Design enviornment

[daz]

I just thought i'd mention this and see if anyone else does this. I spent many months, probably a year actually tweaking this marshallesque build that i've pestered you guys about for so long. But as we all know you can take what seems like a phenominal amp to a gig on;y to find in a band mix it's about as good as a $100 SS amp. I did the majority of my experimentation at work where the room in which i worked on it is a very dead and horrid sounding room. That exaggerated a lot of the issues i was fighting and could literally make them sound unacceptable even after they've been taken to very acceptable levels.

So here we have 2 problems....tweaking the amp in a acoustically horrible room, and evaluating the tone by itself instead of in a mix. Well, lately i have changed this and started tweaking it at home where it's very live and where i can crank music and play along. First of all the live room is great for this because it shows you whether the amp is going to be too bright or dark. I always found a too bright amp is hard to work with, while darker amps can be adjusted to work ok. So this way i've been able to choose component values that give me a range that allows me to adjust it so that a good usable tone can be had anywhere. Second, and this is the real reason i started this thread, playing it in a mix by jamming along with the music (all genres) cranked REALLY has opened my eyes in a big way !!! This isn't to say i didn't understand how amps that sound great can sound bad at a gig. I spent over 2 decades gigging constantly and went thru probably 50 more to how incredible just a single component can change that factor.

What i've been doing is leaving the chassis out and sitting on top of the amp with a soldering station next to it. Of course this only happens when my roomies (live in a studio in back of the main house) aren't home, so i can't do it any time i want. Anyways, with the amp out i choose a few dozen tunes of various genres and drop them into a MP3 player on my PC (have very good and loud speaker) and i start jamming along. As i do i will notice how well or not the tone fits into the mix. It's amazing what i've found. Things that sounded great when played by itself stick out of the mix like a sore thumb or sound TOO fat if you can believe that ! I can't adjust the amp so it fits either. I found that some things i tried would cause the high gain to not come thru the mix. It sounds crazy i know, but with certain component values or design aspects i could be playing with very high gain in the music mix and it sounded, felt, and sustained like i was using a much cleaner sound ! So as i'm playing along i will decide whats happening thats not good and turn off the music for a minute while i solder a different value somewhere or change a design aspect, then try it again. One nite i was having a heck of a time fitting in a mix at all, Things sounded so off, yet i had just changed things around days before that had me thinking the amp sounded better than ever and I was thrilled with it beyond words. Then i played it within a mix and was extremely disappointed to find this fantastic tone just didn't fit in a mix at all and in fact sounded like cr@p ! So i set it back to the last scenario that worked and instantly it fit like a glove and sounded great in the mix.

So this is how i have been making design/value decisions on my amp lately. I no longer gig, and even when i did thats not nearly as good a way to accomplish this because you need to do a gig just to decide whether one change works well or not, while doing it at home like this i'm able to evaluate dozens of changes in a nite. Anyways, i was just wondering whether many of you do this too or if i'm alone in this. l sure wish i'd have done this much earlier....i'd have saved myself countless hours behind a soldering station !

[Chuck H]

I don't work "in the mix" when designing. But, it occurres to me that two out of three times when I hear one of my designs in a mix, usually an actual gig, I do make some changes. I think your approach is a good one. But I'd be unable to live with an amp that sounded good in a mix but uninspiring by itself too. So I just build what sounds good and make ajdusments if something pops up with what I call the acid test...A gig. After doing this awhile you'll be able to listen to an amp in a mix and know what components your going to target inside right away. And more importantly which components your not going to change because they create the amps certain mojo.

IMHE the speaker (if the amp is a head), the room, particular guitar and the player all have a profound effect on what works in a mix with regard to the guitar track. as a designer you have no control over these things unless you only build for yourself. I've designed amps only to plug in another guitar or even just carry it into another room and found I needed to make changes.

Bottom line is that you can't build an amp that sounds good for all genre, with all speakers, in all rooms, with any guitar plugged into it and anyone playing it.

Your method works. I would add trying other guitars through the amp too.

Chuck

[daz]

No, i wouldn't expect that i can use this method to design an amp that would sound great with every guitar, speaker, and every genre of music. Nor would i want one that sounds great in a mix but not by itself. But i find that the things that make it fit into a mix right don't tend to hurt the tone when played solo. in other words, i end up with a tone that maybe isn't ungodly in either arena, but close in both. I'll live with a little lesser tone (tho still very very good) by itself to make it work in a mix. If it's great by itself but worthless in a mix thats no good. So a tiny sacrifice to have both. As for speakers and guitars, i will admit i did design things to nsound great with a certain guitar and speaker....strat and EV12L. But thats what i'm after because i'm a total strat player and i've used EV's since the dawn of man. Plus i feel if you make an amp sound good with an EV it will sound good with a lot of other speakers because thats what i've found, and it does make sense if you think about it. If you design with a typical guitar speaker, it will surely have peaks and valleys. So if you then use a different speaker with peaks and valleys in the same places or even in very different places you can end up with a freq curve thats all over the map or way too much attenuation/accentuation in certain areas. EV's are flatter than most speakers, so an amp designed to sound balanced with an EV should in theory be open to most any speaker depending on the freq's you wish to accentuate or attenuate.
As for genre of music, all i meant was to make it as versitile as possible within it's tone style, in this case as versitile a marshall sound as possible. And IMO a versitile marshall is much more than a hard rock amp. They ARE versitile when they are good and when used right. As the old saying, jack of all trades, master of none. Tho i DO find it to be master of at least one. Anyways, the main point is that i don't find it to be true that this amp will sound mediocre at all when tweaked to work best in a mix. It will sound better by itself when i tweak it in that context, but i find that it may then sound like cr@p in a mix. Yet if it sounds great in a mix, it never sounds bad by itself. Slightly less great, but still great. But it really is amazing to hear the difference one or two little changes can make instantly instead of trying to hear it at a gig hours or days after the tweak. Theres nothing like instany A/B.....it's truly the only way to really hear the difference to the max degree it can be heard.

