Sessionette 75

Van_Hayden

I don't like the Session 75 which I find too honky but do like the baby Rockette 30, great flat clean tone for Jazz. Both have nasty drive as @ICBM notes. I guess if you don't push them they're ok on just a bit of breakup, but very much like a TS9 into a transistor amp type sound.

stonevibe

I had a Session 75 I bought from Machinehead in about '87 and it was okay. Cleans were good and the drive was a bit bland I always thought.

I would buy one today if I needed a portable rehearsal / backup amp for slinging in the boot of a car. But other than that I would rather have a valve amp if I am honest.

It was well made though and I had it for a while till I part ex'd it towards a JCM800...

knuckleberryfinn

I'm going to get one. I always play clean, so the drive channel doesn't bother me. A cheap, small, loud and reliable amp is exactly what I'm after. Cheers for the wisdom everyone.

57Deluxe

You lot of doubters seem fixated on the poor sounding (your words) 'overdrive' channel on both Rockette/Sessionette...

This is an 80s design - remember how overdrive (usually saturated with chorus) sounded back then??

BUT all of you are missing the point... These are 2 channel amps that allow mixing of channels. The idea is to BLEND-IN some of the overdrive into your clean channel. This then gives you authentic grindy, crunch... You can then add a little boost from a pedal and get some fantastic tones. A Transparent drive and the deliciously clean channel is remarkable. In many cases it sounds and plays like a tube amp. I can get the sound of a Tweed Twin from my Rockette quite easily by some careful EQing and pedal matching. 

Out of my Fender Tweed Deluxe, Super Reverb, Supersonic 60, Cornford Roadhouse and my fantastic 59 Bassman-esque Pignose G40V, my much loved Gibson 335 sounds its best through the Session Rockette 30...

EricTheWeary

Couple on eBay at the moment including a 2x12, just watching to see what they go for. Cheap, small, loud, reliable would work for me too ( if not exactly the lottery dream amp).

I used to know someone who had the Acetone (I think that's right) which was the Shadows sound version. Which was pretty much what he used it for, lovely sparkly cleans with a strat. 

Sessionman

knuckleberryfinn said:

I played one of these at a blues jam the other night and it sounded really good. They seem to go pretty cheap on eBay when they turn up so I'm thinking about picking one up. Perfect for my needs: small, loud, and (hopefully) light. Anyone else have any experience of them?

Yes me... I designed all the Session amps.  How can I help?

ThePrettyDamned

EricTheWeary said:

Couple on eBay at the moment including a 2x12, just watching to see what they go for. Cheap, small, loud, reliable would work for me too ( if not exactly the lottery dream amp).

I used to know someone who had the Acetone (I think that's right) which was the Shadows sound version. Which was pretty much what he used it for, lovely sparkly cleans with a strat. 

Keep an eye out for a Bandit, too, cracking clean channel

BenSirAmos

Hi Sessionman. 

Your amps are a bit marmite. I loved the first one I got so much I bought another. Then I fell out of love and couldn't bear the sound. I think I swapped them with @RobWright on here (that is when 'here' was MR). But I think I'm going to get another one so I must be falling back in love again. They've stood the test of time pretty well.

Welcome to the Fretboard, anyway.

koneguitarist

One of the things people keep missing is, a good amp is a good amp despite if it has valves or not.

Welcome to the Fretboard Stewart, nice to have you on board. 

That video on your home page sounds great by the way !

Lexie1

The Blues Baby is just glorious, so there! )

Sessionman

Amps are like Marmite!  Lol

The 1981 Sessionette was not ever designed to be a 'rock' amp... so, please don't beat it up too much if the distortion is not to your liking if you're a 'rock' player.  There are other genres of music too, that most amp makers seem to ignore.

I designed the Sessionette during 1980... it was my first SS design!  However, I know exactly what you mean about the tone.  It can be a little dull and the distortion, although created exactly as many pedals do even today, is not great at high gain stuff.  There is a simple explanation for this.  Like the Hotrods and Blues Deluxes, the distortion circuitry is Post-EQ.  Whereas, modern 'rock' amps have their distortion situated Pre-EQ.  There is resultantly, a huge difference in how they perform.

Pre-distortion EQ: There are some advantages and disadvantages.  Firstly, having the distortion Post-EQ enables the amp to work like an old school amp, where, say, a simple single channel overdrives the output stage to create the distortion in the power amp.  Many players like that kind of tone and is, IMHO, far better at the "on-the-edge" kind of sound. e.g. Roy Buchanan.

