Good amps for testing pickups that won't break the bank

[David Schwab]

one thing one ought to really consider is again who is your target market? If you're selling to blues guys, they like old amps, if you're selling to shred metal guys, Marshalls. So you'd need an amp for the kind of musicians you are targeting.

Which is precisely why I use an amp modeler... they might not be exact simulations, but I can hear the pickup in a half dozen amp situations without having a half dozen amps.

I'm not playing out with the thing, just listening to the pickups (and recording them)

[Possum]

cringe part two....

this is my own personal predjudice as a guitar player, if I saw a pickup maker using a p.o.d. to make sound samples of his product I just wouldn't buy them. Sure the samples will sound great but I really think using amp emulation and solid state circuitry would skew the samples too far away from real world tube amp tones and a speaker pushing air. theres just no comparison. I have seen two guys use pods at jams and personally I can't stand anything that comes out of them in a live situation.
Here's a sample Jake E Lee did for me, he was Ozzies O's second guitar player and all the metal guys know his name, he used a pod, damnit, sure it sounds great but the pickups I sent him are real low winds. I get the occasional metal head asking me about the clip and I have to honestly tell them that he's not using an amp and the pickups aren't hot. then I patiently go on to explain that pickups that aren't hot were used by alot of famous metal players, even guys like Satriani prefer PAF style pickups that aren't hot, but these kids all think they have to have hugely overwound pickups so they never buy from me :-) One of these days I need to find some metal head to demo my buckers with a real amp to show what they will do with that kind of music. Here's Jake, rip it Jake!!! :
http://www.sdpickups.com/audio/bacon.mp3

[Pep]

I gotta say, POD or not, Jakes got some damn good metal tone on that clip! Me likey! A trend that I have noticed is that a lot of guys that are into REALLY heavy tone are playing solid state. If I'm not mistaken Dimebag from Pantera was, so is Scott Ian from Anthrax. They are seeking out the inharmonic nature that these 300 watt monster heads provide. Not really my cup of tea, but as pickup makers it's good to be aware of. BTW, if memory serves, Satriani is using a PAF type that is overwound to roughly 10.5K in the bridge and close to normal PAF specs in the neck. He runs his signal through an ungodly amount of processing units but it's hard to argue that the dude doesn't have good tone.

[OFM]

I use a Trace Elliot Super Tramp Tube for my bedroom, then I try with a lot of settings. First, Solid-State clean, then a mild overdrive, then distortion. I have an old Yamaha strat-style guitar with no pickguard for performing the tests. The pickups are set into the "Swimming pool" itself and hooked up with some clips.

Then i go back to the Garage and switch to an abolutely Custom tube amp I bought recently. Then i try, again, a lot of gain and EQ settings. In both amplifiers i use Celestion G12T for performing the tests.

[David Schwab]

this is my own personal predjudice as a guitar player, if I saw a pickup maker using a p.o.d. to make sound samples of his product I just wouldn't buy them. Sure the samples will sound great but I really think using amp emulation and solid state circuitry would skew the samples too far away from real world tube amp tones and a speaker pushing air.

But what difference does it really make? If you are going to play through a tube amp and record it, it's still abstracted from the "real world" of having an amp in a room, cranked up loud. You can make a small amp sound like a big one in the studio.

And then some players don't even use tube amps, and others that do don't crank them as much, and have a solid state distortion pedal in the front. Even a lot of the so called tube amps out there have diodes for clipping. Also if you have a pickup played through a 50 watt marshall turned up to 11, you can't tell me that you can hear what the pickup sounds like... you are hearing the amp. That's why the metal guys love those toneless Dimarzios. They are loud and it doesn't matter after that!

If you are dealing with a lot of saturation it doesn't matter if it's coming from a tube amp or a distortion pedal. The things that tube amps are great for are more subtle... it's real hard to get a crunch tone from a solid state device for example. They go from clean to too much grit. Tube amps excel at adding some harmonic color. Now I love a good sounding guitar through a good sounding tube amp, but if I'm recording at home, and I can dial up a good tone, it doesn't mater where it comes from, because in the end no one will know the difference when they hear the recording. At the very least they will have no idea what was used to make the recording... amp, pod, whatever. You just know if you like the tone or not, and that's very subjective.

too far away from real world tube amp tones and a speaker pushing air. theres just no comparison. I have seen two guys use pods at jams and personally I can't stand anything that comes out of them in a live situation.

But in a live situation they are using speakers pushing air, right? I mean you still are plugged into an amp and speakers of some kind. Having said that, I played in a band for a while with a guy that played his vintage Gretch through either a Pod or a PowerBook with GuitarRig running on it, into a powered JBL PA cab. Most of the time you couldn't tell he wasn't using a regular amp, but it always sounded a bit too distant.

I think using low wound pickups and then using some sort of distortion or overdrive is the way to go, because you aren't stuck with one tone from the guitar. Over wound pickups sound good with distortion, but not so good clean, you know?

