james low

Just got Jon Press Guitars to route a 5-way switch for my Michael Kelly Hybrid Special. Makes it much easier to access the coil tapping options of the Catwhisker S-Bucker and made me realise that apart from on traditional Gibson instruments, all humbucker guitars should come with a 5-way switch rather than 3 position and separate coil tap switches. There is now an unused switch that I’ll probably remove and find a cover for.

Here’s the wiring. The S-Bucker has quite a different coil tap setup.

Just a quick list because I was bored and thinking about it. I’ve owned a Diago Little Smasher and EHX Caliber 22.

	Quilter Microblock 45	45 Watt
	Baroni Mini Amp 50	50 Watt
	Electro Harmonix Magnium 44/Caliber 22	44 Watt
	Traynor DH25H	25 Watt
	Diago Little Smasher	5 Watt
	Bluguitar Amp1	100 Watt
	Ethos Overdrive/Clean Amp	30 Watt
	Quilter Toneblock/Quilter 101 Mini Head	200 Watt
	ZT Amps Lunchbox	200 Watt
	Orange Micro Terror/Micro Dark	20 Watt
	Create PowerBlock (Discontinued)	150 Watt
	Randall RG13	1 Watt
	Taurus Stomphead	70 Watt
	Hotone Mojo Attack	75 Watt
	Stomp Amp Brown	30 Watt
	DV Mark Micro 50	50 Watt
	Seymour Ducan PowerStage 170	170 Watt

Just recently did this is a common mod for that people do for the Blues Jr. On a Blues Jr. III it’s replacing R25 with a 25K pot. It’s basically an implementation of the Blues Deluxe presence control on the Blues Jr. Billm uses a shielded cable when he wires it in, so that’s what I did. Makes quite a special amp with the other Billm mods, a Warehouse Guitar Speakers ET-65 and salt and pepper vintage grill cloth.

Ok, so not quite, it’s actually an EHX Soul Food/Wampler Euphoria Clone/JOYO Sweet Baby, so take it with a pinch of salt. I wanted something to pair with my Lovepedal Eternity Clone (tube screamer, with more gain and high end). I didn’t have time to do a comparison video, and it was more I just wanted to write down my thoughts on these much hyped pedals for myself as much as anybody else.

EHX Soul Food
This is the Electro Harmonix’s affordable version of the Klon Centaur, one of the pedals to start the “transparent” overdrive craze. I’ve never played a Klon, but from the Soul Food, I see why people say it’s transparent. It feels transparent, which is hard to explain, but some pedals feel “in the way”, maybe its too much compression or too much mids and high end roll off, but the Soul Food doesn’t have that feel. EQ wise though it’s not that transparent. The high end is transparent, the mids have a slight emphasis that gives it a vocal quality and sings on the high B/E strings, and has quite a bit of bass roll off. Gain wise, low gain is definitely where this really shines, but because of the mid range I liked it better with front single coils than front humbucker, and the bass roll off made my bridge humbucker sound thin. I see why people like it, it does a similar job to a tube screamer pushing a overdriven amp, though different and more refined. On my limited size board though, it wasn’t versatile enough for me.

Wampler Euphoria Clone
I built my clone using a high quality kit from Fuzz Dog Pedal Parts. Yes it’s a clone, but despite being a clone it’s one of the pedals that I’ve owned that has sounded most like the demos when I played it person. In my opinion, this pedal is much more transparent EQ wise than the clone, it really has a very flat frequency response. The clipping options and large usable gain range give a wide range of tones, though they are all grittier than the Soul Food. The bass control I found didn’t really cut any bass, but can boost as well as add fuzz, making this one of the most versatile overdrive pedals around. The transparency makes it work well with humbuckers and single coils, although some more mids would help for single coil solos. This is what I’m sticking with along with my Lovepedal Eternity clone.

JOYO Sweet Baby
Like the Soul Food, this is supposed to be pretty close to it’s original, The Mad Professor Sweet Honey. It really does have a sweet high end and was very dynamic in response to picking. It didn’t have enough gain for me though, and with the dynamics I had to go rear humbucker and hit pretty hard to get much dirt. It had more bass but less high end compared to the Klon. The sweet attack worked better at taming single coils. I could see how it would work really well for certain situations, but similar tones can be achieved rolling off the tone (or even volume knob) or a mellow front humbucker, and I found it not as versatile for more aggressive tones. I also installed a WGS ET-65 speaker in my Blues Jr, which gave it a sweeter high end, so having an overdrive leaning that way as well was overkill.

Lovepedal Eternity Clone
I like a tube screamer-like pedal for basic drive and a slight mid range hump. I chose the Eternity clone for more gain and it seems to have more complex sounding harmonics than a standard tube screamer. It has too a lot of gain though and is very bright, so I changed the tone control value. I also added a bass boost switch, great for low volume practice or fatter power chords. I also added an asymmetric/symmetric clipping switch to switch between Eternity and Eternity Boost circuits. The Eternity drive does have a mid boost, but not as much and at a different frequency than a tube screamer.

