Trace Elliot watts

[barkin]

2 hours ago, Paul S said:

Well, in my case the comparison was made by how far round the volume knob needed to be turned to give the same loudness in the context of the band at a gig.  So I guess my volume knobs have been fooled, too  

I had an old Acoustic amp - first impression was "wow, this is loud and it's only on 4". Reality was that once it got to 5 and beyond it didn't actually get any louder.

 

I've not owned a Trace amp, but I've used loads in rehearsal rooms, shared backline gigs etc, and not once have I thought "wow, that's loud".

I have though - on many occassions - thought " eurgh!"...

[Jus Lukin]

-

Edited March 3, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[Chienmortbb]

On 14/08/2019 at 09:52, PaulWarning said:

you've probably seen this before, but I'll post it anyway, always makes me smile

 

Not PC these days but absolutely brilliant.

[Merton]

4 hours ago, Paul S said:

Well, in my case the comparison was made by how far round the volume knob needed to be turned to give the same loudness in the context of the band at a gig.  So I guess my volume knobs have been fooled, too  

Being boring and sensible again, the position of a volume control on one amp isn’t the same as on an entirely different amp. It depends on the pots used ... 

Edited the rest because @Jus Lukin got there first!

Edited August 15, 2019 by Merton

[stewblack]

Being sensible too, none of this matters.

If you like Trace Elliot and one of the reasons is their gear seems louder you won't be disappointed. 

If you're irritated by other people liking something when their reasoning appears flawed then you have the opportunity for some self examination and character improvement.

Everybody wins 

[stewblack]

And if like me you realise you just typed some unnecessary, sarcastic and judgemental stuff on a bass forum then time for me to do the self examination. 

[Jus Lukin]

-

Edited March 3, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[bartelby]

8 minutes ago, Jus Lukin said:

Mate, I'd think that pink wig is probably your first port of call!

That's a wig?

I'm so disappointed now...

[ahpook]

3 hours ago, PaulWarning said:

maybe Trace just sound louder because they're full of heft 🙄

Essex heft.

I hope so anyway, I just bought a TE head

Edited August 15, 2019 by ahpook

[Jus Lukin]

-

Edited March 3, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[wateroftyne]

It’s a class A/B thing, not exclusively Trace.

Edit: Tube too.

I went off ‘Diet watts’ a while ago.

Edited August 15, 2019 by wateroftyne

[Chienmortbb]

1 hour ago, wateroftyne said:

It’s a class A/B thing, not exclusively Trace.

Edit: Tube too.

I went off ‘Diet watts’ a while ago.

The thing is that when discussing many things with religious zealots you get the same mantra over and over again. There are good amps and bad amps . Some people like bad amps. some like bad backs. The point is that it is the design than counts NOT the technology. Oh and having worked on a few. Trace amps were really well designed.

Edited August 15, 2019 by Chienmortbb

[wateroftyne]

4 minutes ago, Chienmortbb said:

The thing is that when discussing many things with religious zealots you get the same mantra over and over again. There are good amps and bad amps . Some people like bad amps. some like bad backs. The point is that it is the design than counts NOT the technology. Oh and having worked on a few. Trace amps were really well designed.

Am I to take from this that you view me as a religious zealot?

Edited August 15, 2019 by wateroftyne

[Merton]

31 minutes ago, wateroftyne said:

Am I to take from this that you view me as a religious zealot?

Well all you ever bang on about is God and guns and “science is a myth”, so... 🤣

 

😃

[Jus Lukin]

-

Edited March 4, 2022 by Jus Lukin
Made up versions of made up words are hard to spell.

[wateroftyne]

1 hour ago, wateroftyne said:

Am I to take from this that you view me as a religious zealot?

Aww.. he's gone quiet.

[shug]

On 13/08/2019 at 23:01, CameronJ said:

I’m most intrigued by this. The idea of “Trace watts” is quite prolific/legendary. I feel a video demo may be in order. Anyone??

_{Surely an audio demo?}

[Osiris]

There's always one. And it's often me. And this is no exception!

I owned a 250 watt SMX 1x15 combo and matching 1x15 cab, bought new in the early 90's and in time grew to hate it with a passion, it was an absolutely gutless pile of 5h1t that was about as versatile as Rik Mayall. 

