james low

I’ve been wondering about tinkering with a guitar amplifier that runs of a 9V power supply for a while now. I tired a Diago Little Smasher which was loud and great for distorted tones, but not quite loud enough, or enough bass for clean. There are some cheap preassembled boards on eBay using the PAM8610 chip, they rated 10W, but this is probably only at 12V into 4ohm. I got a couple and these are the results:

Summary:
Red board:
– More expensive
– More bass
– Treble roll off
– Quieter (but can be as loud with a boost/preamp before it)
– Smallest enclosure probably a 1590LB

Black board
– Cheaper
– More hum
– Less bass
– More Treble
– Louder (without preamp)
– Smaller, would fit in 1590H enclosure to make a tiny but loud amp!

Overall I think I liked the tone of the red board more, but I’ll probably put both in some projects.

Another one of those contentious topics that seem to have strong supporters on both sides. I can’t change what most people think, but it helps me to just get my ideas out somewhere. Here are a few random ones:

• Are boutique pedals that much better than mass produced pedals (whether made in the west or in the far east)? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean that the price isn’t justified. Labour costs are more in the west, as well as more stringent environmental practices.
• So is it just ethics and there’s no difference in tone? I would say no to this too. There will be some differences. The amount you pay for a product made in America is also going towards skilled designers that spend more time tweaking a pedal till it sounds good. This not only includes the circuit, but the layout of the PCB, which can affect things too. Some boutique companies also individually test components to find the ones within really tight tolerances.
• Which should I buy then? Buy what you can afford, support people doing new designs, because part of the cost of the pedal isn’t just the components, but the time taken to design it, which fewer people will do if their designs just get made for cheap in China. Finally think about how a company is treating it’s employees or the environment. There are some places in China where electronics waste is just being dumped, hurting people there, but eventually all of us as it gets into the food chain.
• Are there any people doing unique designs in China? J. Wong who has worked with many of the well known Chinese brands now has his own pedals with Tone City. Some of these seem to be unique designs. JOYO too seem to have moved on from just copying other designs to some more unique products in recent years.

Much has been written about this, it seemed that there was a preference for true bypass. This has slowly shifted towards believing buffered bypass results in less “tone suck”. You still see people on forums simply saying one is always better, but it is of course more complicated than that, and you may want one of the other depending on the situation. Here’s my list of reasons why.

Reasons for true bypass:

• You may want true bypass if the pedal has a bad buffer in it. This seems to have been the problem with lots of BOSS pedals in the 80s and 90s, which is probably why the true bypass fad started.
• You may want true bypass if you’re putting the pedal before a fuzz or other germanium vintage vintage pedal. These pedals sound classic when they’re working with your pickups impedance, not with the impedance of the output of a buffer.
• You may want true bypass (or at least analog bypass/dry through) if you have a digital pedal, and find that you don’t like the sound/feel of your signal going through the digital converters.

Reasons for buffered bypass:

• If you have a good buffer, you may get less loss of high end through long cable runs / multiple pedals.
• If you have a time based effect like delay or reverb and you want “trails”, the effect to continue till fade out after you turn it off.
• For things like long press or tap tempo in a single switch (although this is possible with relay true bypass as well).
• You can have switching with things like MIDI or other remote options (again possible with a relay too).

It’s been one of my little tone quests to fine a humbucker which has a truly good single coil sound when split. An Idea I had recently though was to combine a true single and a single coil-sized humbucker in one, so that instead of a splitting a humbucker, you’re simply switching between two different pickups in one enclosure. These could have a nickel cover for more of a classic look.

You could even have the single coils as hum cancelling single coils, so that in both modes there is no hum, another problem with conventional coil splitting. I saw this working with something like a Seymour Duncan STK-4 and Lil’ 59, or a Dimarzio Area 67 and Pro Track. Dimarzio did something similar to this with their discontiuned “multibucker” pickups, but that was more like two different humbuckers in one, and the Dimarzio Area series have progressed how good a hum cancelling single coil can sound since then.

I’ve submitted this as an idea to Seymour Duncan’s SDRL:
http://sdrl.seymourduncan.com/comment.php?id=121

Update:
I just discovered that Ammoon (a Chinese manufacturer) makes a pickup like this. True single coil and humbucker in one:

As do Warman guitars with their G Rail:
https://www.warmanguitars.co.uk/product/warman-g-rail-hybrid-pickup/

The Gear Tube mobile app is now out for iPhone:

Much has been written and said on this, and what I have to say is by no means authoritative, but I thought I’d write a quick summary of the various info I’ve found while reading:

1) Soft vs. Hard Clipping
The number one reason why tube amps seem to be perceived louder in volume for the same wattage seems to be soft vs. hard clipping. When companies rate amps for power that rate the wattage where the total harmonic distortion (THD) of the power section is below a certain threshold. This is generally not for the amp as a whole, but the specification of the power tubes or transistors in the current configuration and supply voltages.

Now the difference between tubes and solid state is that after that threshold tubes have soft clipping and solid state has hard clipping. As illustrated in the figures below, tube amps will still get louder above their rated power, while having less noticeable, and even desirable distortion and compression. Solid state in contrast will hard clip and sound nasty, and not be any louder.

Modified from here

Now it is true that you can achieve soft clipping with various solid state components, but that will be limiting the total volume of the system, not pushing it above the rated specification for the power amplifier transistors.

2) Tube Amp Variations
Adding to the confusion there also seem to be variation in how loud two tube amps with the same power tubes or power rating can be. This can be down to a large number of factors, power tube supply voltage, transformer efficiency, speaker sensitivity, or technologies like Mesa/Boogie’s Dyna-Watt. Phillip McKnight has an excellent video showing different perceived volumes from similar wattage amps, and even how a higher rated solid state amp doesn’t sound as loud.

3) Logarithmic Volume Controls
A third possible reason for differences his how the volume controls are configured. Some solid state amps may tend to have linear volume controls, meaning the volume increases evenly over the entire sweep of the volume pot. Some tube amps may tend to have logarithmic volume controls, meaning the volume increases more at the beginning of a potentiometer’s sweep. This means a tube amp on 2/10 or 3/10 may be really loud, and still feel like it has a lot more volume to give, when in practice you may almost be at half volume. Of course if it goes to 11 it must be even louder!

Further reading:
http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/tube-amps-louder-than-solid-state-amps-of-same/

http://www.geofex.com/tubeampfaq/beginner_tube_amps.htm

There’s a link on reddit that shows how to get Rocksmith working on a Mac without the real tone cable:
https://www.reddit.com/r/rocksmith/comments/1zf2im/playing_without_realtone_cable_in_mac_os_x/

I’ve got screenshots of how to do it, but after doing it the sound produced is pitch and distortion artefacts and is basically unplayable. I tried with both the built in audio interface and my Presonus Audiobox USB, and neither worked. Some people have managed to get it to work though, so maybe some interfaces work better than others. I did however, managed to get the Rocksmith cable to work recording into both my Mac and iPad:

I installed a USB hub in my pedalboard because I was sick of having to remove pedals to get to the the USB sockets on the pedals. The hub I used is non-powered, I’m not sure if some other pedals might require a powered one. I got some cheap short right angle USB cables off eBay to make the wiring really neat.

This video shows it working with:
– TC Alter Ego V2 (Flashback / Toneprint Software)
– Neunaber Slate (Pedal Customizer Software)
– Fishman Aura Spectrum DI (Aura Gallery Software)