[tubeswell]

I constantly evaluate my amps in different environments, home (where I build and tweak), practice room (which is acoustically terrible) and (less frequently these days) at gigs, where I get to hear them in the mix - unmic'd at little quiet gigs or otherwise mic'd - if the monkey behind the desk knows what he's/she's doing. With the other noises around, I get to hear which frequencies carry better than others through the mix. With quiet gigs I can hear more of the sound of the amp (and anyhow I prefer quiet gigs where everyone can hear everyone else and get in a good song groove. When it gets noisier, you lose aspects and your ability to hear is also affected by selective deafness/reduced ear sensitivity to louder noise). I reckon keeping the group sound levels reasonable, and keeping the amp's simple with the least amount of fluff and padding, and using good quality parts (and tubes), and esp output transformers and good speakers, is the key to good sound (and good mics and cables and foldback, if you're going to mic stuff). Also you needs a great gueetar in the first place.

[daz]

I constantly evaluate my amps in different environments, home (where I build and tweak), practice room (which is acoustically terrible) and (less frequently these days) at gigs, where I get to hear them in the mix - unmic'd at little quiet gigs or otherwise mic'd - if the monkey behind the desk knows what he's/she's doing. With the other noises around, I get to hear which frequencies carry better than others through the mix. With quiet gigs I can hear more of the sound of the amp (and anyhow I prefer quiet gigs where everyone can hear everyone else and get in a good song groove. When it gets noisier, you lose aspects and your ability to hear is also affected by selective deafness/reduced ear sensitivity to louder noise). I reckon keeping the group sound levels reasonable, and keeping the amp's simple with the least amount of fluff and padding, and using good quality parts (and tubes), and esp output transformers and good speakers, is the key to good sound (and good mics and cables and foldback, if you're going to mic stuff). Also you needs a great gueetar in the first place.

I've had amps like that where they sounded great in a soft slow ballad or such where there was plenty of space. But then would get lost and sound muddy or tinny in a dense mix. Often those amps sounded fantastic when evaluating them solo. But for me they have to cut right in any mix or no matter how good they sound solo or in a quiet/sparse mix i have little use for them. They would be better used for recording where you can fix in the mix.

[Steve Conner]

Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you design with a typical guitar speaker, it will surely have peaks and valleys. So if you then use a different speaker with peaks and valleys in the same places or even in very different places you can end up with a freq curve thats all over the map or way too much attenuation/accentuation in certain areas.

Bear in mind that the response peaks and valleys in a speaker are very narrow and intricate, compared to the gentle slopes you can achieve by fiddling with RC time constants in an amp. You can't compensate the speaker's character exactly with tweaks to the circuitry, all you can do is broad-brush changes like "less bass" or "more presence".

I once did a fun experiment with a dummy load, an Alesis PEQ-450 parametric EQ, a reverb box and a headphone amp. I set the reverb to "room" and tried to fiddle with the EQ until I had a "speaker and room simulation" that sounded good through the cans. It took some really aggressive EQ with all of the PEQ-450's 10 bands in use, high-Q peaks and notches all over the place, and in particular, two stacked 12dB/octave low-pass filters to take the buzz out of the high end.

To me this proved that the speaker and cabinet contributes a lot more character to the sound than the amp, and this was what convinced me to go out and buy some good speakers.

I mostly tweak amps at home, using speakers at moderate volume, and a power soak device like the above for testing them cranked. Then I bring them to gigs and jam sessions to see how they work in a band context. However, I have no commercial interest in amp building, I just do it out of my own curiosity to understand how they sound the way they do.

[daz]

Bear in mind that the response peaks and valleys in a speaker are very narrow and intricate, compared to the gentle slopes you can achieve by fiddling with RC time constants in an amp. You can't compensate the speaker's character exactly with tweaks to the circuitry, all you can do is broad-brush changes like "less bass" or "more presence".

I agree. And i don't think it's a big deal, just something to consider. But i DO feel that using a flat speaker should make the amp compatible with more speakers than it would if you used a colored speaker to design it with, especially a VERY colored one like a V30 for example. i think that speaker is more than subtle as mids go and might have you designing out some mids to compensate for that speakers super peaky mids.