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I am pretty new to this, so I wanted to ask others opinions about my first foray into amp modding (no one else I know understands what I'm talking about & my wife keeps asking me why I'm breaking my amp!).
I bought this amp used, and I liked it sound generally but wanted it amp to sound friendlier at lower volumes and to see if I could get rid of the ice-picky character of the vibrato channel. I loved the reverb, but couldn't even play "The Wind Cries Mary", without getting this annoying high end hash when strumming the chordal passages. I researched the DRRI mods from the blue guitar site and from the old ampage forum and got to work.
Here's a description of the changes I made:
C10 removed bright cap (eventually settled on 10pf)
C7 treble cap 250k upgraded to silver mica (same value)
R21 mids resisitor 6.8k to 10k (added mids)
R18 slope resisitor 100k to 90k (less treble)
C12 Vibrato ch. coupling cap .022 to .047 (more drive for Vibrato channel)
C25 Coupling capacitor between preamp/PI .001 to .01 (more drive overall?)
Eminance RW&B replacement speaker
At the end of the day the amp was much more playable for styles other than country and surf. The high end hash is thankfully gone! It also has a slightly more overdriven tone even low volumes, which is what I wanted. After experimenting (caps are cheap so why not?) I ended up with a 10pf bright cap because the Dimarzio noiseless pups on my strat are darker than real SC's. It even sounded good with a .22pf bright cap but then it starts to effect the sound of your OD pedals.
I'm very happy & my only wish right now is to dial in a more defined low end. There's a muddiness to it (E,A strings in particular) that I can't dial out with losing too much low-end, which was how it was before the mods but my attention is directed to it now that the amp sounds better in the upper registers.
Any thoughts?
I bought this amp used, and I liked it sound generally but wanted it amp to sound friendlier at lower volumes and to see if I could get rid of the ice-picky character of the vibrato channel. I loved the reverb, but couldn't even play "The Wind Cries Mary", without getting this annoying high end hash when strumming the chordal passages. I researched the DRRI mods from the blue guitar site and from the old ampage forum and got to work.
Here's a description of the changes I made:
C10 removed bright cap (eventually settled on 10pf)
C7 treble cap 250k upgraded to silver mica (same value)
R21 mids resisitor 6.8k to 10k (added mids)
R18 slope resisitor 100k to 90k (less treble)
C12 Vibrato ch. coupling cap .022 to .047 (more drive for Vibrato channel)
C25 Coupling capacitor between preamp/PI .001 to .01 (more drive overall?)
Eminance RW&B replacement speaker
At the end of the day the amp was much more playable for styles other than country and surf. The high end hash is thankfully gone! It also has a slightly more overdriven tone even low volumes, which is what I wanted. After experimenting (caps are cheap so why not?) I ended up with a 10pf bright cap because the Dimarzio noiseless pups on my strat are darker than real SC's. It even sounded good with a .22pf bright cap but then it starts to effect the sound of your OD pedals.
I'm very happy & my only wish right now is to dial in a more defined low end. There's a muddiness to it (E,A strings in particular) that I can't dial out with losing too much low-end, which was how it was before the mods but my attention is directed to it now that the amp sounds better in the upper registers.
Any thoughts?
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