I was messing around and got this CRAZY tone!

  • Thread starter Thread starter elenore19
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elenore19

elenore19

Slowing becoming un-noob.
So alright, I know this was probably a stupid Idea, but I had to try it.

I plugged my friends head (marshall mg100hdfx) into my line 6 spider two...yeah, wow! I tweaked all these things and found this very awesome crunchy, scratchy, distorted tone. Sounds awesome, I'll try and record some of it sometime or something.

Has anyone ever tried doing this? Could I ruin something by doing this?

It is just absolutely nuts...crazy crazy amount of distortion!


-Elliot
 
i did it with a couple of small solid state amps when i was a kid. i'd probably hate the sound today but i thought it was cool back then.
 
TravisinFlorida said:
i did it with a couple of small solid state amps when i was a kid. i'd probably hate the sound today but i thought it was cool back then.
Ha, nice.


Yeah, I've tweaked what I've done even more, sounds great. Very distorted, but not really meshed...I love it, makes me want to buy the head just so I could use it live.
 
Yeah, you WILL mess your amps up doing that. Thats a promise.

Taken from Z.Vex's website about his amp, which can be applicable to all amps:

WARNING: DO NOT CONNECT OUTPUT OF NANO TO ANOTHER AMP'S INPUT. THE NANO IS AN AMP, NOT AN EFFECT, AND MUST BE CONNECTED ONLY TO A SPEAKER CABINET UNLESS AN ATTENUATOR SUCH AS THE THD HOTPLATE IS USED TO PROCESS THE SIGNAL AND PROVIDE A LOAD. CAREFUL,YOU COULD DAMAGE OR DESTROY BOTH AMPLIFIERS!
 
rory said:
Yeah, you WILL mess your amps up doing that. Thats a promise.

Taken from Z.Vex's website about his amp, which can be applicable to all amps:

WARNING: DO NOT CONNECT OUTPUT OF NANO TO ANOTHER AMP'S INPUT. THE NANO IS AN AMP, NOT AN EFFECT, AND MUST BE CONNECTED ONLY TO A SPEAKER CABINET UNLESS AN ATTENUATOR SUCH AS THE THD HOTPLATE IS USED TO PROCESS THE SIGNAL AND PROVIDE A LOAD. CAREFUL,YOU COULD DAMAGE OR DESTROY BOTH AMPLIFIERS!

Ah. Crap. Alright, thanks for the info. It's too bad, I was really getting an awesome tone that I really loved. Oh well. But what's a "Nano"?
 
Unless you're taking the line out from the marshall. Then it's fine. You just don't want to connect the speaker jacks to the input of another amp. But if you did, things would be broken by now.
 
rory said:
Yeah, you WILL mess your amps up doing that. Thats a promise.

Taken from Z.Vex's website about his amp, which can be applicable to all amps:

WARNING: DO NOT CONNECT OUTPUT OF NANO TO ANOTHER AMP'S INPUT. THE NANO IS AN AMP, NOT AN EFFECT, AND MUST BE CONNECTED ONLY TO A SPEAKER CABINET UNLESS AN ATTENUATOR SUCH AS THE THD HOTPLATE IS USED TO PROCESS THE SIGNAL AND PROVIDE A LOAD. CAREFUL,YOU COULD DAMAGE OR DESTROY BOTH AMPLIFIERS!
The only output on a nano is for a cab. You definitely don't want to be plugging that into another amp.
 
when i did this i was using a line out from one amp to feed the other amp. it had a lot of gain but a lot of noise too.
 
nothing that's .5 watts is badass. i don't care who makes it. yea it has some little mini tube in it but it's not the same as a real amp. sorry rory, no disrespect intended.
 
TravisinFlorida said:
nothing that's .5 watts is badass. i don't care who makes it. yea it has some little mini tube in it but it's not the same as a real amp. sorry rory, no disrespect intended.

None taken, I doubt you've played or recorded with one!
 
IronFlippy said:
Unless you're taking the line out from the marshall. Then it's fine. You just don't want to connect the speaker jacks to the input of another amp. But if you did, things would be broken by now.

IronFlippy said:
The only output on a nano is for a cab. You definitely don't want to be plugging that into another amp.

How would things be broken?

Because as of now, I stopped doing it because of people telling me not to...and both amps work great.

I used the output of the marshall head that I would use if it was plugging it into a cab, and plugged it into input of my Line 6, as if it were a guitar going into my line 6...

if that makes sense...I'll get a diagram up if we need more explanation.


But yeah, nothing is broken as of yet, and I probably won't try this again unless someone says it's alright, ha.
 
Think about it this way. How loud is the output of the Marshall head? Okay, now how loud is the output of your guitar? See the problem? Mainly, it's a voltage/current/impedance issue. The Marshall is looking for a certain load and if the load it's getting is on the wrong side of the spectrum, chances are something's going to fry. Same with the Line 6, that's a lot of current going into the input and there's a good chance that the pre section could fry (I'm not too informed on how much current it could actually take, but chances are the components aren't rated for it). Basically, not a good idea.
 
timthetortoise said:
Think about it this way. How loud is the output of the Marshall head? Okay, now how loud is the output of your guitar? See the problem? Mainly, it's a voltage/current/impedance issue. The Marshall is looking for a certain load and if the load it's getting is on the wrong side of the spectrum, chances are something's going to fry. Same with the Line 6, that's a lot of current going into the input and there's a good chance that the pre section could fry (I'm not too informed on how much current it could actually take, but chances are the components aren't rated for it). Basically, not a good idea.

It's not that there is a lot of current going into an input, an input is only going to draw current based upon voltage and impedance. Amps *should* be designed to limit voltage at the input to something that won't damage the input stage.

But you can't force current into a load. Consider your wall outlets, they can drive a hair dryer to 1800 watts, but they are also perfectly happy running a nightlight at 4 watts. Does the nightlight explode? No, the wall outlet is just a very low impedance source that will drive any load, light or heavy, until the breaker trips.

So, is an amp just a very low impedance source? In the case of a solid state amp, probably. It wouldn't care that it had a high impedance load. In the case of a tube amp, probably not. It would have an output transformer that could be very unhappy without the rated load.
 
mshilarious said:
It's not that there is a lot of current going into an input, an input is only going to draw current based upon voltage and impedance. Amps *should* be designed to limit voltage at the input to something that won't damage the input stage.

But you can't force current into a load. Consider your wall outlets, they can drive a hair dryer to 1800 watts, but they are also perfectly happy running a nightlight at 4 watts. Does the nightlight explode? No, the wall outlet is just a very low impedance source that will drive any load, light or heavy, until the breaker trips.

So, is an amp just a very low impedance source? In the case of a solid state amp, probably. It wouldn't care that it had a high impedance load. In the case of a tube amp, probably not. It would have an output transformer that could be very unhappy without the rated load.

So are you saying that it would be fine seeing that I have a solid state head?

I'm sort of confused...
 
TravisinFlorida said:
you're right. maybe i would shut my pie hole if i had. :p


I just listened to a clip of that amp. Sounds pretty damn nice. You'd never know it was .5W
 
HangDawg said:
I just listened to a clip of that amp. Sounds pretty damn nice. You'd never know it was .5W

Its one of three go to amps when I'm doing a session. Its really great.

The inside speaker sucks balls, but when hooked up to a 4x12 or 2x12 sounds really amazing. You can get really nice feedback without much hassle as well.
 
rory said:
Its one of three go to amps when I'm doing a session. Its really great.

The inside speaker sucks balls, but when hooked up to a 4x12 or 2x12 sounds really amazing. You can get really nice feedback without much hassle as well.


How much did it cost?
 
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