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Experiment - Combine a UL Pro Reverb and a Super Texan Circuit to make great AMP!

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  • #61
    I've got shovels.
    "Stand back, I'm holding a calculator." - chinrest

    "I happen to have an original 1955 Stratocaster! The neck and body have been replaced with top quality Warmoth parts, I upgraded the hardware and put in custom, hand wound pickups. It's fabulous. There's nothing like that vintage tone or owning an original." - Chuck H

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    • #62
      Originally posted by Chuck H View Post
      You are the only one that's hearing it for what it is. If no one else ever has the satisfaction, or even if no one recognizes the circuit for what it does, you will always enjoy the snarky satisfaction of "knowing" each time you play it.
      I'm pretty sure you mean 'live' Chuck, but he did post sound clips that may have got missed with all the sidetrack stuff.
      here's the post with the link for those who may have missed it:
      http://music-electronics-forum.com/t45489/#post473033
      Originally posted by Enzo
      I have a sign in my shop that says, "Never think up reasons not to check something."


      Comment


      • #63
        Thanks. I hadn't heard the clips yet. Either they weren't working at first (?) or I just couldn't run audio at the time. But I think it sounds great. Sort of a *umble meets a reedy SRV tone thing. Very nice. I'd be interested in what speakers are in the cabinet.
        "Take two placebos, works twice as well." Enzo

        "Now get off my lawn with your silicooties and boom-chucka speakers and computers masquerading as amplifiers" Justin Thomas

        "If you're not interested in opinions and the experience of others, why even start a thread?
        You can't just expect consent." Helmholtz

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        • #64
          So much for "Fender Twins are clean to 10" myth:
          Juan Manuel Fahey

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          • #65
            Next time you get one, try it yourself!
            Let's not confuse "Twins a re clean to 10!" with "I'm too scared to turn it up!"

            I learned with my first tube amp (Fender Prosonic): it stopped getting louder at 4. After that, it just sounded BETTER. All the way up to Crazy Horse on 10. And that was the "Clean" channel!

            Twins are similar. And Super Twins. And VT-22s and VT-40s.

            Justin
            "Wow it's red! That doesn't look like the standard Marshall red. It's more like hooker lipstick/clown nose/poodle pecker red." - Chuck H. -
            "Of course that means playing **LOUD** , best but useless solution to modern sissy snowflake players." - J.M. Fahey -
            "All I ever managed to do with that amp was... kill small rodents within a 50 yard radius of my practice building." - Tone Meister -

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            • #66
              Originally posted by J M Fahey View Post
              So much for "Fender Twins are clean to 10" myth:
              All he needed was a SF Twin to complete the comparison. They don't stay clean forever either.
              "Stand back, I'm holding a calculator." - chinrest

              "I happen to have an original 1955 Stratocaster! The neck and body have been replaced with top quality Warmoth parts, I upgraded the hardware and put in custom, hand wound pickups. It's fabulous. There's nothing like that vintage tone or owning an original." - Chuck H

              Comment


              • #67
                Bob,

                A Super Twin woulda been nice, too - because twice the power is what, 3dB? It's not <THAT> much louder, is it? >

                I only met one Twin Reverb that stayed clean on 10. It had been fitted with a 15", and couldn't keep up with a reasonable and competent drummer without being mic'ed. I called that Twin Reverb "broken," but they never let me figure out the problem...

                I mean, I know they're not <THAT> loud, but should definitely be louder than THAT...

                Justin
                "Wow it's red! That doesn't look like the standard Marshall red. It's more like hooker lipstick/clown nose/poodle pecker red." - Chuck H. -
                "Of course that means playing **LOUD** , best but useless solution to modern sissy snowflake players." - J.M. Fahey -
                "All I ever managed to do with that amp was... kill small rodents within a 50 yard radius of my practice building." - Tone Meister -

                Comment


                • #68
                  Johan Segborn does do a review of a Super Twin Reverb, though it's not in Juan's "Twin Comparison" video.

                  He says it's one of the best amps he's ever played, and that guy has played a LOT of nice amps.



                  Mine also has the Pyle speakers. Not many speakers can handle the power.

