Ooo NAD

Fez

Here is the new addition.

timmysoft

Those JCA's are bloody awesome! Hard to beat in the value for money stakes.

Dave_Mc

^ +1 Excellent!

Bellycaster

A lot of Amp for the money there, nice one.

Fez

Sounded brilliant at rehearsal but the boost I use for the HT20 didn't work in the loop. The Vox time machine and Ibanez Phasor were fine though. Looks like I will need to develop a volume strategy. If I can find ICBM's post with an attenuator idea that might work, or I could re-deploy the Boss volume pedal. What does anyone else who has this amp do?

Dave_Mc

You mean for a boost in the loop? I don't bother- but I came across this link the other day when someone posted it on another forum: http://www.guitarampboard.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1615 In post #2 there are a few boosts listed which are said to work in the loop.

p90fool

The other option is a volume cut in the loop for your rhythm tone, then turn it off for leads.

ICBM

Fez said:

Sounded brilliant at rehearsal but the boost I use for the HT20 didn't work in the loop. The Vox time machine and Ibanez Phasor were fine though. Looks like I will need to develop a volume strategy. If I can find ICBM's post with an attenuator idea that might work, or I could re-deploy the Boss volume pedal. What does anyone else who has this amp do?

Unfortunately it isn't going to work with the loop whatever you do because the loop is badly designed and comes too early in the amp circuit, before some of the distortion. (This is a carry-over from the SLO, but why Soldano didn't take the opportunity to fix it as they did with the 20W amps, I don't know!) So changing the level in the loop will affect the amount of distortion more than the volume.

The guitarist in the band I play bass with uses one of them for rehearsals and doesn't use the loop at all - he just runs some pretty aggressive-sounding fuzz and boost pedals up front, which seem to make it cut through quite well, but I don't know whether that would work in a different context.

I suspect the only way to really fix it is to use an attenuator with a bypass switch - I'm not massively keen on this idea since any switching in the speaker circuit can potentially cause voltage spikes in the amp, but it's probably not an issue for something well-made like this.

digitalscream

Excellent choice

The loop on these amps is both line level and before the tone stack, so only boosts with huge input headroom will work. I do it a different way - I use the normal channel with the gain maxed for my dirty rhythm tone, roll off the guitar volume for clean and then just use the drive channel for lead.

Fez

p90fool said:

The other option is a volume cut in the loop for your rhythm tone, then turn it off for leads.

That was  what I was thinking as one option.

What I did last Tuesday was as digitalscream describes. Fine on a strat but on the Epi Les Paul the Vol knob is too far away. The  Boss volume pedal I have is the one for active pups (which I don't have) so needs a buffer any way so I might try that in the loop and out.

Dave_Mc

ICBM said:

Fez said:

Sounded brilliant at rehearsal but the boost I use for the HT20 didn't work in the loop. The Vox time machine and Ibanez Phasor were fine though. Looks like I will need to develop a volume strategy. If I can find ICBM's post with an attenuator idea that might work, or I could re-deploy the Boss volume pedal. What does anyone else who has this amp do?

Unfortunately it isn't going to work with the loop whatever you do because the loop is badly designed and comes too early in the amp circuit, before some of the distortion. (This is a carry-over from the SLO, but why Soldano didn't take the opportunity to fix it as they did with the 20W amps, I don't know!) So changing the level in the loop will affect the amount of distortion more than the volume.

Good point, I forgot about that )

I've never actually got as far as using the loop )

Fez

Ah it wasn't ICBM it was this "Cheapest way is an attenuator in the loop, which is basically a 10k pot in a box bypassable with a footswitch. Your solo sound is with the 10k pot bypassed, so set the pot to get the required contrast between rhythm and lead volume. " From Danny1969 - Relative merits anybody?

digitalscream

Fez said:

Ah it wasn't ICBM it was this "Cheapest way is an attenuator in the loop, which is basically a 10k pot in a box bypassable with a footswitch. Your solo sound is with the 10k pot bypassed, so set the pot to get the required contrast between rhythm and lead volume. " From Danny1969 - Relative merits anybody?

The problem I see with that - for my uses - is that I actually want a significant gain boost as well as a volume boost. I also don't want to have to hit two pedals every time I get to a solo, so I'd prefer to do a bit more work going from first rhythm to clean (which happens less often).

It also just so happens that the normal channel maxed is exactly right for my dirty rhythm tone.

ICBM

Putting a volume cut in the loop will cut gain as well as (or more than, I think) volume. It will certainly give a combination of the two - the problem is whether it's the right combination, and you have no control over it. I would guess that the more gain you're using on the amp, the more it will affect gain and the less it will affect volume, just as if you're using a boost pedal in front of the amp, but having not tried it I could be wrong.

Fez

A bit of a gain boost is OK. So much to try then.

Fez

Drive channel for lead crunch for the rest then. Result.