From bruce@ashbysolutions.com Mon Apr 01 13:35:07 2002
Subject:Re: Tube distortion

David,

>Has anyone tried a guitar player's tube distortion foot pedal to dirty
>up the sound a bit? Any comments?

Yes, I've tried this in the past, and actually had some success with a JHD twin-tube preamp -- now long out of production.

Comments? Most guitar preamps have 5-20x too much gain for anything except Jon Lord in his non-Leslie days (or maybe, Ken Hensley of Uriah Heep?). Usually, the useful range of the "overdrive" or "gain" knob is from 0-1.5 on a scale of 10, which is hard to use to dial in a specific sound. They are also lacking in bass, for the most part. A techie player can fix both of the problems, but it requires some experimentation with resistor/cap changes and/or tube substitutions (12AU7/12AV7 for 12AX7, etc.).

Bass preamps are a little better on both counts. Neither is as good as a microphone preamp, or better still, a dedicated organ preamp.

Regards,

-BW

--
Bruce Wahler
Ashby Solutions™ http://music.ashbysolutions.com
CloneWheel Support Group moderator
978.386.7389 voice/fax
bruce@ashbysolutions.com