Experiment - Combine a UL Pro Reverb and a Super Texan Circuit to make great AMP!

[bob p]

"Free Bird"

I was afraid someone was going to bring up the idea old folks shouting for Free Bird as they fired up their one-hitters.

Enzo, don't forget to raise up your lighter.

I went to see Robin Trower live a few months ago and people started raising their iphones for an encore. It just didn't seem right.

[Enzo]

Control is a whole separate discussion. The sound guy is responsible for the sound of the band. he controls the mix. In my early sound gigs, I had to contend with a guitarist who was Jimi Hendrix, and then the rest of the band which was miced in the PA. My only hope of a mix was to base EVERYTHING ELSE on his guitar sound. If he got loud, I either had no mix, or I got loud too. And in the late 1960s a PA system was like 100 watts. Tough to compete with a 100 watt Marshall and two 4x12s.

If everyone is going to be responsible for his own sound, why even have a sound man?

As a sound man, if you ask me if you are overpowering anyone or sounding bad, I can say "No, you are not...now." If you have spent any time on the mix desk, you know that the hall sounds different set to set. FUll of bodies sounds different from just a few tables. Smoke and humidity in the air changes the sound. Band volume changes through the night. You may be real consistent, that does not mean the sound environment around you is stable. That is why a sound man asks for control. I am not actually taking a side in your situation, but that is why a good sound man wants "control".

[Justin Thomas]

Bob,

That's part of your (and maybe our?) whole stance: accept no substitutes!

Re: Free Bird, I live in a house with 13 other guys aged 17 to 61. I have a 24-year-old (who is also a close friend) who yells "FREE BIRD!" or "Play Sum Skynyrd!" every time I talk about music or pick up an instrument or amp...q. It's very annoying, yet very endearing at the same time. I actually like Skynyrd more than he does, he just knows it annoys me.

On yet another note, a few of us were binge-watching Beavis & Butthead one night. They were dreaming they were onstage fronting a metal band, and a guy in the crowd yelled "Play Sum Skynyrd!" My friend died laughing, because he's young enough to not know that there's one at every concert, and he got it down so perfectly without ever actually being at a concert.

And this is why every band and musician should learn "Snowbird."

Justin

[Justin Thomas]

My last experience with a sound man was me being told that my bass amp was putting out a lot of highs and it was too bright. I said it'd be fine after 130 people are in the room milling around and dancing... if it's till too bright, I'll cut highs.

He ended up saying I was right. It's not that I hate sound guys, but I get tired as a musician of being looked at as the dumb guitar player who just whacks everything on ten all the time (despite my stance here... ) I'm not the same guy I was when I was at seventeen, and I've learned how to be in a band without reinforcement, and how to listen to what's going on around me, and even to link together 40' of cable so I can go out and hear myself in a mix and tweak myself accordingly. And if anything, people tell me to turn UP because I've been so beaten down as an electric guitarist.

Justin

[Enzo]

We had a local town festival - we have several here in Mason each year. I ran into a performer at his little booth at the fest, trying to drum up gigs. I came up to his booth and hollered out "Free Bird". And he looked at me??? he wasn't playing or anything, but was going to play in a couple hours. So I told him: "Look there is always some asshole at every gig shouting out requests, so I thought I'd do it now for you and get it out of the way." He liked that.

A couple years ago, my niece got married, a big deal at the Museum of Modern Art in Detroit. They rented the museum. In one hall the standing art was removed and chairs and alter were set up. As the guests were milling around chatting and getting to their seats, a small trio was playing recognizable "classical" music. I put it in quotes because technically it was probably some other term. Like Cello, violin and flute. I kept threatening to call out "Free Bird" between songs, but my wife seems to have more elbows than I have ribs, so I didn;t. But I thought, if I did that, it would make my day, hell my entire month, if that little trio actually had a few bars of Free Bird worked up, just for some asshole like me who might challenge them.

Friend of mine played a gig once and decided to announce every song as a Ry Cooder tune.

Oh, and bob, we don;t allow open flames in the home. Aside from fire hazard, there are people using oxygen. I have an oxygen machine myself and a warning placard on my door. SO a flashlight has to suffice.

[loudthud]

How about a phone Ap that has a picture of a Zippo lighter and a flame.

[bob p]

Well, at least now I'll know who the Freebird asshole in the audience will be if I ever gig in Lansing. ( If my fretting hand's elbow tendinitis ever quiets down maybe I can pull a solo jazz gig in a local matrini bar just for you, Enzo. I think it would be a riot to have some guy in the bar give the Freebird! shout and then follow it with a chord melody arrangement... though I have to admit, arranging a song that's so rich in string bending would be a real challenge for jazz guitar.)

One of the bands I was in had a guitar player who could play the entire Freebird chart note for note, including that 4-5 minute solo. Learning it off of the record was one of those rites-of-passage things for him in his youth. He was our secret weapon. If someone shouted out Freebird! at a show we'd agree to play it, but if and only if he came to the bandstand and told us his name. Then we introduced the guy by name as the one guy at every show who asks for the song, and that we were playing it just for him. (You have to be prepared for hecklers.) We played the full length version. Something like 9 full minutes IIRC. Half of the song was that 4-5 minute solo.

