cause I don't know how it will sound after I go to the effort and (b) I don't want to go to the effort to pull apart my combo to do it.

Next I looked at a larger Iso box to put the whole combo in - Hmmm this is going to have to be quite large to prevent overheating and I'm not sure I want a large permanent piece of furnature taking up space in my studio.

So, last resort is the least effective but my only option - to place some baffles around the amp to at least try to dampen teh sound. (There is a special name for such a device in teh studio but I forgot).

I'm not really interested in doing it half a$sed with some pillows and a blanket. I'd really like to get some info, apply some science and make something really effective.

Does anyone have any experience on this? Fav? Links? Material suggestions?

Cheers,
FM
 
Have you considered an attenuator?

That way you can drive your amp hard without having all the volume.
 
Had I considered an attenuator? Well, yes, but I sort of discounted this option when I came apon it.

It's an expensive solution (for me at this time) and perhaps if I had a quality amp worthy of it's use I could justify it. But for a Blues Jr ? People would laugh!

I kind of think that this little Fender amp would get some of it's sound from the large speaker movement anyway.

In general, I'm finding that the BJ, as a valve amp, will give me sweet clean tones and that's about it. I'm not really interested in blues and I'm really looking for a tastefully overdrivin solid sound that I'm yet to find with this fender amp alone. Best results for me have been with the Master at 10/12 and the Vol (preamp) at 11/12. This was with the bridge and neck humbucker of my Jem77FP.

In the long run, I may be up for another amp. But this leads me to another question - people with bigger amps with nicer smoother distorted sounds, do they still crank them up to get a nice sound out of them. They would have to he a hell of a lot louder that my little squirt!

FM
 
Well, yeah. Big amps are gonna get loud when the power section is pushed.

Back to your situation.

You can get low-wattage speakers that will respond well to reduced amp levels. (The Celestion alnico Blue is a good example - it's a 15-watt speaker that's really articulate and responsive even at low volume - but it's also pretty damned expensive.)

So you could use an attenuator on the amp (yes, on a Blues Junior!) with a lower-wattage speaker and have a good-sounding low-output rig.
 
Cool. Good info Beeblebrox, thank you.

I should make this an option viable option.

Cheers, :D
FM
 
... but to follow through with the post topic, can anyone comment on teh baffles?

FM
 
You might want to try posting in the Studio forum - those guys know about baffles and that kind of stuff.
 
pure.fusion said:
... but to follow through with the post topic, can anyone comment on teh baffles?

FM
Click to expand...

Baffles aren't going to do much. It's going to have to be sealed to provide much of any transmission loss.
 
pure.fusion said:
Had I considered an attenuator? Well, yes, but I sort of discounted this option when I came apon it.

It's an expensive solution (for me at this time) and perhaps if I had a quality amp worthy of it's use I could justify it. But for a Blues Jr ? People would laugh!

I kind of think that this little Fender amp would get some of it's sound from the large speaker movement anyway.

In general, I'm finding that the BJ, as a valve amp, will give me sweet clean tones and that's about it. I'm not really interested in blues and I'm really looking for a tastefully overdrivin solid sound that I'm yet to find with this fender amp alone. Best results for me have been with the Master at 10/12 and the Vol (preamp) at 11/12. This was with the bridge and neck humbucker of my Jem77FP.

In the long run, I may be up for another amp. But this leads me to another question - people with bigger amps with nicer smoother distorted sounds, do they still crank them up to get a nice sound out of them. They would have to he a hell of a lot louder that my little squirt!

FM
Click to expand...

Why would people laugh??? 15watts is a rating applied by the manufacturer to some arbitrary level of total harmonic distortion, like say 1%.

But what if the tone you like has 3 or even 5% THD???

Now that amp is cranking out ABOVE it's rated output because it's being overdriven. That is the saturated sound of your output transformer and the power tubes working full-on.

With the BJ you probably need an overdrive to get where you want to go tonewise.

After that the Weber just makes the final audio level that much more controllable.

My kid plays a Blues Junior and within a couple weeks I bought him a 50 watt MASS. He NEVER plays without it now because he can get the WAY overdriven tone he likes without having bleeding ears.
 
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