I’ve recently been interested to see if the recent band of analog solid state guitar amps are starting to catch up on tube ones. I understand that digital is getting close in terms of tone, but I’m thinking more about feel, and I still think you need analog for perfect feel. Still even if you like modelling, you still need an analog power amp to hear it, and it does seem that a consensus is emerging that power amp and its interaction with the speaker that effects the feel the most, but more on that later.

Update:
It seems that most of the more recent Quilter amps are class D, but according to this patent and forum post, may still have some form of current feedback applied:
http://www.google.co.uk/patents/WO2013082166A1
http://www.ssguitar.com/index.php?topic=3098.0
http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US7924091

First the list.
It starts of with some boutique amps, the Award Session Blues Baby and Ethos Overdrive Amp. Most of the others on this list are all analog solid state amps with current feedback (Fender/Quilter/Tech 21), a few are hybrid tube preamp/ss power amp (Koch/Micro Terror) and some are Class D with no current feedback possible (PowerBlock/Magnum 44).

Current Feedback
The thing that seems to have improved solid state guitar amps since the ones I’ve tried that were made in the 80s/90s, seems to be current feedback, sometimes called current drive or constant current source (CCS). This places the speaker partly in the negative feedback loop of the amplifier causing it to sound/feel more like a tube amp. The following links, particularly the first one, are good for learning about what it means:
http://education.lenardaudio.com/en/13_guitar_amps_3.html
http://www.current-drive.info/9
http://sound.westhost.com/articles/guitar-amps.htm
http://www.award-session.com/bluesbaby2.html

The idea seems to have been around for a while. This thread seems to list some quite using it:
http://www.ssguitar.com/index.php?topic=2346.5

But it only seems to have become more mainstream as Fender started putting it in their solid state amps around 2003 like the “Dynatouch”, Frontman and Champion series, I believe in the early 2000s. You can see the resistor between the speaker and ground on schematics like the Fender Frontman 25R:
http://support.fender.com/schematics/guitar_amplifiers/Frontman_25R_schematic.pdf

A few companies like Award session mentioned above and Albion even use it in how the market their amps:
http://www.albionampsus.com/albion-ag-series/

The season of mainstream all analog current feedback amps maybe short lived though. Fender soon started adding DSP and modelling as they moved on from Frontman to Champion series and class D amplifiers seem to be becoming more popular for their size and efficiency, and I think even with the smaller manufacturers sticking with it, and even it is technically possible, it will be hard to get near a tube amp simply because there have been so many manufactures constantly working on trying to make great sounding tube amps, and there are far fewer solid state ones. It’s hard to imagine guitarists perceptions on tube vs. solid state changing too. The major manufacturers (Fender/Marshall) just want something cheap, and don’t try to produce anything that sounds close to their valve amps and I did notice it was quite hard to find that many demos on youtube of solid state amps, and often the ones there were by beginners with bad technique therefore tone. Still it was interesting on catching up on everything that has happened in the time after I’d decided tube amps were just “better” and now.

Update:
One final thought though. I’ve tried a lot more solid state amps since writing this. There still seems to be something wrong with feel and tone. Session say that we use solid state pedals for overdrive, so why not like a solid state amp, but there still seems to be something about a tube amp, and how pedals were designed to go into one. Tube amps are a whole system that produces what we expect as guitarists. There doesn’t seem to have been as much effort into replicating that entire system using solid state components.

I recently purchased a Standby switch for my Blues Jr. with Billm mods. The instructions only come for the US mode. The international model has different wire colours, and more transformer wires which use the clips on the circuit, so I had to work things out myself a little bit.

First off standard warnings: This will void your warranty, and tube amps contain potentially lethal voltages, so I’m not responsible for any damage to your amp, yourself or others.

The standard switch is just a two position switch (off-on) which connects both the live and the neutral wires to the transformer.

Before:

The new switch is a three position switch (off-on-on), in the middle position only one half of the switch is on, and in the full on, both are. The mod involves:

1) Connecting the live (brown) and board live (black) to the half that is on in both positions:

2) Connecting an additional red jumper lead from P11 to the other half of the switch and the red transformer wire (formerly in P11) to the switch.

3) Next the neutral (blue) wire needs to be permanently connected to the white/black transformer wire. The US version of the mod uses some of the onboard jumpers to connect them.

Unfortunately these are all used on the international model so I needed another way. I happened to have a spare power switch with an insulated case that I just use to connect them together. This is the switch on the far left of the after picture.

After:

I first added built in jack sockets using plastic cliff style sockets because I had some already and they keep the ground isolated from the Pedaltrain chassis. However these are less than ideal because the contacts are exposed and can short or get dusty. There is also no strain relief on the cables which could be unreliable for the solder connections. I found that flexing the cables would bend the contacts and stop them being in full contact with the jack that was plugged in.

Ideally I’d use Neutrik sockets with the protective strain relief covers. But the Neutrik sockets see too large for the rear panel of the Pedaltrain mini. My solution was to use the insulated plastic switchcraft style sockets which while square, still seem to fit the Neutrik strain relief covers. I was going to add a cable tie to keep it tight, but seems to be snug enough without it. Here’s some photos: