Ideal amp for pickup testing?

[Bruce Johnson]

I'll speak up as a bass-only pickup builder. I do almost all of my testing of pickups and completed instruments through a clean system; a good solid state amp with a wide range speaker, flat EQ and no distortion. I want to hear purely what the bass is doing, and have a consistent reference. For comparison testing, I test other basses against the test instrument, all back-to-back through the same clean amp rig.

When I'm happy with it through the clean rig, then I may check it through my big SVT rig, or a smaller amp with the distortion cranked up, just to see if there are any problems or issues. I want my basses to create their signature tone through a clean system, and not be dependent on a particular amp rig.

Yeah, I know, this is mostly a guitar crowd, where clean amps are considered unsophisticated...

[Possum]

...

Nothing unsophisticated about a clean guitar amp, finding a good one for guitar is hard, and really if you look closer they're really not perfectly clean. I know what its like being poor and trying to climb the ladder in this dumb ass business. It took me years to accumulate those amps and most of them I had to put alot of hours into to make work right. I have a POD type thing that supposed to have better sound than it does and their tones for Fender amps don't sound like my amps at all. I do have a friend who records with one and got some good tones out of his with alot of twiddling of knobs somehow. The problem with the emulations is they are only set in stone, real tube amps change with the volume you play them at. Never heard an emulation of a small speaker old blues type tone ever either. I just would not trust a POD for engineering guitar pickups. Bass pickups are a totally different world, I don't even make bass pickups because I'm not a bass player, it would be dumb of me to even try I think.

If you look around Ebay you can find guys who convert old P.A. heads to guitar amps for pretty cheap, you could do something like that. I would try to get some kind of amp that your type of players use, if they are into heavy distortion a deluxe reverb would be the wrong way to go. Distortion pickups to me sound flat and sterile through amps a blues player would use; as I said before what is your MARKET?

[Jeff Callahan]

I honest truth is I don't have a market, yet? I've wound some singles for a few people...couple strats and one tele, and I have had a little success with my first few buckers, but am still learning the craft. My ideal amp would be something I can practice on, but still get really clean tones for pickup testing. I think there is a bigger market for humbuckers around here, but I'm not sure. I've built only fender style guitars, but my first paul is just around the corner.

[NightWinder]

>>>

I think you may be into the Egnater Mod 50 with the removable Preamps- You can have any preamp you need- A tweed, Bassman, Marshall, Mesa, Vox,etc and there are now some guys that make their own to work with the amp as well to further the Line of amps- The Randall RM100 is nice also, and they work with the Egnater stuff also. Cool thing is for recording, you just slide the preamp out and try another one. Great for pickup testing and recording small clips fast and easily with Protools Its a Win situation...

[JGundry]

I use 3 amps that I think cover most of the territory. I have a Matchless Lightning clone that can quickly be adjusted for great clean or dirty tones. If you had to have just one amp that would be a good choice IMO. I also use a Marshall 18 watt clone and a Fender Princeton Reverb. The good thing about the Princeton Reverb is you can classic Fender clean and dirty tones without huge volume. One other thing I do is I always use my Overdrive Boost with the 18 watt amp. The reason for this is a Marshall 18 watt amp can sound a bit boxy but if you pair it up with a pedal with good tone controls you can gut a much fuller tone out of the amp.

Ideally I think you want to have a classic Fender amp and a classic Marshall amp. If you are targeting the heavier gain market you probably want a Mesa Boogie also.

[salvarsan]

Test vs. Demo

When I was testing prototypes, I used a neutral headphone amp
and a reasonable pair of headphones. The two are more revealing
than any guitar amp when you want to detect nuances.

Once the pickup sounds good enough "dry", bang away with the usual
guitar amps as suggested above. Microphonic artifacts, desirable or
otherwise, won't show up until the amp is loud enough to shake the guitar.

If the sound level is loud enough to shake your clothes, you're overdoing it.

-drh

[Zhangliqun]

The IDEAL amp for testing is the exact same amp your customer uses. Since that's not too realistic for most (if not all) of us, you have to develop experience to allow yourself to hear the pu in an available amp and be able to convert in your head how it will likely sound in the type of amp the customer uses.

I have to extrapolate from my Fender Hotrods what it will sound like in a Marshall, etc., but at the same time, and some winders here might disagree with me, my philosophy has always been that if the pickup sounds great clean, it will sound great with gain. And there's no better amp for the clean bell tone test than a Fender tube amp. (Especially one with Svetlana 6L6 Winged C's in it.)

[David Schwab]

I know a lot of purists are going to flame me for this, but what about a Line 6 POD modeler?

That's not bad if you tweak the patches a little. I think the factory patches are rather generic.

I'm not familiar Fractal Axe-FX, but the DigiDesign Eleven Rack sounds very good. Really sounds like an amp.

I use a Roland VM-3100Pro digital mixer that has their amp modeling built in. The Twin patch is the one I use most of the time.

But in general what ever amp you use should be good. Everyone is going to be using a different guitar and amp, and since pickups don't just have one tone hardwired in, if you can get a good tone that you like though a reasonable amp, that should do it.

[Possum]

....

You have to be careful about testing pickups "clean." When I was prototyping the VL's, I recorded them playing at about 2 1/2 on the Vibrolux, and recorded my early Patents as baseline comparisons. I did months of work doing that, only to discover that once the volume went up everything changed and had to start from square one again. Its like you almost have to test clean, then medium volume then cranked, using a tube amp with no gain or pedals. Then if you're going to sell to pedal addicts you need to test with those as well. I like my Princeton as well but its a bit darker than some Fender amps, but a great recording amp. Another thing is that pickups that work for high gain players don't sound very good played clean. Its complicated. I mostly make pickups for blues guys and sorta classic rock guys, so my demos that I do are dead simple, just plug into a simple tube amp that matches the pickups well and play. This way is straightforward and honest and no one has ever emailed me back and said my pickups don't sound like my demos. At the other end of the scale without mentioning any names I've seen pickup demos done by slick players through complex rack mount amp effects systems and my customers who bought those complained to me that they could never get the pickups to sound like that. Tricking customers like that will make sure they don't buy from you again. If I had to get rid of all my amps but one I'd keep the Vibrolux, it does clean pretty good and cranked loud sounds fantastic. The Vibrolux reissues suck though, you can still get a decent silverface vibrolux for around $700 if you're lucky and will need to put a bunch of work into making it safe to play and sound great.