It was my first serious rig and I'd saved long and hard for it. I'd bought it on the strength of the buzz about them at the time, still very much pre-internet times so I was influenced by the likes of Bassist magazine and the word on the street. I was still young and relatively inexperienced when I bought it but as I developed as a bass player and got to know what bass sounds work for me I came to realise that my Trace rig couldn't deliver the goods. I wanted a fairly flat sound with tight lows, punchy mids and enough high end to give the sound some definition. All the Trace seemed to deliver was a bright top end. The SMX pre-amp had a million and one tone shaping options but no matter what I did with it, it didn't really stray form a bright sound that was delivered with the slam of an asthmatic nematode. It was like dealing with an 8 year old;

Trace, give me gutless sound with lots of treble.

No problem.

That's great, how about thickening things up with some audible bass frequencies?

What about some more treble instead?

Trace, give me some punchy mids.

I know, a massive boost between 2-4KHz will work wonders. 

And so on. 

I eventually saved up enough money to replace it. I couldn't care less what the anti class D crowd say but it was replaced by a Mark Bass Little Mark 2. And there it was, all of a sudden there were all the lows and mids that were missing from the Trace. The Little Mark was rated at 500 watts and was easily twice as loud as my old SMX and didn't break a sweat delivering the lows and mids with a conviction that the Trace never could. So if TE watts are twice as loud as everyone else's, then Mark Bass watts are >4 times as loud! All in my experience of course!!

Fast forward to last year and having more or less got over my old Trace rig I thought try again. Based on the high praise heaped on them on here and elsewhere online, I bought a TE Transit pre-amp pedal as my band was ditching backline for IEM's. This was a significant improvement over the SMX but still not without its issues, for example the so called legendary Trace pre-shape added so many subby lows that it was unusable. I reckon it'd even be too over powering for dub reggae. Still, the EQ was very good, and the dual band compression was fantastic. But that soon followed its predecessor out of the door. 

So it came as something of a pleasant surprise when I dropped in to buy a used bass from a guy a few months ago and he plugged it into a GP7 (?) (1x15 with 7 band EQ) combo to show that it was working. My initial reaction was to think "oh no, don't" but with the EQ set flat and any idiot buttons switched off, there it was, my Trace Elliot epiphany. There was that big, punchy Trace sound that's so revered. There was the weight and heft that was lacking from my old SMX. Mine was obviously a Friday afternoon special and I still sometimes shudder at the thought of it. But some 25 years or so later, I think I finally get it. 

[CameronJ]

18 minutes ago, Osiris said:

an asthmatic nematode

I had to google that. Excellent work sir 

[Osiris]

@CameronJ My pleasure, my good man 😀

[Soledad]

On 14/08/2019 at 00:52, stewblack said:

Trace Elliot is magic.

Correct. We don't ask how or why. We just know and respect. The end.

[TheGreek]

On 14/08/2019 at 00:52, stewblack said:

Trace Elliot is magic. That's the scientific answer. It can be proven with a magic detector, or Magector™. 

Here my Magector™ measuring bar is bent to 82° by the sheer force of an AH500X GP11 running at only half volume. And I was never closer than 30 feet from the amp at all times. The bass wasn't even turned up that much. 

The magic field was so strong during this test that you can clearly see where my white sleeved shirt turned entirely into a two tone blue denim overall. It had to be buried in a lead lined box until the magic levels (magevels) reach a safe and above all wearable state. 

To put this into context here is a Magector™ measuring bar following 2 hours exposure to a Penn & Teller live show. The Magector™ was never more than 8 feet from the stage and yet only a 15° bend was detected. 

Now I respect Phil and his decibels, of course I do, but I think the pictures speak for themselves here. 

This is a true story....

[stewblack]

Just now, TheGreek said:

This is a true story....

Every word. 

[SubsonicSimpleton]

Although Trace made a range of amps badged with different ratings, if you inspected the actual amp modules inside the heads you might just find that they had a practice of putting higher rated modules into lower output badged amps to meet production targets - economies of scale would have made a big difference to their bottom line, and it's important to remember that Trace were not manufacturing on the same scale as Fender/Hartke/Ampeg/Marshall.

[Chienmortbb]

33 minutes ago, SubsonicSimpleton said:

Although Trace made a range of amps badged with different ratings, if you inspected the actual amp modules inside the heads you might just find that they had a practice of putting higher rated modules into lower output badged amps to meet production targets - economies of scale would have made a big difference to their bottom line, and it's important to remember that Trace were not manufacturing on the same scale as Fender/Hartke/Ampeg/Marshall.

Many of their amps were designed around MOSFET output stages and these were easy to scale up to higher powers. The BLX130 that I had spaces for extra output MOSFETs suggesting that the same  PCB was used for a number of models. 

As electronics engineer I must say they  well engineered, maybe over engineered,  by the standards of the time.