I don't like Pods too much, but I think part of that is the factory preset sounds that they come with, which aren't so good, and players don't bother to change them. I have heard some good recordings with them, like the last two XTC records. If I hadn't read that Partridge used a Pod, I wouldn't have suspected it wasn't an amp.

I don't own a Pod by the way. I have an old Korg Pandora, which I think of as a multi effects unit, more than an amp sim, but it has the cabinet simulation, which stops it from sounding like a guitar through a fuzz into a mixer.. Blah! Sizzle city! I also use a Roland mixer with built in amp sims.. it has a Twin, JC-120, 6160, and a Matchless. I can't say it sounds like those amps, but you can tweak it and get a decent recorded guitar tone.

But hey, what ever sound you get, if you like that tone, there's nothing wrong with that. There is no right or wrong guitar tone. Now what might work for jazz wont work for blues, which wont work for metal, and so on. So that's where I see the value of having some kind of device that gets a variety of tones.

As far as not buying a pickup that was demo'd through a Pod... it is a sort of real world demo for a lot of people. And how is it any different from someone playing a pickup though an expensive boutique amp you don't own, not to mention on a guitar you don't own. Does that really tell you what the pickup will sound like?

For my bass pickups I record direct with no EQ or compression. That doesn't mean that someone's bass will sound like my bass, and I'm sure it wont, but you can get an idea of the response of the pickups.

But if you make a sound clip that doesn't sound good, how will anyone know what can be done musically with your pickups? Playing through a tube amp is just one situation that might be encountered with the pickup, but that only tells you what your pickup sounds like though that particular amp.

[Zhangliqun]

I'm not one for sound samples myself -- too many variables, different amp/player/pick/gauge of strings/manipulation of recording/etc., for me to have any idea what it sounds like in my hands.

That said, sound samples really do seem to sell pickups, at least in my case. The biggest spikes in sales I've gotten by far is when a customer does a review of my pu and posts a sound sample.

[Possum]

I'm PODDDING.....

OK, I'm convinced , not kidding maybe I'll try to do some Marshall stack samples for the guys with metal plates in their heads. I have a Johnson J-station thats not made anymore, the harmony central reviews say its better than a POD so I whipped out Garage Band and learned the stupid basics and did this totally goofy whacky mess-ter-piece on the Marshall setting, pretty funny, I won't use this one of course but this could be fun. I got one of those Guitar Player DVD's that has some metal riffs on it, who knows where this could lead? Old Fucker Metal Band strikes gold, I can see the headlines now :-) this is more rock than metal, yeah I used to play that shit so shut up :-) lets see if this will attach....shit it won't so here's a link:
http://ur.pair.com/shrapnel/hehe/marshall.mp3
I'm gonna be a star I'm gonna be a star, I'm gonna go far....away....

[Pep]

Just don't be biting any chicken heads off. What kind of guitar was that on the recording? A little secret for those of you who haven't messed around with DAW's (Digital Audio Workstations) much. You can get software such as Amplitube 2 or Guitar Rig which do the amp and stompbox modelling on the computer itself. Because of this you can record a track and model it through 10 different kinds of "rigs" so there is no variation. Sound quality on the new stuff is about at the same level as the best hardware based modelers. Only bummer is that you need a "relatively fast" computer to handle it. I run an AMD 64 3000+ with an m-audio ozonic and it seems to do fine.

[David Schwab]

OK, I'm convinced , not kidding maybe I'll try to do some Marshall stack samples for the guys with metal plates in their heads. I have a Johnson J-station thats not made anymore, the harmony central reviews say its better than a POD...

I wanted one of those real bad when they were still making them, but it was out of my budget at the time, so I bought the Pandora. Then the dropped the price on the J-Station to way less than the Pandora and discontinued them! Grrrr!

Old Fucker Metal Band strikes gold, I can see the headlines now :-) this is more rock than metal, yeah I used to play that shit so shut up :-) lets see if this will attach....shit it won't so here's a link:
http://ur.pair.com/shrapnel/hehe/marshall.mp3
I'm gonna be a star I'm gonna be a star, I'm gonna go far....away....

Go Dave!

See it's not so bad! And you really can hear the pickups...

Here's an unfinished track I did that features a Charvel strat with some old DirtyFingers pickups I had. I think it's a pretty good tone... this was with the Pandora. Great sounding pickups... but they were a tad noisy so I sold them on eBay. Wish I kept them now.

[Possum]

goofy computer recording....

that was a cheap LP copy with my un-announced Tone King Fats that are currently under armed guard at Fort Knox, Tennessee. The guitar is a Stellar from Ebay, nitro finish, maple cap body, mahogany neck and body, $200 with hard case. Had to dress the upper frets and gut the elctronics, but its a killer guitar for low bucks and a great test rig.