Also, you can adjust the Treble control to make the high frequencies distort before the lower frequencies.  Very useful for blues, country and other forms of music where reasonably low depths of distortion are required.  So, no rock or metal tones here!  The down side is that removing the mid tones from the signal before distortion is added leads to quite a 'confused' unsmooth kinda sound when used at very high gains.  The Hotrod DLX suffers this, and is even worse with its 'More Drive' feature -IMO. The bass 'n' treble frequencies alone do not make for great 'saturated' distortion sounds!  The mid frequencies are always best for great distortion sounds... which is why Les Paul & Gem guitars sound so good in distortion!  They have fewer bass and treble harmonics in their basic clean sound.  Modern Marshall amps work enhance this fact.

Post-Distortion EQ: Placing the EQ after the distortion is rather similar to plugging into a distortion pedal and adjusting your tone using the amp's EQ.  In this situation, the already distorted guitar sound can be made to sound very aggressive, scooped, or whatever.  But the guitar signal always carries through the distortion circuit ALL of its (mids rich) tone unaltered, which is best for deep creamier distortion.  It also reasonably well for low levels of 'on-the-edge' distortion too, although without the ability to decide which frequencies distort first.  However the EQ generally needs to be kept at fairly neutral settings for this to sound convincing.

So, to sum up, there's a clear trade off between them! And all this applies equally to valve and SS amps. Not all amplifiers are designed in the same way and for the same purpose, although most are now-a-days Post Distortion EQ types.

I can perfectly understand some of the comments in this thread.  And they also apply to other makes of amplifier like the Fender Hotrod and Blues Deluxe/Deville, even the Mesa Nomad... but NOT the Blues Junior.  The BJr has Post-Distortion EQ, so can sound more like a rock/metal amp, albeit without the deep distortion ability!

What always kills me are Fender's SS amps.  They design a Heavy Rock sounding SS amp and stick it in a BlackFace style cab.  This means that older or more traditional players are attracted by its looks and low prices, but are totally horrified when they plug into it.  Not surprisingly, because the amp is SS, in their minds, that's the reason it sounds so obnoxious!  Which of course it is not.  SS amps can be made to sound classic too, which is what I now do exclusively... and the big producers don't!

One more thing.  My old designs from the 1980s/90s, did not feature 'Constant Current' power amps.  They do now and this makes a huge difference to their overall tone and vitality.  Valve amps, via their output transformers, are also Constant Current' power amps.  This is the major difference between valve amps and (old design) SS amps.  The switch to Constant Current techniques in SS power amps has revolutionised their sonic abilities.  So comparing a valve amp to the older SS amps is bound result in 'fail' opinions.  This is not longer the case, thankfully.

I like SS... you can do more with it than valves.  I certainly enjoy the flack I often get because "I don't talk the toooob  talk".  But you know what... it's water off a duck back.  Here's me playing live through a 1986 MosFet Sessionette modified with 'Constant Current' drive in the power amp:  http://www.award-session.com/audio/Live_RetroTone_Blues_Solo_1.mp3

Things have certainly moved on since those early 1980s!  I rest my case. 

ICBM

koneguitarist said:

One of the things people keep missing is, a good amp is a good amp despite if it has valves or not.

Welcome to the Fretboard Stewart, nice to have you on board.

+1

Whilst if you read above (you probably have) you'll find that I really don't like the sound of these amps, I'll give Stewart the credit for sticking to his guns on solid-state amps, and for standing behind his old products in the (pretty rare, I'm happy to agree) cases where they do need repairing.

It's not because they're solid-state that I don't like them - there are some valve amps I dislike as much, too... or maybe even more so!


@Sessionman - the point you make about the EQ is a very good one, although I'm probably a bit odd because I like post-distortion EQ for lower-gain sounds too! I even like old-school Marshalls for clean sounds, possibly in preference to the 'classic' Fender cleans. Although strangely, I dislike the Blues Junior too - nothing to do with the distortion though, I just find it a boxy, muddy-sounding amp. (Some of that is the speaker, I know.)

I always found it bizarre that so much of what you say, both now and in the past, makes perfect sense from the fairly little I know about amp design (I only fix them, not build them!), and yet you made one of my least favourite sounding amps... no accounting for taste, of course. Though the fact that you might have been aiming for a Roy Buchanan-type sound perhaps explains a lot .

Good to have you here, anyway.

Sessionman

Given all the time, I could probably design amps to do anything you want.  But having such a wide range of amps would only confuse players!  You have to stay within a niche and make it clear why you're there.

Frankly, I don't take it personally if anyone dislikes my amps... there are more than enough that do and that's all that counts at the end of the day!  You know, the one thing I've learned over the years in this crazy biz is... you can't please all of the people all of the time.  Jim Marshall could never accept that.

