A short overdrive demo

Hey Richard, 🙂

Always cool to hear you play man! Great stuff!

I liked your tone (as usual!) It didn’t seem too “”fizzy/brittle” to me?!? However, I’m sure you know what you are shooting for, so I believe you – LOL!

Ya know what would be a cool comparison…try A/B-‘ing your: Les Paul–>clean-channel–>MAR drive-pedal–>Blackstar HT-5 clean-channel with just your Les Paul–>Blackstar HT-5’s overdrive/dirty-channel (tweaked to most closely approximate your “dynamic/unforgiving slightly overdriven-tone” that you achieve with the Les Paul/OD-pedal/amp-clean) That would be very cool to hear the differences/similarities IMHO! 😉

Even though the guitar–>pedal–>clean-amp setup might more closely resemble your live-rig, such a comparison might help some of us IG-ers who are learning the difference between the two ways of achieving overdrive (amp-dirty vs. pedal–>amp-clean) See what I mean? My plan is to do it both ways (pedal for edge-tone; amp-dirty for overdrive/distortion tone! – See below:)

Right now, my plan for implementing my new Blackstar HT-40 is to have a “3-tone setup” (not including subtle variations with the guitar’s volume-knob of course!) with only 2-amp channels! It’ll go like this:

*BTW, my live/gigging-guitars – (2) Blade R4’s – have Seymour Duncan Little-’59’s in the Bridge and Fender Custom-Shop/Texas Specials in the Neck & Middle positions.

*The ZVEX-Distortron is essentially a ZVEX “Box-of-Rock” pedal with some additional higher-gain-options and some mini-toggle/switchable tone-filters…VERY COOL pedal!

Clean-Tone: Blade Guitar–>Blackstar HT-40 Clean-Ch. *in Class AB mode/Fender-like clean!

Edge-Tone: Blade Guitar–>ZVEX Distortron OD-Pedal–>Blackstar HT-40 *Class AB mode.

Higher-Gain-Tone: Blade Guitar–>Blackstar HT-40 OD-Ch. *ISF at 3-O’Clock/75% UK-mode a la Marshall and 25% US-mode a la Mesa Boogie!

*BTW, HT-40 amp/channel-switching and special-effects (Delay; Modulation; Reverb; Volume-Pedal; etc.) by BOSS GT-10.

I’ll try to get a camera to do a rig-demo, once I get everything “tweaked” just right – LOL!

Thanks again Richard – Great post and demo bro! 😎

~Bill Meehan~ 😀

Awesome stuff, I caught this on YouTube the other day. Very fat!

@Richard Lundmark 11547 wrote:

You know guys, I was taking to Sean the other day about my setup, and now I actually am leaning towards a new plan.
Using a Palmer PDI-03 (the loadbox/cab sim that guys like Bonamassa, Satriani, EVH have used for years).

What that would enable me to do is to use my -74 marshall JMP lead at full blast to go straight into the soundcard via the Balanced emulated outputs. BUT, also to use the lineout-option from the Palmer to take the un-emulated signal into the sound card at the same time, adding some Recabinet impulses on that channel. That might make for a HUGE tone, and would also enable me to not only recreate my liver tone at home, but actually improve my consistency in live performances, and have a better on stage monitor tone. Of course the biggest plus is that home recording will be completely silent but with a full throttle marshall head, that’s sweet!

Another option would be to buy a Rocktron Piranha, or that elusive H&K Access preamp, and go straight with impulses. However, that would of course then not add anything to my live rig, since my old marshall does not have FX-loop, and I can thus not use the power section of that at all.

Hey Richard, 🙂

I’m sure you would attain a “killer-tone” with your old 1974 Marshall JMP Lead at “full-blast!” However, you’ll be really “stressing/aging” those output-tubes (6L6’s, EL34’s, or KT88’s – I suppose?!?) at a faster rate for two reasons: (1) You’d be playing the amp on full output-volume (“11” – LOL!) which really heats up and works those lovely “big-ass tubes” (with glorious results of course! :cool:) and (2) you’d be actually putting more total-hours/duty-cycle on the amp, since it would function as your “live-amp” and your “recording-amp” at home as well. The speed by which you’d be accelerating the “output-tubes’ aging-process” would certainly depend on how many hours you’d spend actually playing through that rig (cumulatively on the gig as well as at home recording guitars/woodshedding – not that you need much of that! – LOL! 😉 Furthermore, you could always do any “non-recording-playing” through any amp you have kicking-around, which would keep a bit of “duty-cycle” off those output-tubes!) 😉

Perhaps you’ve considered this and factored it into your budget, but if you haven’t, it just seemed like something to consider since a quartet (I assume there are four (4)-???) of excellent-quality output-tubes are NOT cheap!!! With that (approximate) amount of use, I would think that you’d need to re-tube it every 12-15 months to maintain optimum “output-tube tone/performance?” Maybe you have a different opinion of output-tube “life-expectancy?!?” :confused:

One thing is almost 100% certain – Your tone (live and recording) would rule the universe! – LOL! 😎

Let me know what you think about this…;)

BTW, I assume you’ve tried the Rocktron Piranha, as you ‘ve spoken highly about it’s tone/performance. So is it a really good unit? The reason I ask is because I think you can get one of those pretty cheap on eBay if i’m not mistaken?!? (My opinion of, and familiarity with the H&K Access is of course “well-documented!”) – LOL! 😉

Thanks,

P.S. Oh yeah….I don’t find the H&K Access to be too elusive…Ha-Ha!!! :p – LOL!

~Bill Meehan~ 😀

Hey Richard, 🙂

Your Marshall is in EXCELLLENT SHAPE my friend, but you are right – they’re ALL meant to be played – LOL! 😉

BTW, that was a great decision to revert it back to the original “non-master-volume” design. That’s part of the charm/tone of those original beasts! 😉

Anyways, yeah considering your high-level of dynamics and “tweener-tones” used, you would want to run those output-tubes at about seven (“7”) – just enough to heat-up those “delicious-EL34’s” – LOL! 😀

BTW, any chance we might get the honor/benefit of you giving us IG’ers an A/B comparison of achieving an overdriven/lead-tone two (2) different ways:

1.) Guitar–>Tube-Amp (“CRANKED”)–>Impulse-Response/Re-Cabinet–>Recorder

2.) Guitar–>Tube-Amp (“SEMI-CLEAN”)–>OD-Pedal–>I.R./Re-Cabinet–>Recorder

I think it would be interesting AND educational to compare & contrast these two (2) “age-old-ways” of achieving one’s “overdriven lead-tone.” 😎

If you have the time for such a test, I’m sure I would NOT be the only one who’d appreciate and learn from it! 😉

~Bill Meehan~ 😀