Greg hated my sound clip :-) Wasn't meant to be serious and I don't have the patience to set up a whole complicated song, just was having fun. But I think this J-Station will do the Marshall thing fairly realistically, enough anyway for the metal guys to scope out, I just need to cop a couple heavy rhythm chops and that'll be all. The JStation is a fun toy but honestly the tweed sample and fender samples just sound fake. Maybe I ought to read the manual :-)

[Pep]

In my experience with amp modeling low gain, especially the just on the edge of breakup to light crunch tones never come out right. That is something the engineers are going to have to spend more time on. I think the problem is that at that range of gain you get to hear the most harmonics and kind of a blend of clean and overdrive. Honestly though, I think they are getting there. In another 5 years tube amps might not be necessary, although I'll be damned before I trade in my valve amps. Still, I agree with David. Modelling technology is a viable resource. You don't get the "feel" of the amp that is being modeled, but on a recording nobody knows the difference.

Dave, if you ever get a chance to make some clips through your DR with those Tone King Fats let me know. I've listened to your sound clips for the other HB's you make and I have nothing but good things to say about them. You are really on to something there. I am addicted to single coils but your humbuckers are some of the best I've heard.

[Possum]

gracias.....

Thanks Pep, where'd you come up withat nomer? Are you moving to Portland yet? I do have sound clips of the TK Fats through my Princeton since Greg has my DR for awhile. These are unedited, so there's playing mistakes and my verbal notations on switch selection etc. so their not perfect and too long, but here's those two raw clips: (I didnt really crank the amp on the dirty clips, usually crank it harder but these just sound sweet as is)....

http://www.sdpickups.com/audio/fat%20tk%20dirty.mp3
http://www.sdpickups.com/audio/fat%20tk%20clean.mp3

I really like working on humbuckers, there's so much you can do with them, and research pays off if you pay attention to the tiniest details, the PAF history and materials are an obsession with me. I scout ebay every other day for pictures and readings etc. The primary reason I got 10,000 pole pieces made was to improve them even more, since no one sells the right pole screws out there yet. Pole screws make a huge difference in tones. The dumb thing is that my humbuckers are almost completely unknown out there and I sell very few, the LP guys don't relate to my sound clips unless they play blues which almost none of them are any good at. So thats why I'm going to do some metal sound clips here real soon and see if they get noticed or not. Anyway, I'll edit these sound clips down and let people know they are available now.

[David Schwab]

In my experience with amp modeling low gain, especially the just on the edge of breakup to light crunch tones never come out right.

Exactly! And that's what I want. I can get fuzz with anything. But that semi clean crunch is the holy grail to me! Give me an AC-30!

Can't beat a tube amp for that.

[Pep]

Well guys, my new (used) Prosonic arrived today. Obviously I am in the honeymoon period but I am VERY impressed with the clean channel. I am running it in the 30 watt Class A mode w/ tube rectifier and it is blowing me away. Even though the circuit is quite different, the tone and feel are ridiculously close to a nice warm blackface. I'm still on the fence with the OD channel. It is made to rock. More gain than I normally use but with some tinkering I have it sounding like a tubescreamer pushed fender. There are a couple of service bulletins that fender released to improve noise on the reverb and eliminate a pop when switching channels. I have them and schematics so I will have to poke around and see if it is something I want to tackle myself or have a tech do. Aside from the noise on the reverb though (I don't really do the channel switching thing), it beats my HotRod Deluxe in every aspect. I was unsure about the 2 celestion 10's but they are matched up pretty darn well to this amps tone. No high-mid spike as I was afraid of. Anyway, just wanted to let you guys know. You can pick them up for $700'ish if you keep your eyes open.

[R Walker]

Well guys, my new (used) Prosonic arrived today. Obviously I am in the honeymoon period but I am VERY impressed with the clean channel. I am running it in the 30 watt Class A mode w/ tube rectifier and it is blowing me away. Even though the circuit is quite different, the tone and feel are ridiculously close to a nice warm blackface. I'm still on the fence with the OD channel. It is made to rock. More gain than I normally use but with some tinkering I have it sounding like a tubescreamer pushed fender. There are a couple of service bulletins that fender released to improve noise on the reverb and eliminate a pop when switching channels. I have them and schematics so I will have to poke around and see if it is something I want to tackle myself or have a tech do. Aside from the noise on the reverb though (I don't really do the channel switching thing), it beats my HotRod Deluxe in every aspect. I was unsure about the 2 celestion 10's but they are matched up pretty darn well to this amps tone. No high-mid spike as I was afraid of. Anyway, just wanted to let you guys know. You can pick them up for $700'ish if you keep your eyes open.

Thats a great little amp. Next up on the block for me is a Marshall JVM and a Cameron. Saw the JVM at NAMM and holy cow that thing was badass! 4 Channels would cover a lot of territory and all of them sounded great. No delay in channel switching was really surprising. Also the midi switching was done with a guitar cable, not some fancy pinned plug thingy.