umph

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='706119' date='Jan 8 2010, 10:56 PM']Fairly easy to tell when you want to fix it. Valve amps need maintenance.[/quote] aye its not a sound difference its more of a quality and ease of modding / maintaining thing.

[quote name='bigjohn' post='704836' date='Jan 7 2010, 09:46 PM']But then he's not got a good word to say about anything other than Mullard and Powersoft. Oh, early Sansui (for hifi) Leeds built Celestion, good pioneer, yamaha and some other stuff I've not even heard of are ok too... amcron, uk built carlsbro etc. Peavey stuff doesn't break but sounds sh*t...[/quote] sounds like he knows his stuff then!

[quote name='Thornybank' post='704816' date='Jan 7 2010, 09:29 PM']I took an Ampeg SVT-115 Classic cab in p/x. Sounded awful and wimpish. My tech checked to see if it had a pathetic driver. No - cast frame (Chinese) Eminence. Snipped the spade connectors and hardwired the speaker - big improvement in mid (any at all, now). Hmmm... Connection to the crossover board is a fiddly crimp on with spring contacts onto two rectangle bar thingmies all in a nylon junciton thing. Snip. Solder. NOW IT IS A CAB!!!!! Sounds amazing - 100X improvement. Wow! Ampeg - shame for that fiddly crap tone sucking nonsense. And they retail @ £549!?!?!?? Worth it after the mod, though. A great cab trying to get out.....[/quote] so soldering things on instead of connecting them with spade connectors made it sound better? sounds like you've been sold snake oil chap.

[quote name='Musicman20' post='704990' date='Jan 7 2010, 11:35 PM']Yeah...as in if you want a really nice grit but not as high levels every time. Like at home etc. Or quiter practicing. Most the time though...crank it.[/quote] front end gain from an orange? how much further can they get from the original matamps! They may be made in the uk but that doesn't make them any better than something made in china. It's still on a pcb and the valves are still pcb mounted to and all the wiring is done with spade connectors and borderline components are used. get a matamp, same price MUCH better quality.

[quote name='Musicman20' post='704819' date='Jan 7 2010, 09:31 PM']Orange or Matamp. Forget the VR if you want nice low level volume tube grit. I tested a CL with the Orange AD200b Mk3 instore...with the Ampeg through an 8x10 and the Orange through its own Orange cabs. Orange won by miles. Simply different and totally brilliant. Simple, awesome tube grit, stunning to look at. All IMO of course. If you want low level volume full on dirt, look at Orange or Matamp. Both are UK made, and IMO, much nicer boutique amps. Dont even worry about the wattage difference.[/quote] low level? haha

does it do it with nothing plugged in?

[quote name='alexisonfire' post='703574' date='Jan 6 2010, 10:19 PM']I don't think they do a finance deal otherwise I would (Don't mean to sound cheap)[/quote] i think they will just ring up.

to be fair if your going ultimate, i would be looking to build it all myself using good quality components and drivers, most mainstream companys wouldn't be able to touch it with a bargepole, some of the stuff companys like orange / fender / vox put out nowadays is apalling it's like they don't field test their products anymore!

[quote name='fatgoogle' post='702620' date='Jan 6 2010, 11:23 AM']I would be for a really nice practice amp, how loud would a 5-10 watt valve bass amp be? I would prefer a simple preamp myself, maybe gain, bass, mids, treble, master sort of like those fender tv combo's. Would the ohms be 16,8,4 or similar?[/quote] 5-10 watts is more than enough for home, it might get a little loud if you have touchy neighbours and your cranking it, but it should be fine. It will have 4/8/16 ohm outputs on a selector. As for the tone stack i'd prefer to keep it valve and a 4 band parametric eq is going to use alot of valves which will result in needing bigger power transformers etc. I'm not a huge fan of the fender tone stack either since you can't really avoid the mid scoop at all and bass and treble centre frequencys are to low and to high. I'm guessing more flexibility would be more ideal then, i'll look into a few different active circuits with shiftable centre frequencys, so it'll still be bass / treble but you'll be able to choose the centre frequency to boost something like 70 / 100 / 300 hertz for the bass and 700 / 1000 / 1500 for the treble. How does that sound, it'll keep the valve count down and keep it fairly simple still. you'll still be able to scoop the mids though by boosting the bass and treble or have a big mid boost by cutting them both.

[quote name='Happy Jack' post='702003' date='Jan 5 2010, 07:21 PM']Just pretending for a second that I'm an electrical/electronic ignoramus who thinks that electricity drips out of wall sockets: 1. The dummy load is to fool the valves into thinking that they're driving a speaker (even though they're not)? 2. The post-power amp line-out allows a tone-rich signal to be fed to a SS power amp? 3. There will be a valve pre-amp sitting in front of all this, presumably using ECC83's or whatever?[/quote] aye your correct about the dummy load and the post power amp line out, will be like the ones fender use except i'll add a balanced line out aswell. For the preamp i'm not 100% just yet for the one i've been testing on the bench i've been using a 6sl7 (bit darker sounding than an ecc83 but essentially the same with lower gain) but i may use ecc83s for the proper thing just because they're easier to get. For the preamp though, would you guys prefer it kept simple ie 4 knobs or would you like more direct control over the mids and other things?

essentially i eventually want to go into building valve amps commercially (within the next year or so) i've finished the design of my 200watter and now i'm going to start work on a smaller amp. The smaller amp is going to be a class A all valve amplifier around 5 - 10watts depending on what valves you put in it. It's going to be cathode biased so you can switch between 6v6 / 6l6 / el34 / 6ca7 / kt66 / kt88 or any other valves with the same pinout and primary impedence at will for different clean / overdrive sounds. Heres the bit thats a bit out of the ordinary, it's going to have an inbuilt dummy load and post power amp line out so that you can run it directly into a power amp or straight into the desk for recording and i'm going to aim to keep the weight of the amp to under 20pounds / 9kg probably a bit lighter if i compramised a bit more on the output transformer. But essentially you'll be able to get great valve tone without the weight, well thats the plan anyway. The preamp i havn't 100% decided on yet, but i was thinking of keeping it simple, gain, bass, treble and volume, but since this would be a bit of a studio amp would a more flexible preamp be ideal? If you have any input on this it would be greatly apprieciated!

where are you based? you'd be best going down to a shop and trying them all out, rather than blindly buying one online and being disapointed. Are you going to be gigging these amps if so it may even be worth saving up a little bit more.

[quote name='Clarky' post='689665' date='Dec 20 2009, 12:24 PM']That is sexier than Kelly Brook on a trampoline ... almost Which cab is that? 115 or one of the new neo iso-barrrimanilow ones?[/quote] its the cab with the heaviest size to weight ratio known to man.

[quote name='maxrossell' post='699748' date='Jan 3 2010, 05:49 PM']Kinda gets to the point where you're buying something that can't possibly be better than a new model costing around two grand or whatever - I sincerely hope that goes to a musician who will do something good with it, rather than a bank manager who's going to keep it under his bed for ten years.[/quote] they're collectors pieces now not instruments ;o

those markbass cabs aren't exactly low end monsters

[quote name='gnasher1993' post='697393' date='Dec 31 2009, 06:06 PM']For dubstep, I'd go Octave, Fuzz, LPF, Chorus. As for the wobble, there's alot of good info in [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=560398"]here[/url][/quote] yeah personally i'd go for some oldschool vibrato with the speed cranked

battery?

highly doubt preamp valves would've gone more likely the output are on their last legs, does the distortion sound normal?

really can't top that