Guitar Amp to Guitar Amp Conversion

[Gtr_tech]

It sounds like most of you dissatisfaction is with the lead channel pre-amps. The X-series clean channel is good. But you're better off with the clean channel and a tube screamer than you are with the drive channel. The drive channel pre-amp is where you've been focusing your efforts, right?

Yea, pretty much. I did change a little in the clean section, but it never gets used since the lead ch. cleans up so well now that I've redone it. I use .001u bypass caps on all my guitars' vol pots so the loading mud gets avoided.
The stock pre design just sounds so yucky.....fuzzy and unfocused with a strange shifting harmonic on the decay...I really hate that.
Like a bad fuzz pedal. The way I designed it I can use just a bridge humbucker and get a whole load of tones across the range of the vol pot. Malcolm Young is at around "3" and it gets thicker and more compressed as you go up. Never sounds unnatural. A good quality neck pos single coil gets ya SRV lower on the vol pot and gets hotter from there.

Its not a super hot pre, basically a juiced up/tweaked JCM800 format. Works for me and I always get compliments on my tone from other players.

[olddawg]

Interesting thread. I have found world has changed after not playing out much for a decade or more and performing regularly now. I have found that almost no one (especially sound guys and club owners) wants the stage volume that we used years ago. I only use large(ish) amps nowadays outdoors or on really big stages in big rooms. Usually I end up using an Epiphone VJ with a compressor through an open back 2x12 cab for the average club, sometimes miced. I get lots of complements on my tone. But it is a personal thing of course. I love small class A EL84 amps and 18 watt Marshall clones.