@ICBM - If you can't like the clip I posted, made on an upgraded Sessionette with a Tele, then I don't know where we go from here on!  It's a routes guitar sound in my books and one that many modern amps struggle to produce.  That sound is the result of adding the circuitry I didn't know about back then. 

Further, I think you must admit that such a high power SS amp lobbed into a small cab containing a high powered mids orientated (as high powered speakers tended to be in that era) was quite a task for the time.  It was the beginnings of channel switching and 'convenience' amps!  Within two years, I was receiving letters from Japan offering me distribution of exact copies.  So something was right... probably the Fender like clean sounds and the small package.  Armed with the right pedals, anything was possible.  Not so different from today really!

Thank you all for your kind words of welcome... I'll try not to be too outspoken, but it'll be hard - I'm an Aquarian!  Blame Ttony for me being here... I was recruited at the Great British Guitar Show a few weeks ago.  So I had no choice, but to sign up! 

ICBM

Sessionman said:

@ICBM - If you can't like the clip I posted, made on an upgraded Sessionette, then I don't know where we go from here on! 

It is much better than any Sessionette I've ever heard ... but no, still not my kind of sound. It's still way too honky for me and not open or deep enough. I do think it would quite easily fool most people into thinking it was a valve amp though - but in some ways I find that frustrating since it should be possible to judge a solid-state amp on its own sound and not by how 'close' to a valve amp it sounds.

Oddly enough I also like a lot of old-school solid-state amps which don't sound anything like valve amps, but do have that 'big' tone.

Sessionman said:

 I think you must admit that such a high power SS amp lobbed into a small cab containing a high powered md orientated (as high powered speakers tended to be in that era) was quite a task for the time.

Certainly - although I wonder if that's part of the problem... by packing it all into such a small box, there perhaps wasn't enough room for the speaker to work well.

Anyhow, I should really get around to trying one of your newer amps with the constant-current output section just in case . It's nice to find someone who still wants to make solid-state *analogue* amps sound good, rather than go down the route everyone else seems to be doing, with digital.

koneguitarist

I think the sound on the clip is a great indication of the right tone for the song.

I am not thinking if it's valve or SS, that's meaningless unless you are comparing like for like. 

I have played and owned valve amps such as the Blackstar HT series, the Fender HR Deluxe, Marshall Haze 40, all looked the part but sounded lifeless sterile, everything that is constantly levelled at SS amps.

I have made my views regarding amps on other threads. 

What matters is not how it's made but does it give you the sound you want to use. 

ThePrettyDamned

@sessionman I loved that post! Very informative, and you're clearly passionate.

I have recently had the opportunity to a/b two of my favourite budget amps - my own silver stripe bandit, and the hot rod deluxe v3. Clean, I preferred the hot rod deluxe... Just. Actually, it was so close, I was going to say the other way around until I dialed in the hrdx just right.

Drive channel was unfair, like apples and oranges, but for general overdrive the hrdx was nicer. The bandit had a better 'clean drive' sound, with low output pickups (the exact opposite - you'd expect the valve amp to win) and it had much better tight, high gain stuff but for everything in the middle the hrdx sounded better.

But overall, it really amazed me that a solid state amp could, in my opinion, be compared to what is surely one of the best budget valve amps on the market! It's not even 'budget', just reasonably priced. I'd take it over the bandit, but it was a much closer competition than you'd think.

Oh, the bandit had a nicer sounding reverb.

Solid state can be good!

57Deluxe

@Sessionman - Stewart - you need more videos to convince the doubters... I have tried my best so far as a lone furrow...

ooer - I can use my amp stack pic again!

jpfamps

Sessionman said:

Amps are like Marmite!  Lol

The 1981 Sessionette was not ever designed to be a 'rock' amp... so, please don't beat it up too much if the distortion is not to your liking if you're a 'rock' player.  There are other genres of music too, that most amp makers seem to ignore.

I designed the Sessionette during 1980... it was my first SS design!  However, I know exactly what you mean about the tone.  It can be a little dull and the distortion, although created exactly as many pedals do even today, is not great at high gain stuff.  There is a simple explanation for this.  Like the Hotrods and Blues Deluxes, the distortion circuitry is Post-EQ.  Whereas, modern 'rock' amps have their distortion situated Pre-EQ.  There is resultantly, a huge difference in how they perform.

Pre-distortion EQ: There are some advantages and disadvantages.  Firstly, having the distortion Post-EQ enables the amp to work like an old school amp, where, say, a simple single channel overdrives the output stage to create the distortion in the power amp.  Many players like that kind of tone and is, IMHO, far better at the "on-the-edge" kind of sound. e.g. Roy Buchanan.

