natural valve distortion

You can get some nice saturation out of that amp without turning it to max, but you would probably have to crank it to 1/2. You can hear tube saturation, but it's hard to describe. All I can say it that the amp will sound very alive. You will get increased sustain, and feedback too if you are into that.

On my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe my amp will start to saturate around 4 (out of 12). Fender volume comes on very fast, you may have to crank up a little higher than that.

But Ricochet was correct, when your amp starts to saturate it will not get louder, just more distorted. This is the tube tone guitar players die for.

Everybody thinks tube saturation is some over-the-top distortion, but it is not. It is not to be compared to high gain distortion you get from pedals. It is a more mellow distortion. But the tone is better than any sound you will ever get from a pedal.

Here is a great example of tube saturation, Neil Young. Neil has never used pedals. He just cranks his old 12 watt Fender Deluxe to max and lets it scream. Listen carefully to this clip to hear what true tube saturation sounds like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guwyG8VR86c

You can hear his amp making all kinds of noises, feedback, squeaks, crackles, noise... this is tube saturation.

thans very much - thats great.
But if turning my amp up that high is still too loud, if can drop the volume nobs the guitar and i should still get the tube saturation sound at lower volumes?? am i right

The only real way to get tube saturation is crank the amp up. Even an attenuator cuts the signal going from the amp to the speakers, and the speakers are part of this overdriven tone too.

In some studios they build a box to put the amp in and then crank it to max. Some players will place their amp against a wall or even cover it with a blanket. You don't want to cut off air circulation to the amp however.

It is really hard to crank even a 5 watt amp at home, a 100 watt amp is ridiculously loud.

Go to Weber and look at their attenuators with an actual speaker motor. This is your best bet to get cranked tone at lower volumes.

Weber Attenuators

An attenuator will get you as close as possible while keeping volume down.

also known as a power sink. not very expensive. check out any gear catalog.

I realized I never answered your question. Yes, you can crank your amp to max and then turn your guitar way down. You will still get a very alive saturated tone, however it will be pretty clean. You will gets lots of noise and feedback. But to really overdrive and distort you have to turn the guitar up too.

Here is another great clip of Neil playing Cinnammon Girl. Again, no distortion or overdrive pedals, this is all amp.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBS3B2cZcFM&feature=related

MIne's an early combo, they may have done something like that already after the head came out with switchable impedance. I don't know.

Mine's a rev-2, it has the changes for hum reduction but still only one output jack at 4 ohms

what is an attenator? are they easy to connect to amps and eare they expensive??

Follow this link:

https://ssl.eurotubes.com/cart/index.php?page=view_products&category_id=112&sub_category_id=113

It lowers the volume, essentially. It just connects between the amp head and the speaker.

Wes - thanks, some great sounds on those clips. the hunt for tone continues!!! i will now have a look at some attenuators!

I've notice some don't clean up nicely when backed off or are not very well calibrated

You can sometimes offset that problem with a "treble bleed" mod using a resistor and a capacitor across the volume pot lugs. Very inexpensive and very effective.

Hi Slej,
Do you know of a good resource to learn more about how to do this? The only thing I can't stand about the LP Studio is that it is very hard to get the volume between full-on and off, and the inconsistency when I try to get in that spot (where my amp turns into a shiny clean machine). I'll search out "treble bleed" to see what I find but if you have some personal exp I'd love to hear it. My exp with the LP is that it cuts the treble alot and then finally the volume to naught. I like to use the vol knob as a tool but it is very definitely not a strong suit on my gibsons but practically built in to a few fenders and G&Ls. I've said before I'm no EE but I have no problem soldering in the control cavity if it would even help me learn something at the very least.

Oh and whoever first asked about the epi valve jr, I like it a lot but it will piss off you neighbors if you share a common wall!

Peace,
Jick

that deaf dumb and blind kid was pretty good at asteroids too

Hi Slej,
Do you know of a good resource to learn more about how to do this?

I don't remember the exact values I used, but I did the cap+resistor in parallel version that is found about 2/3rds of the way down THIS PAGE. If I had to guess I'd say it was a .001 cap with a 100k resistor, as that's most likely what I had sitting in my parts box. :wink:

The tone change is almost imperceptible as I roll down the volume; just the slightest treble drop-off. It's almost too smooth! If I did it again I would have used cap/resistor values that give the perception of a modest treble boost, and this would also give more sense of "cleaning up" as the volume rolls down because the mud-inducing lows/lower-mids drop off more rapidly. Joe Satriani's guitar has one of these mods, and he has commented that that's how he gets his "clean distorted" tone that doesn't get muddy.

You can plug values for the cap and resistor into THIS SPREADSHEET (MS-Excel required) and see how the tone profiles change at different volume levels. You can easily see how a 200k resistor with the .001 cap would have achieved the modest "treble boost" I'm talking about above. If you plug in a really large number for the resistor (like 10,000,000) then that will essentially be like having no resistor, and you can then also see how a cap by itself affects the tone profile - the same .001 cap gives a huge treble bump by itself, whereas the addition of the resistor in parallel smooths its out nicely.

Dimarzio recommends a 680pf cap in parallel with a 220k resistor; that's a good place to start and you can't go wrong with those values.

Hope that helps!

just wondering... i know that to get the valve saturation we have been talking about, the valves have to have had time to warm up. how long does this take. my amp sounds like fingers on a blackboard for a long time before it begins to sound appealing??

The valves are properly warmed up in 30 seconds or so.

There are drifts in values of capacitors and resistors in the equipment until everything reaches a final equilibrium temperature, which takes a while. That's why a tube (valve) radio has to be retuned for a while to stay on a station.

But IMO most of the "warmup" in tone is your ears becoming adjusted to the sound level.

slej

Thanks very much for that info!

Peace,
Jicky

Lots of folks complain that attenuators affect the tone, but I think it is minimal. If you really have a chance to crank a tube amp full, you will notice that the highs roll off anyway and you get a much thicker, rubbery tone like Neil Young had in Cinnamon Girl. Some attenuators allow you to boost Highs to offset this natural roll-off of high frequencies. But it is really the thick rubbery tone that guitarists crave. It is a soft distortion compared to a very hard, edgy tone that solid state amps get when really pushed. But neither sound is better, Metal groups especially like a very edgy tone and often use solid state amps. But old-school Rock and Blues almost always goes with tube amps.

Well, old school Rock and Blues are obviously better. :wink: