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Hi all,
Just discovered this place after a bit of a break from the forums- used to post on Musicradar under the same username.
Anyway, I'm considering a change of amp and wanted to pick the forum's collective brains.
I play guitar with a singer-songwriter (elizabethcornish.com if anyone's interested) as part of a four-piece band- me, acoustic guitar, bass and drums plus lead and backing vocals, and currently use a reasonably simple set up:
PRS Starla X -> TC polytune mini -> BYOC comp (not often used) -> Foxrox ZIM (B9 and VT) -> Vox Delaylab -> Cornell Romany Plus ('04 or '05 I think, so only 10w and 2.5w modes)
The Cornell does what it does (Fender blackface cleans with a little dirt when wound up and/or played hard) beautifully, and is loud enough for my purposes (small rehearsal rooms and mic'd gigs, both with a drummer who knows how to keep some in reserve for the loud bits), but there are a few things it can't do that I'd like to be able to:
1. A little more dirt. I don't need high gain sounds, but I do need a little more sustain and "oomph" than the Cornell seems to be able to give me, without too much more of the distortion-y stuff- I don't want "grind" or "sizzle" or any of that, just a bigger, warmer, sustainier sound. That's why I tried out the compressor on the board- after all, what I want is basically compression- but it's not quite getting me there- I tend to play quite dynamically, so the comp was making the quiet stuff too loud. The ZIM, even at low gain, adds mids and "dirty dirt" as opposed to the sort of "clean dirt" I want. I'm not convinced that I don't sound like a total mentalist. Is all of this even possible, or am I asking for an amp that does two opposite things?
2. A good lead tone. By which I mean much the same as above, but more of the same. I guess I'm shooting for the sort of "expensive" sounding, smooth, sustaining sort of sounds- think Gilmour, Robben Ford etc.
3. More control over EQ. The Cornell's EQ is subtle, and really only good for tweaking the one basic sound to tune out bass mud or treble sharpness. I'd like to be able to tweak a little more than that.
I'm aware that to get all the other stuff I want I'll probably end up with an amp that can't do what the Cornell does quite as well as the Cornell can do it, but I'm happy to trade off a little of the very specific wonderfulness of the amp I have now for a little more versatility if I need to.
To cap it all off and make it really difficult for youse all, I don't have a ton of money to spend beyond what I'll get for the Cornell (£500-550ish?), and I'd like to be able to maintain my ability to "load-in" to a venue in one trip- at the moment I can just about get a guitar case and a pedalboard in one hand and an amp in the other and walk a short distance without dropping anything! I'm still holding on to the belief that I'm relatively young and fit, so I reckon I could manage something a little bigger and heavier than the Cornell and still do that, but I think I'd prefer to stick to a fairly small 1x12" combo unless someone can convince me that I really need more speakers and/or a lot more watts to get the sound in my head.
I'm wondering if the smaller, lower wattage Mesa amps might be an option- Studio .22s, DC series, Subways, F series and occasional Express and Nomad series amps seem to crop up on eBay at that sort of price. Any opinions on whether these amps will get me where I'm looking to go? if not, what will? Anything?
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
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Comments
Nice to see you too! Sticky, did I read somewhere that you're in the middle east now? How did that happen?
The Klon idea might be worth a try. I'm not convinced that this isn't at least partly a "grass is greener" thing, and that I won't end up regretting it if I sell the Cornell.
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
What sort of a guitar forum is this? I ask how best to spend £500 on an amp and I get recommendations of pedals I could bang together on perfboard for maybe £30? Aren't I supposed to get £1k amp suggestions? :-?
I think I might have to bust out the soldering iron and try out a few of these nice ODs.
Still kinda liking the idea of being able to clear my board of dirt pedals though...
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
Fair comment.
It's not a genuine complaint(!), I appreciate sensible suggestions that might help me avoid making silly decisions that I might regret much more than I'd appreciate the TGP crap like "don't do that, somehow miraculously have twice as much money to spend and buy a Mad Mojo Amps Unobtanium Rocket, but make sure you send it to Franck Overcharge to do the Boner Mod first".
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
A secondhand Mesa Transatlantic 15?
Seen a few sold here around £500. It has a lot of sounds, no Fx loop though.
If you are basically happy with the clean sound of the amp, I'd be equally inclined to suggest a couple of pedals instead of changing the amp. Mr Gilmour effectively plays his hi-watts clean and gets his sublime lead tones from pedals.....I'd suggest an Xotic SP comp - it has a fair amount of boost so you can hit the front of the amp harder to give you a bit more of what you already have, plus, it has a blend control allowing you to dial in just the right amount of compression, giving you lots of sustain without killing your note attack. A basic Boss GE-7 will give you more EQ options and can also boost volume as well if needed. Finally, a RAT will cover a lot of lead tone territory from mild break-up to singing sustaining leads including a good Gilmour approximation with some delay behind it.
Maybe not the answer you were looking for but pedals can offer a lot of versatility if you're happy with the basic clean tones you're getting.
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
It's not the attack that I didn't like- my BYOC 5 knob compressor has a similar blend feature- it was the way the comp affected my playing dynamics.
This is a perfectly valid way of getting your sound, but I'm wondering if there's a simpler way to get there than having a whole bunch of pedals just to get the basic sounds I need.
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
So you got all those sounds by setting the BB to the highest gain setting you'd need and backing the volume off for the lower gains? Did the overall volume stay fairly consistent?
If I could at least cut the pedalboard down to a single dirtbox and free up space for some more interesting effects it would be a step in the right direction.
I definitely think an evening trawling tagboardeffects is in order.
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
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