Also, you can adjust the Treble control to make the high frequencies distort before the lower frequencies.  Very useful for blues, country and other forms of music where reasonably low depths of distortion are required.  So, no rock or metal tones here!  The down side is that removing the mid tones from the signal before distortion is added leads to quite a 'confused' unsmooth kinda sound when used at very high gains.  The Hotrod DLX suffers this, and is even worse with its 'More Drive' feature -IMO. The bass 'n' treble frequencies alone do not make for great 'saturated' distortion sounds!  The mid frequencies are always best for great distortion sounds... which is why Les Paul & Gem guitars sound so good in distortion!  They have fewer bass and treble harmonics in their basic clean sound.  Modern Marshall amps work enhance this fact.

Post-Distortion EQ: Placing the EQ after the distortion is rather similar to plugging into a distortion pedal and adjusting your tone using the amp's EQ.  In this situation, the already distorted guitar sound can be made to sound very aggressive, scooped, or whatever.  But the guitar signal always carries through the distortion circuit ALL of its (mids rich) tone unaltered, which is best for deep creamier distortion.  It also reasonably well for low levels of 'on-the-edge' distortion too, although without the ability to decide which frequencies distort first.  However the EQ generally needs to be kept at fairly neutral settings for this to sound convincing.

So, to sum up, there's a clear trade off between them! And all this applies equally to valve and SS amps. Not all amplifiers are designed in the same way and for the same purpose, although most are now-a-days Post Distortion EQ types.

I can perfectly understand some of the comments in this thread.  And they also apply to other makes of amplifier like the Fender Hotrod and Blues Deluxe/Deville, even the Mesa Nomad... but NOT the Blues Junior.  The BJr has Post-Distortion EQ, so can sound more like a rock/metal amp, albeit without the deep distortion ability!

What always kills me are Fender's SS amps.  They design a Heavy Rock sounding SS amp and stick it in a BlackFace style cab.  This means that older or more traditional players are attracted by its looks and low prices, but are totally horrified when they plug into it.  Not surprisingly, because the amp is SS, in their minds, that's the reason it sounds so obnoxious!  Which of course it is not.  SS amps can be made to sound classic too, which is what I now do exclusively... and the big producers don't!

One more thing.  My old designs from the 1980s/90s, did not feature 'Constant Current' power amps.  They do now and this makes a huge difference to their overall tone and vitality.  Valve amps, via their output transformers, are also Constant Current' power amps.  This is the major difference between valve amps and (old design) SS amps.  The switch to Constant Current techniques in SS power amps has revolutionised their sonic abilities.  So comparing a valve amp to the older SS amps is bound result in 'fail' opinions.  This is not longer the case, thankfully.

I like SS... you can do more with it than valves.  I certainly enjoy the flack I often get because "I don't talk the toooob  talk".  But you know what... it's water off a duck back.  Here's me playing live through a 1986 MosFet Sessionette modified with 'Constant Current' drive in the power amp:  http://www.award-session.com/audio/Live_RetroTone_Blues_Solo_1.mp3

Things have certainly moved on since those early 1980s!  I rest my case. 

It's good to have a plurality of technologies available to the modern guitarist.

Nor, do I have a problem with vigorous debate in online fora, as long it doesn't descend into argumentum ad hominem.

Regardless, I'm with ICBM on the Sessionette sound clip; it's not a sound I care for, although it does seem to be a popular one.

Since the early 80's Fender have persistently tried to make amps with "high gain" channels (both valve and SS) and they have never been very successful with them. I guess that that's not what you buy a Fender amp for (well don't).

knuckleberryfinn

Hello @sessionman. Thanks for all the information about the design differences and what you were up to thirty five years ago(!)  I liked the tone on the clip - as koneguitarist said, it was perfect for the song.  I think we all just have different tastes as far as guitar tone goes.  In fact, it's something I've been thinking about over the last couple of days.  I think it deserves a dedicated thread, which I think I might start in a minute...

My search for a Sessionette ended a couple of months ago, not because I bought one, but unfortunately because I ran out of money.  But I'm sure I'll get one at some point.

Incidentally @jpfamps, I had a Deluxe Reverb II until about six months ago and I know what you mean.  The clean sounds were lovely of course, and it was a pretty versatile amp, but I found it hard work getting a good sound out of the drive channel.

ICBM

knuckleberryfinn said:

Incidentally @jpfamps, I had a Deluxe Reverb II until about six months ago and I know what you mean.  The clean sounds were lovely of course, and it was a pretty versatile amp, but I found it hard work getting a good sound out of the drive channel.

Shame you didn't post this about seven months ago… there's a great and very simple mod for these amps - you move the EQ on the lead channel to post-distortion (where it should be ). That makes it *much* easier to get a good sound, as well as giving it more gain overall (because the large insertion loss of the tone stack is taken out) and making the gain control actually useful.