Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: Tricalibur on June 01, 2006, 07:39:36 PM
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Im in the market for an all tube amplifier and have been looking profusely at a JCM 800. I love the power and balls out tone but they just dont seem to get enough gain/OD/DIst. on their own, so If I were to buy one I would almost certainly have to get an OD pedal to drive the preamp with. Before i go any further, you should know that I usualy tune down to C# and I play ALOT of Sabbath and Sabbath style music. I kno the JCM's are generaly very mid and trebele bassed amps when compared to other, more modern amps, however I am pretty much convinced that with my Low Tuning, heavy string guage and the soon to come warpigs my guitar will easily be able to compensate.
Back to what I was saying tho. I would need an Overdrive pedal of some kind and I want one that wouldnt color my tone too much but would still drive the amp enough to get a good vintage-ish kind of Distortion. I would prefer it to be a tube driven pedal. Im thinkin maybe a Maxon ROD881 Real Tube OD/Dist., Vox Cooltron Britboost or BigBen OD, Robert Keeley Baked Ts-9. One of those probably. So what do yall think? Any suggestions for helping me get the tone im after with a particular overdrive pedal?
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I have a JCM800 and an Analogman SD1/808 (you can change between modded BOSS SD1 and TS808 sounds), and that's more than enough gain for me! With a set of Crawlers I can get a pretty tight tone, but with the VHII's it's a bit bright - although I think this is a by-product of the pickups themselves. I'm selling both, so drop us a line if you're interested...
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If Tims clips are anything to go by, I'd get an SD-1 or Keeley SD-1, they seem great for boosting JCM800s.
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For sabbath stuff, hard to go wrong with a treble booster, like the Rc Booster. To give an undersung company some business though, A lovetone Brown Source in front of a cooking amp can yield fantastic results. I've put one in front of a blackface twin before and it just killed. It goes up to at least 17.
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^ would a treble booster make my sound too bright for a good Sabbath tone?
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^ would a treble booster make my sound too bright for a good Sabbath tone?
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A treble booster won't necessarily make your amp brighter, as they boost frequencies across the range with emphasis on treble. I use one thro' a 79 JMP Marshall that has 5881's. I found that when running it flat out (as with all tube amp response) the bass frequencies were dominating the sound.
I use the BSM RM version which also sounds cool thro' my cornford harly and the nano-really kicks 'em up the arse!
For the Iommi/Sabbath tone look at the BSM RM Metal version.
http://treblebooster.net
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Iommi did actually use a treble booster for his tone in the Sabbath days right through till at least the Masters Of Reality era - all of Vol4 is an old non master volume Laney with a modded treble booster (Rangemaster). I've used this kind of rig myself and you can get a surprising amount of gain if you plug into the bass/normal channel.
:twisted:
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cool! Could a cranked JCM800 with a treble booster in front of it possibly get me closer to a vintage Sabbath sound than the Laney GH100Ti Tony Iommi Sig Amp?
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Yep, it most likely would. For the most accurate 'old' Sabbath tone I'd go with a 4-input Marshall with a treble booster into the normal channel. If the shear volume is an issue then it's easy enough to get a master volume installed.
:twisted:
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well I could always attenuate it with a powerbrake or something. But what exactly is the difference between a Master volume and a non-MV amp. Dont the old "plexi" amps have master volume knobs?
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Any OD/Dist/Fuzz pedal in front of a JCM800 with a cooking power valve stage would certainly get you into the sonic area you're after, though IMO all you should be using the pedal for is to colour your tone, and not for the drive.
If you don't have an attenuator (like a HotPlate or whatever) I'd say that you NEED one! I have a similar setup (for a similar style) and the HotPlate makes all the difference.
The Vintage RAT is a good place to start, though the "Filter" can be annoying, other pedals like Guv'nor's, Big Muff's, modded TS-9's etc would sound pretty good, anything that'll give you colour to your tone.
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What exactly is the difference between a Master volume and a non-MV amp.
A non-MV Marshall has only a single volume knob for each channel (brilliant or normal) and are clean when played on 1 or 2 then get gradually louder and overdriven as you turn them up.
The Master Volume series of amps have a gain knob plus an overall volume control (aka, master volume)
Dont the old "plexi" amps have master volume knobs?
Nope (not in the gain + mv sense anyway)
:twisted:
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^ alright, I understand know. Thats pretty much what I thought it meant :D . I was playing through my friends VOX Tonelab Se today and just messing around with settings and I decided to try putting a treble booster in front of the UK 80's Model(JCM 800). I was very surprised to find that the amount of gain the treble booster provide was quite massive to say the least. Of course I had the amp gain pretty much maxed out as well, but even still it was quite amazing how much gain you could get out of such an obscure effect. The only negative affect of haveng the pedal running into the 800 was that it made the tone VERY middy and biting. Which isnt neccesarily a bad thing (It was AMAZING for lead work). But still, it wasnt quite getting me the proper Sabbath tone that I wanted, so I tried it with the same settings into the UK 68P model amp(Marshall 1968 plexi) with the same gain and eq settings as w/ the 800. This yielded a more bassy and girthy tone, which I realy liked :twisted:. My main question is how accurate would my findings on the amp modeler be compared to how they would be on the actual amps? I have played JCM 800's and Plexi's and this pedal seemed to do a pretty good job recreating their tone.
