Tilt-leg amps - winner or loser?

[trevorus]

We took a lot of flack about the looks of the grilles that held the cones; people compared them unfavorably to hubcaps, which they did resemble. But they worked.

If those are the ones I'm thinking of, they did look like hubcaps. Paint them black, inset the baffle and cover the whole thing in grille cloth, and you'd never notice.

[Ken Moon]

bob p, if you use a high-quality American IPA bottle, it'll add a piney note, with slight citrus overtones.

[Paleo Pete]

Rhythm guitar player in the band I'm in has one of the factory made tilt back stands, it sits at a lot more angle than my PVC job, but it works great, and he sits quite close to it in the practice room while I'm 8 feet away from mine. Both do a great job. We played at a family BBQ this weekend, it seemed to do ok there too but I didn't get to hear it out front, where the audience was.

I've seen a few of those onstage too, they seem to work fairly well in that setting. You get good sound for the guitar player, maybe a bit lacking in treble out front, but if you're running everything through the PA it's a non issue. I usually run my Super Reverb tilted back onstage. I didn't this weekend, small flatbed trailer didn't leave me a lot of floor space so I set the treble a bit low and just lived with it. I can stand it, I know what's going on, and the audience didn't have to deal with really high treble levels. I wasn't crazy about it, but it worked fairly well and nobody complained about treble, and I usually like plenty of it...

So to me, tilt legs are a good thing, I use mine a lot. I remove the wheels, it tilts too far with them still in place. Not hard to remove and replace. In the practice room, the little Champ is plenty, I use it on the stand pictured above and it works just great, I love it. I wish it had tilt legs...

I like IBC root beer bottles...

[Enzo]

The audience wont go looking for a seat with a good mix, if they are off beam, they will sit there drinking. If their table is in the sharp beam, they will complain to the club that the guitar is just too damn loud, and you know where that complaint goes, yep right to the band.

[pdf64]

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned the 'Mitchell Donut' Speaker Directivity Modifier :: TGP Webzine solution yet, to mitigate speaker directivity.
Having tried various solutions, I find they work really well and create an even tonal balance pretty much across the room.
The amount of improvement depends on how beamy the speaker is in the first place; the worse they are, the bigger the improvement, the difference with an angle fronted 4x12 (loaded with G12H) was like night and day.

As mentioned earlier, I'm concerned that tilting a combo back serves to exaserbate the oven effect by creating an unvented dead zone where heat can build up.
Pete

[Paleo Pete]

Pete - The only time I've noticed any heat problem was when I propped my Champ up against a chair back. The back of the chair blocked air circulation, the entire top of the amp was hot after 15-20 minutes, I was still working on it and thought maybe something was allowing really high voltage and heating things up a lot. Set it on the floor next time I powered up and heat was back to normal. After using it on the PVC stand at band practice for around 4 hours, the top of the amp is still room temperature. Tubes and chassis get hot, but I don't think any hotter than if I use it without the stand. I guess I may need to do some checking and see for sure, I think I have a thermometer that will do the trick. Never noticed any serious heat build up with the Super Reverb playing it tilted back at gigs either, but never really paid attention to it. Never would have noticed the Champ was so hot but I was working on it, shut it off and grabbed the handle seconds later...Wow that's hot...otherwise, never noticed it but I guess I need to check it out.

[Paleo Pete]

OK Temps...

Took me a while to find my thermometer...in the refrigerator of course...(no I'm not kidding, needed to know if it was working right). Set the Champ in the floor, same spot I use it to practice, 30 minutes later it was 120°F. I left it siting there, just under the chassis, it has a plastic sleeve over the probe so no worries about creating a short. Put it on the PVC stand, 30 minutes later still 120°F, maybe edging toward 121°. Certainly not enough to worry about.

I'll try it on the Super Reverb in the next few days, mostly because I'm curious. But it seems to me if excessive heat were an issue, players would have complained 50 years ago and tilt back legs probably would have been discontinued.

As I noted above, the only time I had an issue was leaning it back against a chair back. That blocked off the area where heat normally rises and dissipates, otherwise no problems. I've always wondered about it though. The front is covered by the speaker baffle, chassis bolted to the cabinet on top, and just the v notched back plate on back for heat to escape. Most head type amps are built in a similar manner, so usually you have no real flow through type ventilation, (yes, I know there are exceptions) so looking at the Champ or Super Reverb, I would almost expect greater heat issues. I suppose with the tubes hanging inside the cabinet and not inside the chassis, they have enough air space to dissipate heat without major problems...I've never even had trouble in a hot room in summertime...