Anyone familiar with Dumble amp?

[big_teee]

If your making a boutique wish list?
I always liked the Soldano sound.
The SLO100 and Warren Haynes playing it IMO is hard to beat!

[Alan0354]

My point is a player of Larry Carlton's caliber can play through anything and sound great.

That's it.

That Dumble/Mesa sound is ok, but unless the player bends a few notes you can't really tell its being produced by a guitar. The sound of the string interacting with the pickup is buried beneath layers of processing. Its a cool sound, but I wonder how much of Carlos Santana's brilliance we've missed because he wasn't playing through something else. I don't mean that it has to be dead-nutz clean, and I think that dark fuzzy sound can be nice in small doses, but, I dunno, there's something very interesting about the sound of an electric guitar string. And maybe I haven't seen them all, but it seems like just about all the demo sounds you hear from guys who have built their own Dumble style amps are accompanied by a cheesy backing track. Great builds, great players, but there just aren't enough examples playing the thing straight into a mic.

That's what I kept saying, all the great demo on different amps......BUT......BUT.....If you go to the store and test the same amp yourself, IT SOUNDS NOTHING......I REPEAT......NOTHING LIKE THAT. I was a serious guitarist and was consider very good guitarist in my days ( 70s). I think I know enough about sound and how player make the sound. Not only the player makes the sound, all the recording technique, effect pedals totally change the sound. As I said, I was so surprised Carlos Santana sounded totally different when I listen to the sound direct from the amp instead of through the PA. It is that different. I remember I stood at the front row and heard the raw amp without mic, then when I went to the bathroom and heard it through the PA at the back, it's completely different.

It is very hard if not impossible to judge sound of amp from video. All you can do is find the video that is recorded directly into mic without fancy effect, if you like it, look for one in the store to try it.

[Alan0354]

If your making a boutique wish list?
I always liked the Soldano sound.
The SLO100 and Warren Haynes playing it IMO is hard to beat!

That's the reason I said the Dumble preamp sound very good, 2204 good, maybe Soldano good.......my amp good!!! Ha ha!!! Like all good boutique amps, they are in the $2000 range +/-. Nothing more, nothing less.

Also I have to add, from my testing, I don't believe you can get very good clean sound and OD on this particular Dumble AT THE SAME TIME as a channel switching amp. This is because in order to get a rich full clean sound, you are going to have to crank up the bass at the pre OD gain. This will make the OD farts!!!! I question that when I looked at the schematic, I tried it. It sure farted like anything when I crank the bass beyond 1/4!!! You guys that design amps should know exactly what I am talking about.

For me to get the sound I want, the setting of the pre-OD tone stack is very funny with the treble almost to the max. You all know that is not going to sound good as the clean channel. I did not set up for channel switching, but experience tells me that it ain't going to pan out. So bottom line you might get very good clean sound, or you get very good OD sound, not both.

Another thing, OD is 4 stage, you guys should know that it sounds very different from 3 stages. I did not manage to get a good clean sound by turning down the guitar no matter how I adjust the volume, gain, trim setting. Which is normal. Nothing like the 2204 that you really clean up good by backing off the volume on the guitar.

To me, it's a very good metal high gain amp for the 80s on, it ain't a rock amp of a Marshall.....or just from reading the schematic of Soldano( which is a variation of 2204).

I think the Fender Super Sonic has kind of similar sound characteristics as the Dumble. But SS has totally separate clean tone stack and volume. It makes a perfect channel switching amp, nothing like the Dumble that all inner twined together. For the super stars, they play their own style, how many of the famous players using Dumble ever play clean to back up some singers, then immediately switch to an all out shreading? I bet they never even get off the OD channel. But for the rest of us mortals, we need to play all different kind of musics. Good luck in using the Dumble.

[big_teee]

I was a serious guitarist and was consider very good guitarist in my days ( 70s). I think I know enough about sound and how player make the sound.

Don't break your Arm!
So much for Humility!

[Alan0354]

Don't break your Arm!
So much for Humility!

That was almost 40 years ago. I did won 4 top Telent quest in Hong Kong and been on TV and all. This is a street jam I recorded on a hand held cassette in 1978 right before I quit. It's nothing compare to today's players, but I don't think anyone can sneeze at it in 1978

Solo 1 - YouTube

[jazbo8]

Do you want Alan to send Jackie Chan to whup your benind?!

[Alan0354]

let's get back to the Dumble. I spent a lot of time putting in my 2 cents, What do you guys feel? This is only my opinion.

[big_teee]

The Dumble clips just sounds like a lot of other good amps IMO.
However I'm more Marshall oriented.
I like the sound of the Granger amps, too.
Most of them are copies of marshall, Vox, and Hywatt.
I don't figure too many here have ever had their hands on a dumble.

[Alan0354]

Definitely have 10 times more variant of 2204 than anything else. I think it's for good reason. If I have to live with one, from my two front ends, I think 2204 et al is easier to live with. Much easy to clean up.

[JoeM]

let's get back to the Dumble. I spent a lot of time putting in my 2 cents, What do you guys feel? This is only my opinion.

It's known that HAD tweaks his amps for the particular player,so no one really knows the exact circuit. Accordingly, I don't give too much weight to your comments based on the version you built.