                  The STR can easily go head to head with a full Marshall stack and it slays even the most animalistic drummer.
                  It's like an SVT for the guitar.
                  "Stand back, I'm holding a calculator." - chinrest

                  "I happen to have an original 1955 Stratocaster! The neck and body have been replaced with top quality Warmoth parts, I upgraded the hardware and put in custom, hand wound pickups. It's fabulous. There's nothing like that vintage tone or owning an original." - Chuck H

                  Comment


                  • #69
                    I also saw it, of course, but wasnīt relevant to the "Twin" thread because itīs a very different beast.

                    We are talking Non-Master, "nominally clean" amplifiers today.

                    SF Twins with a pull boost/distortion Master control are also irrelevant to this thread.
                    Juan Manuel Fahey

                    Comment


                    • #70
                      Originally posted by J M Fahey View Post
                      I also saw it, of course, but wasnīt relevant to the "Twin" thread because itīs a very different beast.

                      We are talking Non-Master, "nominally clean" amplifiers today.

                      SF Twins with a pull boost/distortion Master control are also irrelevant to this thread.
                      Well, not really. Irrelevant to the immediate subject at hand, maybe. Comparing Twins. But the OP's amp is quite distinctly a master volume amp. In fact I think most of the distortion in his clip ISN'T coming from the power tubes. I mentioned before that Dan, for all the heat he takes on these forums, is pretty good at getting very "Fender" distortion tones from a preamp. Sort of his forte.
                      "Take two placebos, works twice as well." Enzo

                      "Now get off my lawn with your silicooties and boom-chucka speakers and computers masquerading as amplifiers" Justin Thomas

                      "If you're not interested in opinions and the experience of others, why even start a thread?
                      You can't just expect consent." Helmholtz

                      Comment


                      • #71
                        Originally posted by J M Fahey View Post
                        I also saw it, of course, but wasnīt relevant to the "Twin" thread because itīs a very different beast.

                        We are talking Non-Master, "nominally clean" amplifiers today.

                        SF Twins with a pull boost/distortion Master control are also irrelevant to this thread.
                        I'm not sure that I understand the irrelevancy idea. I think the thread shows that more than one person think the MV amps are relevant. IIRC the OP's amp was an "UL" amp, which means it probably had a master volume. I'm thinking the OP's amp would be relevant to his own thread, so I guess I'm missing the point about irrelevancy.

                        My personal take on this is that the later SF amps and the earlier BF amps are more similar than a lot of people want everyone to believe, and that the minor electronic differences between them are often magnified beyond the limits of practicality, primarily to justify high collector's price premiums on the amps that have BF cosmetics. Looking at today's current production reissue amps, even Fender charges more for the BF Princeton Reverb Reissue than for the SF Princeton Reverb Reissue, just because people are convinced that the BF faceplace makes it worth US$100 more at retail. I don't understand that.

                        In spite of what any of us may have said about our misadventures where we got a Super Twin Reverb to distort (!), it doesn't change the fact the Super Twin Reverb is in reality a CLEAN amplifier -- the loudest clean amplifier that Fender ever made. That's why it's primarily used by pedal steel guys and not rockers, because it gets so damned loud while staying clean. *NOBODY* likes the crappy distortion circuit. Nobody uses it. Nobody pulls the knob out more than once -- and then they push it right back in. If you don't pull the knob out, the amp remains a typically clean Fender amp.

                        If you don't use the distortion circuit, the amp still has the basic twin topology: clean Fender Preamp into a paralleled set of power tubes, designed for clean Fendery tone, just like all the others.

                        On any of those Master Volume Twin amps, if you dial the master up to 10 then the pot is out of the circuit and you're left with the basic "nominally clean" BF/SF Twin topology.

                        On any of the BF/SF Fenders the stock preamp doesn't produce enough gain to overdrive the output section, so the MV doesn't really do anything until you start modding the amp for gain. In a stock amp you have to do signal boosting with pedals to overdrive the little preamp tubes to get anywhere dirty (in the preamp sense) with a stock fender.

                        I think it's fair to say that Leo's objective for all of the Fender Twins, in the era that he made each of them, were to make them all clean amps first and foremost. Sure, some of them break up faster than others when dimed, because NFB levels changed over the years. And yes, a couple of them had add-on distortion circuits that nobody really cared to use. As the amps actually get used by musicians, they're just more of the same basic Fendery clean amps. The biggest difference IMO isn't in the Master Volumes or in the Distortion circuits. It's the amount of NFB that the circuits had and in the higher voltages designed to deliver more power, with the later amps staying cleaner longer until the feedback loop eventually failed, and they started to roar. But those high feedback amps got pretty damned loud before they broke up.

