Forgiving & Unforgiving Amps

sweepy · June 2018

StuartMac290 said:

impmann said:

Less pronouced mids... so you don't want to be heard, then? ;-)

Seriously though - I don't really understand the 'forgiving' vs 'unforgiving' thing. I don't understand the terminology.

Play an early Bad Cat Black Cat 30 or a Matchless DC30 and you'll probably get it right away.

I have a Bad Cat Hot Cat 30r, let’s just say that what you put in you get out, perfect amps to actually understanding touch response and how to “bloom” notes using palm damping. I find amps like a JCM800 and Mk series Boogies you can take a lot of liberties with your dynamics and touch and it makes bugger all difference. Yes you can back volume off etc but with a properly dynamic amp you get the same or similar effect with pick control

blobb · June 2018

My MATAMP (King ST, 2xEL34's) is right up there for hardcore unforgiving amps.

Absolute hi-fi if you get it right, the interactive eq just makes no sense if you want to soften it up a little. Dynamically, it punishes you for the slightest error.

Most of the time it sounds lifeless and brittle. You have to adjust to it, take a view that it knows better than you do and adapt to the way it works. When you do this it comes alive and has the most amazing 3-dimensional sound. Clean and pure.

It really needs pickups that suit it too, something with lots of rich harmonics. You also need to tune to it's sound, play a full chord and it clearly displays every string individually, any string that's even slightly off can be very noticeable. It really makes you play hard, you dig in and concentrate on being musical. You have to raise your game, no doubt about it. In turn it really shines if you use delay or echo with it, so long as you get timings right. It's like you can stack sounds into it and it can throw as many notes out clearly as you can individually put into it. You break before it does.

I know some don't get on with it, but to me it's exactly how I think, sometimes. Other times I don't want the hassle. I don't want to be picked on every time I fluff up. Since moving into the MESA fold I find that the opposite. You struggle to get a bad sound, great for just thrashing about on and probably much better creative tool. But when I want t get serious it's the MATAMP, every time.

slacker · June 2018

p90fool said:

slacker said:

Regardless of what it's called, I want an amp that sounds good with the controls at noon,

Why?

because its easy to set up.

darthed1981 · June 2018

impmann said:
So basically a 'forgiving' amp makes a slightly crappy player sound better than they actually are (ie it hides sloppy technique) - is that what we are saying?

We really need a short list of these then as a pinned thread, just for me if no-one else.

brooom · June 2018

I agree with @ICBM, according to the general definition of 'forgiving', the little fender push pull dual 6V6 amps have it. However I find that the even smaller single ended 6V6 champs/vibrochamps don't. They are more immediate and 'revealing' if you will.

I love both of these types of amp.

ICBM · June 2018

brooom said:

I agree with @ICBM, according to the general definition of 'forgiving', the little fender push pull dual 6V6 amps have it. However I find that the even smaller single ended 6V6 champs/vibrochamps don't. They are more immediate and 'revealing' if you will.

There is a technical reason for this! The single-ended amps, while not in the strict definition Class A, do have many of those characteristics - including lack of compression.

The irony is that what are most commonly called 'Class A' amps - cathode-biased, push-pull Class AB - sound the way they do exactly *because* they're Class AB and not Class A...

A lot of this does probably sound like being a nerd for the sake of it - who cares, just play your guitar! - but actually I find it interesting to understand why some amps sound different from other ones.

brooom · June 2018

Yes, completely. I've had another amp, which was push pull (6V6), with low plate voltages and high current, which was operating very near a class A. An Alessandro blue tick.

Obviously there were more factors to it, like the heavily filtered power rail and ultra linear output transformer. But as far as the preamp design was concerned, it was very very similar to a blackface fender.

It sounded nothing like a fender, extremely fast response, very similar in some ways to the smaller single ended amp in terms of how immediate the notes popped out of the speaker.

I wanted to like it (and in some ways I did), but eventually sold it, as I was missing that fendery envelope, roundness and tubyness to the sound.

EricTheWeary · June 2018

slacker said:

p90fool said:

slacker said:

Regardless of what it's called, I want an amp that sounds good with the controls at noon,

Why?

because its easy to set up.

Don’t call you Slacker for nothing...

When I got my Lionheart I made a great attempt to listen and try to dial in ‘the sound.’ When I stood back and looked it was everything at noon.

I have an idea in in my head about Forgiving and Unforgiving amps but it doesn’t necessarily correspond to what is being said on here so I suspect I’ve moved to the ‘load of bollocks’ camp on this one. But I’ve never used things like Matchless or Matamp so I’ll just stick in the ‘don’t really know’ camp instead.

TTBZ · June 2018

@blobb that Matamp sounds like my idea of hell!

blobb · June 2018

..you gotta get into it before you get out of it.

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