I heard *the* clean and overdrive tone in my head yesterday in a bar.
It was a marshall jtm45 reissue, and the player had both a strat and a 2 humbuggy tele. Both sounded great, clean single coil chime and the buckers had a nice raunchyness.
So... With that in mind, knowing I could save for a UK made one with power scaling/attenuation, or a used reissue... (
@martinw, Stoneham and jpf, I'm looking at you!)
How would they take to, say, a digitech hardwire metal distortion? I like to djent out, something I know the pedal can do with a ts in front, but I love love love that pretty strat tone, hendrix esque ideas... Basically, my want for that is outweighing the want for a high power metal monster.
So, opinions?
Comments
You are right - it sounded amazing. Just a brilliant sound that covers every genre well, bar metal.
The Digitech Metalmaster is brilliant for the high-gain scooped "metal" sound. And they can be ad ew for around £30.........
Failing that, ping me, and try any of my gear, there's a slight pissabolity I have a couple of loud pedals.
Ringleader of the Cambridge cartel, pedal champ and king of the dirt boxes (down to 21)
Yeah, I wouldn't mind trying a couple out at some point. I don't have much to let you try, but I do have a grainy high gainer and a porn pedal. I mean, Qtron.
Ringleader of the Cambridge cartel, pedal champ and king of the dirt boxes (down to 21)
It's a thought, but the tight sound I like is from preamp gain - and an eq or signal cut somewhere won't give a wonderful tone really... I've tried with a few, and once you're in that gain territory, the clean up goes to a pretty dirty clean, rather than 'edge of breakup strat tone'. If that makes sense!
Also I prefer to use suitable kit, but that's just me. There's more than one way to skin a cat, of course, but I normally try the tried and tested approach first.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
+1.
It's also easy to do a couple of slight tweaks to tighten up the (huge) bottom end on the JTM, which after all, was based on a bass amp.
You could increase the stiffness of the power supply a tad too.
It really sounded amazing - it would do for most of my playing, and I wonder whether it would be okay.
Edit: the correct tool for the job would probably be a mesa or diezel - which are way out of my price range. Used jtm45s are actually not terribly priced... And UK built alternatives are around. Not entirely sure what the stiffness is - but yes, this is good news.
I really enjoyed the sounds I heard - he stepped on a pedal, and it just boosted the volume and gave a great od tone for crunchy rhythm. But when just using unboosted single coils, it was a lovely, rich clean sound with no breakup at all.
It is the first sound that really wowed me since I heard a peavey 6505 at volume. Just incredible, but opposite end of the spectrum!
Just my big concern is you might not be happy down the line. I mean that JTM copy is liable to be no cheaper (or not much cheaper) than a 6505, for example. It's one thing paying a lot less money for something unsuitable. It's another thing paying the same amount of money as would have bought you the suitable thing.
I don't think I can set a 6505 up like that... I'll have another go when in store. But this was really great sounding - I'll have to compromise whichever way I go.
Still wondering if I can hold out for a dual rec. Hmm...
As above though, you can mod them, or you could get a 1987x, which may be closer to your ideal compromise.