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I use the ZW OD and it sounds really nice. But like any OD in front of a JCM it squeals.
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I can't promote the Keeley SD1 enough. Tim has one, and I picked one up recently...give it a noise suppressor and you will get loads of gain and endless sustain (hey, that rhymes. :lol: ). Try it! It's pretty inexpensive and very sweet sounding. The harmonics are just out of this world!
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To answer your question from before :oops: ...I'd have to say that the tonelab will give you an approximation of the sound you'd get out of a hot 800 running with a treble boost into the input...but it's NOT going to give you what it would sound like exactly. That's to be expected, though. I guess, what I'd say is you can't go wrong with a decent overdrive pedal as has been extremely common among NUMEROUS greats from the 800's era. Once you get an overdrive, look into a treble boost. Gear is one of those things...it's not like you're going to be waiting 2 years before you could get BOTH units, so, figure out what you believe to be more useful to you NOW and buy whatever else strikes your fancy later on. Cheers, mate!
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If you look on the Keeley website he talks about using a ts808/9 with a vintage rat. I have had a rat for a while now and do not like it, it's a bit too fuzzy for me. The other day I bought a ts9 and I love it, it has a lovely clean overdrive. I have now started using the two and the results with my yamaha pacifica and laney LC15 are astounding. I crank the ts9 overdrive right up, knock the tone and volume to half, and then add a very small amount of distortion with the rat, along with almost full filter and full volume. The result with the two is a meaty sustainy tone. If I knock the rat out of the chain gives me a nice bluesy sound, or knocking the ts9 out gives me a nice compressed clean, slighty driven sound.
I know my guitar and amp setup are a million miles away from yours but I think Keeley is on to something.
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Here's Keeley's blurb about the rat:
How do you know if you are going to be a RAT pedal fan? If you like a real cutting type of tone, one that sounds like a British type stack of amps and speakers, then the Rat is for you. Delivers classic tones as heard by Jeff Beck, John Scofield, as well as many Heavy Metal groups! Wide Range! Well, the Rat takes some fine tweaking! The controls are sensitive, but once set, it can be tonal Nirvana! Some of our most excited customers are Keeley Rat owners. Also, some folks just don't get it. (Hey, no fault right?!?! Not every pedal is for every person!) I can say, though, that the RAT and TS9 make a power dual pedal setup. For something that has a super sound combined, try your Rat and TS9. Experiment with the order of the pedals. These pedals sound completely different when one is put before the other, and vice versa. Are the magic settings Apocryphal? Yeah maybe a bit! But whence set right... ahhhh you've found the golden needle in the hay stack, mate!
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It may still be worth considering a treble booster if you're after the authentic Tony iomme tone - he used an original Dallas Range master treble booster which was responsible for the riduclous overdrive and harmonics/feedback that he got , also check out Rory Gallagher's tone as well as he used one most of the time.
There's quite a few companies that make copies of the original, i've just ordered one from toneman in America.
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I´d go with Ibanez TS-9. I use one with my SL-X head as a clean boost, that is Level on max and Drive on sero. I love that pedal!
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I have to say, the Behringer TO800 is awesome as a booster, and is only £20. The bypass isnt 100% perfect, but its good enough for non-snobs.
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I have a JCM800 and an Analogman SD1/808 (you can change between modded BOSS SD1 and TS808 sounds), and that's more than enough gain for me! With a set of Crawlers I can get a pretty tight tone, but with the VHII's it's a bit bright - although I think this is a by-product of the pickups themselves. I'm selling both, so drop us a line if you're interested...
<Homer drooling>Mmmmm, Analogman overdrive pedal ....</Homer drooling>
When you say you're selling "both", you mean both the JCM800 and Analogman SD1/808, or both the Crawlers and the VHII's, or .....? :)
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I should prob go ahead an say that I change my mind ALOT. And though this thread is only a month or so old I have already changed my mind about wnating an 800 several times over :D . But I still do want to boost whatever amp I get with a treble booster. prob this one: http://www.pedalgeek.com/cgi-bin/new_shop.cgi?config=&uid=ROFwsQAA1155248266&command=link--bsmrmm since its an authentic recreation of the rangemaster Tony had modified for more gain. Im thinkin Il prob run it into either a vintage matamp or a NEW Matamp or Electric amp or an old Laney Supergroup if I can find one. If I ever do get an 800 though I'll prob drive it with a Robert Keeley Moddified TS-9 "Baked Mod".
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hi I recommend the keeley fuzz head, because it's true bypass and it's a little beefier than a keeley SD1 if you want it to be, AND it can also get less drive than an SD1. I own both the Keeley SD1 and Keeley Fuzz Head and I'd go as far as saying that the fuzz head is the best sounding od/dist pedal I've ever heard, it never gets muddy even on full blast.