Back up amp

ICBM

siremoon said:

Regarding the Joyo American, this may be of interest:


Edit:  here is the answer as to which is which:

I got it right straight away - and the one which I thought sounded better was the amp. 

It was obvious to me which one was the pedal - it has a slight (but clear) nasty buzz on transients. I actually think he could have EQ'd them slightly more similar too - the amp was definitely brighter, and the pedal sounded a bit muffled.

For what it's worth that transient characteristic would drive me mad if I owned it, small though it is. I didn't hear it in Paulo's clip though!

hotpickups

Well I wouldn't have thought it would be as good or better than the real thing but for an amp back up that hopefully I would never use I would say that was a pretty good comparison. Just what I wanted

ICBM

Yes, for a backup I completely agree. I just though it was a bit odd that he went to all that trouble to record the clips, but didn't make the effort to EQ the pedal so it sounded like the amp or avoid it clipping on transients, given that he was trying to make them sound the same.

Almost as odd as that people couldn't easily tell which was which and/or preferred the pedal.

Paulo's clip is much better recorded anyway, even if he thinks he cheated a bit by adding reverb - which isn't a cheat to me, since all natural sounds have at least some ambience.

hotpickups

You just have a very good ear for these things ICBM

Paulo

Yeah don't be put off by the lack of natural room ambience. We expect to hear it as guitarists.  It has a very flat feel to it until you add a touch of reverb.  

It might also benefit from a touch of compression before it when recording in order to even out the dynamics for a more realistic feel for the fingers,  particularly on the very clean settings. 

Joesa

Roland Cube 60 or 80XL. Fantastic amp for the price and you can pick the 80 up for less than £200 used with the Bright Onion footswitch making it a very flexible, affordable, essentially 3 channel amp for backup.

hotpickups

Ok guys I'm back I plugged my joyo American in tonight to one of my PA speakers (mackie) via my mixer desk. I just used my guitar lead to connect to the mixer and fired it up. Well it was certainly a better sound than without the pedal but quite fuzzy and not a clean signal. Would this improve if I got a DI box to plug into before going into the mixer I.e. use an XLR input !

Thanks for all the advice

hotpickups

ICBM?

ICBM

Are you overdriving the mixer input?

hotpickups

Not sure what that means ICBM. Just plugged the joyo in, turned the dials down of the pedal. Set the gain knob on the mixer about half way and added reverb on the mixer. It's just a very crunchy sound all the time

hotpickups

Still pretty dirty even if I turned the gain knob down on the mixer. Although it says gain it's a boost in volume really on the mixer. All the way gets gainy though

ICBM

Can you get a clean sound at all? With the pedal knobs (except the level) set the same as would give you a clean sound with it going into an amp. If not, something is overdriving when it shouldn't be - it might be the input stage of the mixer, which is before the gain knob. If so that will defeat the speaker emulation in the pedal since the distortion will be happening afterwards, even if you want a dirty sound.

It's also possible that the pedal doesn't like the low impedance of the mixer's 1/4" input, but I wouldn't think that was very likely. It is often better to use a DI box though, so if you have one you could try it. A DI box is always a useful thing to have if you don't already.

hotpickups

Ok I'll look into it. Thanks ICBM

hotpickups

If I need to get a DI box for my electric guitar with passive pickups what DI box do I need I.e. passive or active

ICBM

hotpickups said:

If I need to get a DI box for my electric guitar with passive pickups what DI box do I need I.e. passive or active

Active if you want to go direct from the guitar itself. Or a passive one with any buffered pedal - or a pedal you always leave turned on - in front of it.

I actually prefer the sound of old-fashioned passive transformer-balanced DI boxes.

hotpickups

Yes it will be through my pedals still so:-

Guitar - pedals - joyo - DI - mixer

Passive then?

ICBM

I would, yes. I have a couple of old passive DOD ones which were cheap and sound great for guitar or bass. I prefer active for acoustic instruments though.

hotpickups

Selling? ICBM

ICBM

No! Get yer own!

hotpickups

ICBM said:

No! Get yer own!

Doh! Worth a punt