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I may have just wasted 20 years on Valves.


tonyxtiger
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So I get that everyone's tone goals are different. I've always had a bit of a fight getting a bass tone that was a mix of clean punchy bass with a grittier/clanky/hairy/whatever/ mid, top end.
No one praises solid state amps for their break up so off I go year after year with ampeg/mesa/aguilar/ashdown/orange/fender amps of all valve and hybrid varieties.
All good fun but as soon as I got the mids where I liked it the bass started to mush up. (Technical term)

Then I got a pearce BC1. Fantastic. One channel sounding fat, add the dirt with the other channel. Great dirty tones but still somehow clearer and articulate. Done.

Because I loved that, for curiosity i put a rig together with a tech 21 VTRM and a used crest power amp for a total of £430.00. That shouldn't have sounded better than the 2k valve stuff but for me, it did.

I've since added another pre for clean/ dirty. Dirty/dirtier.

So basically I've learned not to automatically go down a particular road because that's what everyone says or that's what your hero does.

I really should have learned this sooner so thought I'd share.

Edited by tonyxtiger
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Exactly what happened to me when I dropped on an old GK800rb for less than the cost of what I paid for revalving my old SVT. It's funny how you arrive at the sound you want, I've found it best to ignore what your favourite players use. The Ampeg growl I wanted ( I've had mk1SVTs and my favourite valve head '70s V4Bs) I found in GK amps.

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[quote name='SmallDawg' timestamp='1410717376' post='2552289']
So are you running the 2nd "dirtier" one in the effects loop of your cleaner one with a footswitch to activate it? I bet it sounds phenomenal. Nice one on putting together such a cool rig :)
[/quote]

The tech21 preamps let you link the footswitch thru each so you can channel switch. The out put from the first is run into the second but when one is on the other switches off so you get a 2 channel set up. You can wire them in parallel thru the effects loop but I'm running two channel clean/dirty for now. (My clean isn't that clean to be fair.)
I've taken about three dirt pedals off my board now.

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