Need gritty tone!!

[rocketpastthemoon]

I'm in search for a gritty tone that is thick with a good bright shimmer to it, but most thick tones end up sounding muddy. I have a jcm 800 2205 with an orange cab, which is cool, but sounds better at high gain on the jcm then run through my twin reverb. I just bought a V2 hoping to fix my looking for the perfect tone. any suggestions?

to help aid for readers, i usually run my mid at about 5 to 6, bass at 8 and treble at 8 or 9 to get that bright shimmer tone.

[stokes]

At higher volumes I would suggest turning the bass down to about 2-4 at most.I find at higher volumes the bass always muddies things up if you dont keep it down some.Thats a cheap fix.Tubes can make a big difference but can get expensive searching for just the right ones.A different bias setting can be a big help in some cases.And just when you think you have "that" sound,you want even better,and on and on...

[PlayItAll]

I don't know what kind of guitar/pickups you're using, but in addition to stokes great advice, you may want to try moving your pickups away from the strings just a bit. It's hard to do psychologically, but it can air out your tone and give better "cut" or "bite" to your high volume lead tone.

Good luck!,
Ed

[mykey]

I'm in search for a gritty tone that is thick with a good bright shimmer to it, but most thick tones end up sounding muddy. I have a jcm 800 2205 with an orange cab, which is cool, but sounds better at high gain on the jcm then run through my twin reverb. I just bought a V2 hoping to fix my looking for the perfect tone. any suggestions?

to help aid for readers, i usually run my mid at about 5 to 6, bass at 8 and treble at 8 or 9 to get that bright shimmer tone.

if you want, i can pass on some minor modifications, do you know a tech who can do them for you? these are not very difficult or time consuming. what also comes to mind is replace your preamp tubes with 12AX7 / 12AT7 Chinese "Sino" brand tubes. these are also sold by groove tubes as 12AX7CH.
you will notice an immediate improvement with these type of preamp tubes.

[rocketpastthemoon]

if you want, i can pass on some minor modifications, do you know a tech who can do them for you? these are not very difficult or time consuming. what also comes to mind is replace your preamp tubes with 12AX7 / 12AT7 Chinese "Sino" brand tubes. these are also sold by groove tubes as 12AX7CH.
you will notice an immediate improvement with these type of preamp tubes.

Yeah I'd be interested to hear what it is and what it'll do.

[PRNDL]

I'm in search for a gritty tone that is thick with a good bright shimmer to it, but most thick tones end up sounding muddy. I have a jcm 800 2205 with an orange cab, which is cool, but sounds better at high gain on the jcm then run through my twin reverb. I just bought a V2 hoping to fix my looking for the perfect tone. any suggestions?

to help aid for readers, i usually run my mid at about 5 to 6, bass at 8 and treble at 8 or 9 to get that bright shimmer tone.

Do you mean that the JCM sounds much better turned all the way up.
If so, then the difference is the JCM output tubes, as well as the speakers.

Are you connecting the JCM preamp out into the twin, which gives you lead tones from the JCM plus the Fender Twin clean?

Fenders are very sensitive to speakers. You might want to try some other speakers for the Twin. The way speakers handle high frequency is the main difference. I've heard that in reference to Alnico speakers.

You may also want to try a high quality pedal with the Twin. I really like the Subdecay BlackStar.

[mykey]

[QUOTE=rocketpastthemoon;24097]Yeah I'd be interested to hear what it is and what it'll do.[/QUO

well I'm out in the desert now but I'll pass that on to you when I get back. But basically it makes the marshall sound more like a marshall. more gain and sensitivity, more of the good type of distortion, less ringing of preamp tubes.
the mods draw on the design of the old style plexi marshall.
and it can be removed easily if you don't like it, but i would advise having an experienced tube tech do this, seriously because the inside of this amp is a shock hazard, requires good soldering equipment and should really be bias adjusted with real test equipment.
what most players don't understand is that installing these higher gain preamp tubes (Chinese Sino 2 X 12AX7, 1 X 12AT7) makes a huge improvement, and that not all preamp tubes are created equal. so most don't want to spend the $20 to replace them, but it's more worth it than you realize.
and then for those who want to use distortion pedals, this is not really for them because its really geared towards real tube distortion and not transistor distortion which is rather thin, noisy, and contains rather irritating odd harmonics.
then my last recommendation is to use humbucking pickups, not single coil due to your single to noise ratio, you want to get as little undesirable squealing feedback as possible and as little 60 cycle noise as possible and you won't get these things from single coil pickups.

[mykey]

Kine Grind modifications...JCM 800 2205:
OK before you solder to tube sockets, take the tubes out...and where silver mica caps are called for, make sure these are 1000Volt do not substitute. do not recommend you use ceramic disk caps for this, it will result in a lot of 60 cycle heater noise being amplified. Silver mica caps are much quieter. recommend 1/4 or 1/2 watt metal film resistors be used instead of carbon, this will result in less hisssssssss.

1. change R2 to 680 ohm for more gain, then you want to do step 2 also to prevent ringing oscillation.

2. install 7 pf 1000 Volt silver mica cap on V1A between plate (pin 1) and grid (pin 2). this provides negative feedback to prevent V1A from becoming microphonic. Install this cap directly soldered to the tube socket, leads as short as possible.

3. change R13 to 4.7K (optional) for more gain

4. maniacs: (optional) change capacitor C2 to 25 mfd, the + of the capacitor faces pin 3 of V1. this might be too much gain and almost out of control, but all those lead guitar players who are power crazed will love it.

5. after step 4, (maniacs) install 7 pf 1000 Volt silver mica capacitor between pin 6 (plate) and pin 7 (grid) of V1B. This provides negative feedback to prevent V2B from becoming microphonic. Install this cap directly soldered to the tube socket, leads as short as possible.

NOTE 1: this is pure tube distortion and not intended for people who use distortion pedals. Also- this may not work with single coil pickups, you might get too much noise or the pickup might feed back too easily.

NOTE 2: you can use these mods on other Marshall amps also.