The "must" pedals for tube amps...Tell me a couple

[wavley]

EHX Soul Food or variants. Sounds great in front of every tube amp I've tried so far.

A friend at work gave me a Soul Food because he was at a store and they had two and he knew I wanted to try one.  It's actually a pretty great sounding pedal in front of an amp ready to break up.

[petey twofinger]

people mod those with germanium diodes . surprised there isnt a layout for this yet , but boy did i enjoy that demo video ... .. ..

oh and hats off for the snarky comment , i agree what you typed there .

i always found it interesting how ritchie blackmore used those akai reel to reel decks as a premap , but then again he had that peg gimmick  on his headstock so i am not so sure how much weight i would prescribe to them being anything too special .

i feel generally higher gain devices are more suited for lower volume / power levels , like a big muff does this very well , in a bedroom , then the cleanish boost , that type of idea works better for much more powerful or stage volume set ups .

honestly , my vote would go towards a bk tube driver, valve caster, or something with an actual tube . david G did ok combining the bmp with s boost to round out the tone .

[wavley]

people mod those with germanium diodes . surprised there isnt a layout for this yet , but boy did i enjoy that demo video ... .. ..

oh and hats off for the snarky comment , i agree what you typed there .

i always found it interesting how ritchie blackmore used those akai reel to reel decks as a premap , but then again he had that peg gimmick  on his headstock so i am not so sure how much weight i would prescribe to them being anything too special .

i feel generally higher gain devices are more suited for lower volume / power levels , like a big muff does this very well , in a bedroom , then the cleanish boost , that type of idea works better for much more powerful or stage volume set ups .

honestly , my vote would go towards a bk tube driver, valve caster, or something with an actual tube . david G did ok combining the bmp with s boost to round out the tone .

I actually have the Roberts version of his reel to reel, someone else around here does too, I remember discussing it with them.  DougH? Mark Hammer?... you know one one of those cats that's been around here for a while and really knows his stuff.  If you plug into the phono input meant for a turntable (with the RIAA curve and loads of gain) you get a very thick creamy fuzz out of the thing, it's quite nice sounding.  It also has two single ended EL84 based amps that you can use for recording, not bad sounding at all.

I have an EHX English Muffin that I tweaked the values to be more of the early Hiwatt sound, these days I run fairly low wattage amps (a Cornford Carrera on one side and a 69 Vibrolux modded to be a 62 after I fixed Ned's and fell in love so I recorded all his values and voltages) so the Muffin is just some extra grunt and growl to push my amps into Hum (the band) territory.

[PRR]

> talk about "clean boosters"

Not sayin' I understand the jargon, but an observation....

> to push a tube amp from the edge of breaking up over that edge

In principle, all you need is another stage of tube, easily added in the original design.

Problem is, tubes hiss and hum. Another stage in front, hiss+hum is 10X worse.

Fairly cheap transistory circuits have hiss levels 5X better than typical tubes, and often "no" hum.

So if you need more gain to get from finger/pickup level to tube OVER-drive level, then you should consider a "clean" transistor boost in front.

I've pondered the toplogy of a simple (Champ, even Kay/Kent) tube amp with a JFET on front. Gets the input garbage way down, by getting some clean gain before the nicely-dirty parts. (Somewhat similar thinking in some hybrid amps- chip frontend and a bottle-set at the output; though sometimes just to add a bunch of frill-knobs without huge glass cost.)

"Clean" as in low-distortion is a maybe/maybe-not issue. If you are going to smack the tubes to 50% THD, then maybe 5% THD in the transistor won't matter. OTOH transistors distort different, and also invariably at different level (and THD slope) than tubes. So transistor distortion with tube distortion may be like mildew on the Venus de Milo-- she's broken, but the mildew is a very different damage which stands out despite her armlessness.

[PRR]

>> ritchie blackmore used those akai reel to reel decks
> I actually have the Roberts version of his reel to reel

Same machine. When first brought to the USA, the "Roberts" name was used to distract from its Japanese origin (older Japanese gear had a cheap rap). But even that year, folks in the USA were learning that Japan could make world-class gear, so the badges were changed to "Akai".

[Mark Hammer]

I actually have the Roberts version of his reel to reel, someone else around here does too, I remember discussing it with them.  DougH? Mark Hammer?.

It may have been me.  I currently have an Akai 4000DB, but I used to have a Roberts with a tube preamp.  I forget what model number, and likely would not recognize it all these years later.

I don't know what sort of level-shift Blackmore employed.  In my own case, I plugged the guitar into the mic preamp, which would overdrive it, and took the line out to feed my cheap tube amp (a dual 6V6 Symphonic with a bad 12").  This was roughly 45 years ago, so I knew much less, only that it sounded great to my ears, as well as to my bandmates.  Whether it would sound as good to me now, is a whole other thing.

Someone from this forum, or maybe another, contacted me a few years ago, and was interested in making a pedal that was just the solid-state Akai preamp.  I may have the schematic he sent, somewhere, but don't recall whatthe filename was or what I filed it under.  It was for the entire tape recorder, and had a lot of crossing lines, so it was bloody hard to read.  Don't know whatever came of it.

[tubegeek]

4000 dB is a LOT of gain, Mark.

[B Tremblay]

4000 dB is a LOT of gain, Mark.

You need to subtract 32 and multiply by 5/9 to calculate the true gain. Unless you mod it to kick it up another three or four quads per channel.

[tubegeek]

You need to subtract 32 and multiply by 5/9 to calculate the true gain. Unless you mod it to kick it up another three or four quads per channel.

Referenced to how many milliWebers per nanoBar?

[B Tremblay]

You need to subtract 32 and multiply by 5/9 to calculate the true gain. Unless you mod it to kick it up another three or four quads per channel.

Referenced to how many milliWebers per nanoBar?

42!

[R.G.]

At one point in the engineering outhouse I worked in, it was common to answer every question which required a numeric answer with:

"Oh, about eighty - why?"

[bluebunny]

"Oh, about eighty - why?"

[Ben N]

Did you guys know that a quick google search looking for a forum dedicated to tone being all in the fingers turned up absolutely nothing?

I'm guessing because it's a pretty boring thing to discuss and is only ever mentioned to derail the momentum of forums dedicated to equipment.

Yes, Clapton always sounds like Clapton and SRV always sounds like SRV no matter what they play on, we all know and accept that, nobody once I think has ever denied it.  The subject has been discussed ad nauseam, this is a pedal forum, can we please never discuss this cliche again?  It seems like every time someone asks an open ended question about pedals, guitars, or amps someone has to pipe in with "the tone is all in the fingers".

Sorry to be so snarky, but I really enjoy discussing equipment, it's not a crutch, they are different color paints on my palette.  I'm tired of getting a good discussion going only to halted by some contrarian chiming in.  I immensely enjoy tinkering with, building, and playing equipment, it seems that I discover something new about my playing that is often brought out by using a new piece of equipment and exploring it's sounds.

I assume this diatribe/snark was aimed at me, so I'll respond, even though I don't think there is any dispute of substance here. I've been hanging around here a long time, so I obviously also "immensely enjoy tinkering with, building, and playing equipment", and I did not mean to suggest that there is anything impure or inferior about these pursuits, or that playing without pedals is superior to playing with them, or to derail any discussion. I only took issue (mildly) with the notion that there is such a thing as a "must" pedal. There are a lot of possibilities, and choosing among them is dictated by the personal tastes of the player, coordination with the player's other gear, and/or the demands of the gig. Buchanon played through a bare cable, Gallagher through a Rangemaster, SRV through a TS--which one is the "must"?

[deafbutpicky]

I once had the opportunity to have a Marshall 1959 for a week years ago and what ever I tried it either sounded lush or spikey and harsh till I went all dimed on it (and every one else left the practice room) with nothing between, just the cord. Half an hour later I joined them with a big grin on my face and half deaf. Now I'm not one of the fainthearted but the lesson I took from it was to push a tube amp and making it sound good are two different things. Went on with my Boss GT-5 and poweramps always missing something. Then I started making my own pedals... (moral of this I think is the best is at the end)

[karbomusic]

Buchanon played through a bare cable, Gallagher through a Rangemaster, SRV through a TS--which one is the "must"?

I took it as a number of pedals do an outstanding job at it but others possibly not so much. It's always YMMV but there are probably pedals more revered for doing that than others (or not). 

[PRR]

> I used to have a Roberts

Announcement:

[Davelectro]

A must pedal iMO is the Colorsound Overdriver/Power boost.

At least if you're into classic rock.

[tubegeek]

If you have a guitar amp with a footswitch for trem or reverb, those are nice to have.