                        With that in mind, I think someone could do the Torres preamp mods to any of them, and if you put the same preamp in a Super Twin or a UL Pro Reverb I don't think the result would be all that different, other than the Super Twin would be louder. I think the basic Fender BF/SF designs are more similar than they are different. The amps are basically the same, though speaker configurations changed a lot.

                        It may not be evident from that last video, but Johan was playing that twin at Bone Crushing Volume and it was still a damned clean amp. I can't get that amp to distort without making my ears bleed. So I don't go there. Justin? He's just CRAZY.

                        I don't mean to be splitting hairs, but I guess I just don't understand the "irrelevancy" angle. Maybe I'm missing out on what you mean by "nominally" clean.
                        "Stand back, I'm holding a calculator." - chinrest

                        "I happen to have an original 1955 Stratocaster! The neck and body have been replaced with top quality Warmoth parts, I upgraded the hardware and put in custom, hand wound pickups. It's fabulous. There's nothing like that vintage tone or owning an original." - Chuck H

                        Comment


                        • #72
                          I'm not crazy, I'm young. I never got to live through all the fun! I grew up with ghetto blasters and discmans and ipods... bluh. So when I get a chance, I crank every amp I can get away with, if the speakers aren't likely to go.

                          I don't play out like that (most of the time!), but I do enjoy standing in front of a raging monster, even if I can only take it for a few seconds. Who's got a 400PS?

                          Re: all these Twins, be they Tweed or Super or anything in between, I agree that they are "cleanl all he way to 10, when you think of the fact that we're now trained for decades to expect JCM-800 levels of gain and beyond. I would say they're cleaner next to most of what we're comparing to them, but they still are crunching WELL beyond their reputations for "extreme clean machines!"

                          I'll also side with Bob on this: if you leave the Master on 10 and don't use the pull boost, or the active tone controls, I'll call it close enough to a non-master Twin Reverb to roughly compare fairly. And the Masters in the Super Twin, Twin Reverbs, etc. are NOT Boogie-esque Masters. They were intended to suit the level to the room. I know that Drnder advertised their Master Volume amps as having "any desired degree of distortion," but I think we all know that even in the mid-70s, Fender was already leagues behind Marshall in THAT arena, and that using the Fender master volume for dialing in preamp distortion was just silly...

                          I'm also willing to use a 65 Twin Reverb reissue and wind it up to ten when I get chance. I know it's not nodded, either. I fan make no promises, but I'm willing to try.

                          Anyway, maybe I am crazy after all... most of my argument is coming from the angle that most players are too afraid to even TRY. Sissies... shut up and eat yer Wheaties!

                          Justin
                          "Wow it's red! That doesn't look like the standard Marshall red. It's more like hooker lipstick/clown nose/poodle pecker red." - Chuck H. -
                          "Of course that means playing **LOUD** , best but useless solution to modern sissy snowflake players." - J.M. Fahey -
                          "All I ever managed to do with that amp was... kill small rodents within a 50 yard radius of my practice building." - Tone Meister -

                          Comment


                          • #73
                            From my original post and after finally including a link to a video demo of the amp I built...my good friend John Jorgenson asked if he could borrow it. How cool is that!

                            But, because the show was quite intimate...a three pc. band with Maria Maldaur (of Midnight at the Oasis...fame) on vocals and with an audience of 40 people (2 shows sold out in Mill Valley), we opted for something a bit smaller.

                            So, I offered up my "better than a Deluxe Reverb," Deluxe Reverb build and it stood up to the test with flying colors...and NOTES! John is an amazing guitarist and I'd encourage you all to look him up. He played a beautiful early-60's Hofner and one of his signature Hellecaster Telecasters. Both REALLY nice guitars.

                            All I can say, is a huge, "Thank You," to John for believing that anything I could build would be helpful to him doing what he does best. And...if not for the purpose of the "Original" post topic, it might have taken me longer to get John to give my little creations a whirl.

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                            A few shots at sound check...
                            Mandopicker

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