Perhaps the funniest circumstance I can remember regarding a Freebird performance was at the Art Institute in Chicago. In the summertime when I was working in the Loop we'd go there for lunch in the courtyard, and they always had live music. On several occasions there was a harpist from the CSO who played arrangements of the Top of the Pops on the harp during lunch as a side gig. One of the guys from work gave her the Freebird! shout, and I'll be damned if it wasn't the next song that she played. I squeezed him to give her a major tip after acting like such an ass.

[Enzo]

I like the phone app lighter idea.

You think I am an asshole now...
Recently a friend lost his mother, and we went to the funeral - or at least the visitation just prior - I don;t do church services. it was not an unexpected loss, and he was OK. Off the stage was a woman playing the piano. I told my friend, "I always tip the piano player." and he said Yes, do it.

So I walked over to her, and put a dollar on the piano by the sheets. it really confused her. "Oh no I never charge for playing." I told her no, it was a tip. And I left it there. I suspect it went in the collection plate eventually.

The best part was a minute later as I was talking to my friend, another fellow walked up and said, "Somebody put a dollar on the piano???"

[bob p]

You think I am an asshole now...

there was never any doubt in my mind ... you've proven to be a first class joker for more years than I can count.

[Mandopicker]

Don't even have to turn my amp up to 10 (on the normal channel side) to get some breakup. If my experiment proved anything to me, it's that Fender took the life (for lack of a better term) out of the "UL" or "DL" designs (if you please) with circuit design and part value choices. It wasn't the "UL" transformer that took the life out of the amp...nor peoples misinformed opinions of the sound qualities of a reasonably tastefully build Super Texan circuit. Combine the two...and I delicately place my SM58 carefully on the floor...

Heck, changing the NFB resistor values did more to add some liveliness.

I appreciate the discussion.

Oh, they will. They SO will. Ask anybody who's wound a Super Twin up to 10, without the "Distortion" circuit.
IE, ME.

Come to think of it, I've wound up my Bassman 100 to 10, too. And that's basically a Twin Reverb Normal channel. And by golly, it WILL do the "Working Man" tone.

Justin

[bob p]

without a schematic, it's unlikely that anyone will ever know what you're talking about.

[Justin Thomas]

Don't even have to turn my amp up to 10 (on the normal channel side) to get some breakup. If my experiment proved anything to me, it's that Fender took the life (for lack of a better term) out of the "UL" or "DL" designs (if you please) with circuit design and part value choices. It wasn't the "UL" transformer that took the life out of the amp...nor peoples misinformed opinions of the sound qualities of a reasonably tastefully build Super Texan circuit. Combine the two...and I delicately place my SM58 carefully on the floor...

Heck, changing the NFB resistor values did more to add some liveliness.

I appreciate the discussion.

Well, it starts breaking up around 5... But I consider "Working Man" to be a little bit more than "starts breaking up..."
I just have gotten tired of so many people saying, Twin Reverbs never break up... they stay clean all the way to ten... blah blah blah. No, either your guitar is REALLY low output, or your amp is broken.

Justin

[Mandopicker]

First, let me say I mean this with the utmost respect..and after all I am newbie here, but not to the music biz. Unfortunately, I can only share insight into how I interpreted the schematic and applied my ideas to what I think is a good circuit layout - given the variables. Sitting in front of the amp, I know it is a fantastic result.

I will say that it does have a Fender pedigree (like countless other amps) and was resuscitated from parts that others might have discarded as useless, old, no good, includes the dreaded UL OT (from a vibrolux), a retolexed and repaired twin cabinet, and a GOOD circuit of a Torres design. I think people will see the circuit (with careful study of the images and clues from others) without me giving somebody else's design work away that easy. It's likely out there already, but like you, I would appreciate this discretion, too. Especially if it was my living. I kinda would like too show it, cause I love that stuff too, but I just can't. Maybe I should have thought of that before starting this thread. Anyway, my apologies again to the forum.

That's OK, cause after all, I am talking about sound AND removing other sorts of bias (no pun intended) - fore or against - the premise of the project itself. In time...others will understand too...if this really is an interesting topic (slightly derailed at times). Or it will soon tumble into the archive forgotten. Either way, the best thing that I could hope for, and why I posted here, was that you or any of the other learned forum members would like to share their knowledge freely to help others, and myself many times over, to understand. That is what I tried to do here. Happy Holidays!

without a schematic, it's unlikely that anyone will ever know what you're talking about.

[Chuck H]

You are the only one that's hearing it for what it is. If no one else ever has the satisfaction, or even if no one recognizes the circuit for what it does, you will always enjoy the snarky satisfaction of "knowing" each time you play it. It's something that makes itself clear to the player when it's real. I have that amp for myself. An amp I can play for hours without even thinking about "tone" in any evaluative way. For me that's a rarity. I'll always maintain this amp and I will be buried with it.

[The Dude]

...... I'll always maintain this amp and I will be buried with it.

Directions to your cemetery plot, please?