[Gingertube]

Alan,
It is my view that pre overdrive tone stacks are pretty much a waste of time. YES - you may want to adjust the frequency balance before the overdrive stages, particularly to limit bass which rapidly turns to mud in the overdrive section BUT this can be done by reducing coupling caps or similar. It is the overdriven sound which you want adjust with a tone stack.
You have probably worked this out for yourself but it is not specifically stated in the thread above. One of the tone stacks in the Dumble consists of internal preset trimmer pots on the board and it is a "Set and Forget" tone stack which is adjusted at set to work/tune time for the customer. It is tweaked along with several other presets like the OD trim control to suit each customer. This means that no 2 Dumbles sound exactly the same, each was originally set up to suit the original buyers taste/preferences.

Cheers,
Ian

[Alan0354]

Alan,
It is my view that pre overdrive tone stacks are pretty much a waste of time. YES - you may want to adjust the frequency balance before the overdrive stages, particularly to limit bass which rapidly turns to mud in the overdrive section BUT this can be done by reducing coupling caps or similar. It is the overdriven sound which you want adjust with a tone stack.
You have probably worked this out for yourself but it is not specifically stated in the thread above. One of the tone stacks in the Dumble consists of internal preset trimmer pots on the board and it is a "Set and Forget" tone stack which is adjusted at set to work/tune time for the customer. It is tweaked along with several other presets like the OD trim control to suit each customer. This means that no 2 Dumbles sound exactly the same, each was originally set up to suit the original buyers taste/preferences.

Cheers,
Ian

Thanks for your comment. Yes I did the pre OD tone stack as trim pot right from the start, have no intention of having two sets of tone stack outside. It does seems to give slightly different sound from non pre OD tone stack. I had tone stack trim in my first build, only I put it after the second stage, effect is not quite as good. That's the reason I was intrigued about the Dumble and build the front end.

There is still something about the Dumble front end that I like though. Ha ha, I just like it!!!!

Right now, I am busy grinding and drilling chassis to build my second build. I still want to experiment with lowering the current of the stages to increase distortion as you so detaily described in the TW post. Hopefully I can get to it in a day or two.

[Audiotexan]

Right now, I am busy grinding and drilling chassis to build my second build. I still want to experiment with lowering the current of the stages to increase distortion as you so detaily described in the TW post. Hopefully I can get to it in a day or two.

This is something that's started to cross my mind in the last few weeks of watching some of your threads. You've recently said that you have no intentions of going into any kind of production and that most of your exercises here are academic/personal curiosities....which I think it very cool. What it did make me stop and wonder though, is:

-have you developed a single chassis to the point of being able to "hot-swap" major components as you go? (trannies/chokes/etc)

-drilled out x number of slots for preamps, and outputs, and then fill accordingly?

-using multiple 'base' chassis' and then stripping/rebuilding in the appropriate chassis as the next idea/curiosity emerges?

If not...then I've been imagining a garage full of old amp projects. Some completed, some not, and in short, a very perturbed wife. Or ex-wife (depending on how bad the obsession/size of the house ratio). lol

No harm/offense meant...just curious as to how you manage it all.
I have a hard enough time with all my gear, and tubes, and test equipment... lol

[Justin Thomas]

That's me... sadly. I REALLY need to get some scope probes so I can send all these damn things out the door. Luckily, I build & fix all my "landlord's" gear, so they don't mind the junk collection.

Justin

[Alan0354]

This is something that's started to cross my mind in the last few weeks of watching some of your threads. You've recently said that you have no intentions of going into any kind of production and that most of your exercises here are academic/personal curiosities....which I think it very cool. What it did make me stop and wonder though, is:

-have you developed a single chassis to the point of being able to "hot-swap" major components as you go? (trannies/chokes/etc)

-drilled out x number of slots for preamps, and outputs, and then fill accordingly?

-using multiple 'base' chassis' and then stripping/rebuilding in the appropriate chassis as the next idea/curiosity emerges?

If not...then I've been imagining a garage full of old amp projects. Some completed, some not, and in short, a very perturbed wife. Or ex-wife (depending on how bad the obsession/size of the house ratio). lol

No harm/offense meant...just curious as to how you manage it all.
I have a hard enough time with all my gear, and tubes, and test equipment... lol

Ha ha, I am building amp one by one, and yes, my wife brought up this very problem up just a few days ago. If I keep building it, I would have too many amps!!! But in a way, I like it that way, then I can see my progress. I am talking my wife into putting in an extra car garage

I have not develop a single chassis yet. My first one is built into a KMD combo that is American sound with Fender type OT and 6V6 with WGS G12C/S which is perfect match for Fender SF amps. This one build out of the Marshall Dual Reverb combo with Marshall type OT, EL34 and WGS Veteran 30 speaker. It is totally British sound.

I use my Bassman 100 chassis as the experimental platform, I have 3 different preamps, the Dumble, JCM800 2204 and then my own design. I experiment until I am happy with the sound, then I build a complete amp with channel switching and VVR. Then I just rip out the preamp from the Bassman and start over a new design.

I find I learn a lot every time I build a complete amp, things that I would not have thought of. Ha ha, I am already spotting another speaker anticipating for the next build. I think I have room for at least one more.