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Seen as how I'm around for a minute, I figure I might as well put out what I have on my plate currently.
Fair warning, it involves solid state! Hope that's OK.
I had a request from a local musician to help reduce the weight, consolidate and improve the tone on his coffee shop gig rig. He's currently using a Martin acoustic guitar with a number of time based FX into a Peavey Backstage SS guitar amp.
He initially wanted to try a tube compressor, particularly an Altec 436C type (variable mu) but I managed to talk him down from that, thinking it might not be that great for guitar given many cheaper, solid state options. Anyone willing to change my mind on that, I'm all ears. I'm sure he'd still be interested.
I did manage to convince him to try a stereo setup and we are waiting for a 1x8x10 "Maggie" cab from Weber to do some testing with. I think we'll just hook up some SS guitar amps and see how our speaker selection is, then if we like it, I have a plan to build him a SS 2x20W stereo power amp in that enclosure. Right now our speaker choice is two Jensens - a MOD 8-20 8" and a Jensen Jet Falcon 40W 10". Not so sure how this all will sound so we plan on testing first - see if we're going in the right direction. If not we might set this aside and try a ported enclosure with different drivers, and possibly scrap the original or build it into an electric tube stereo setup...
As far as the preamp, he is using a solid state device now, and wanted the tube compressor to "warm things up". I've convinced him to try a tube preamp instead so we're going to work that end of the signal chain as well. Typically, what I've done in the past for tube acoustic preamps was designed them to be as flat and quiet as possible, and assumed another device, like a graphic eq would be used for tone shaping, but he wants to try some passive tone shaping within the preamp. I'm not really sure where this will go so we're going to start with the tried and true "Fender" TMB and see how that sounds. I'm not really well versed in acoustic tone shaping, so any pointers, I'd be all ears. But he's not exactly going for "acoustic" tone either. He's heavily modifying it with all sorts of FX and really just using and acoustic guitar for aesthetics. He could and may just as easily switch to a "clean" electric or semi-hollow.
Fair warning, it involves solid state! Hope that's OK.
I had a request from a local musician to help reduce the weight, consolidate and improve the tone on his coffee shop gig rig. He's currently using a Martin acoustic guitar with a number of time based FX into a Peavey Backstage SS guitar amp.
He initially wanted to try a tube compressor, particularly an Altec 436C type (variable mu) but I managed to talk him down from that, thinking it might not be that great for guitar given many cheaper, solid state options. Anyone willing to change my mind on that, I'm all ears. I'm sure he'd still be interested.
I did manage to convince him to try a stereo setup and we are waiting for a 1x8x10 "Maggie" cab from Weber to do some testing with. I think we'll just hook up some SS guitar amps and see how our speaker selection is, then if we like it, I have a plan to build him a SS 2x20W stereo power amp in that enclosure. Right now our speaker choice is two Jensens - a MOD 8-20 8" and a Jensen Jet Falcon 40W 10". Not so sure how this all will sound so we plan on testing first - see if we're going in the right direction. If not we might set this aside and try a ported enclosure with different drivers, and possibly scrap the original or build it into an electric tube stereo setup...
As far as the preamp, he is using a solid state device now, and wanted the tube compressor to "warm things up". I've convinced him to try a tube preamp instead so we're going to work that end of the signal chain as well. Typically, what I've done in the past for tube acoustic preamps was designed them to be as flat and quiet as possible, and assumed another device, like a graphic eq would be used for tone shaping, but he wants to try some passive tone shaping within the preamp. I'm not really sure where this will go so we're going to start with the tried and true "Fender" TMB and see how that sounds. I'm not really well versed in acoustic tone shaping, so any pointers, I'd be all ears. But he's not exactly going for "acoustic" tone either. He's heavily modifying it with all sorts of FX and really just using and acoustic guitar for aesthetics. He could and may just as easily switch to a "clean" electric or semi-hollow.
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