Posts by crhfish

    So I'm home sick with the crud, all by myself and decide to go play around a bit. Saying I was really bored is an understatement. I'm cleaning out a drawer and find this old thing that I purchased new in the 80's. Its an Ibanez Rock and Play cassette deck for practice. Back in the day you could play through this to songs and slow the speed down a bit to learn things. It has two sounds, distortion and distortion plus chorus. thats it, two switches. I decided to try and profile it. Here it is by the way between Geddy and Alex on top of the Champ.


    [Blocked Image: http://i68.tinypic.com/zme8m8.jpg]


    This gets a surprisingly good Boston sound to my ears. Its very sensitive to the Cab thats used. Its just for fun. I put up a couple of profiles called Boston.

    I guess I'm on a roll. I make my weekly stop at a few pawn shops. The second one has an amp made by Genz Benz. I though they made bass amps, but this one is a gem and I got it for basically lunch money. I don't think they knew anything about it either. I looked it up on my phone and found a few very glowing reviews. Its a single channel with a switchable boost, 30/15 watts with a compensated unbalanced line out.


    I have tried using line outs before with mixed results, this one is done right. It sounds great and I would guess they tried to compensate it to the redfang speakers that originally came with this setup. The reviews are correct about this amp. The tone controls are perfect and very usable, the boost basically give you a two channel thing if you want it. Its loud and built like a tank. The sounds options on this amp are numerous as if also has a voicing switch that turns it into five different sounding versions and they work. I'm really impressed. It also has the triode pentode switch but I have not even messed with that yet.


    I put up a few profiles, I will probably add some more later. Look for Pearl.

    [Blocked Image: http://i63.tinypic.com/2z8ubft.jpg]


    I put up several profiles of this little Rivera combo. I've had it a while but never really looked it up on the net before. A couple of days ago I read a write up on this amp. Its supposed to have a Mesa styled channel 1 and a Fender Blackface style circuit on channel 2. Its a small amp and not very heavy. I played around with it the last couple of days and frankly I was shocked at the sounds I could get out of this thing. I'm not sure why you would want to go from a Mesa Mk2 tone to a Twin Blackface sound, but with this little thing you can.


    If you ever see one of these things, grab it if you can.

    I've got some decent guitars, quite a few in fact. This one really is different. It has the 1meg pots with treble bleed wiring which makes the bridge pickup sound as tangy as you can stand it. I have to use the tone control to calm it down. The bridge pickup is only 6 ohms but it puts out much more output than I expected and it sounds really good. The guitar had never been intonated. The three bridge saddles were all set in a line way to high to be even close. No fret wear at all.


    And to think I almost bought a PRS SE Tremonte right before I found this one. If I had, I never would have stopped at this place.

    I uploaded several new profiles tonight. The most interesting to me is the amp.


    [Blocked Image: http://i67.tinypic.com/20qxhc.jpg]


    Its a Speedster made by Soldano before Soldano was Soldano. This is serial number 2. As best I can tell is a souped up Deluxe circuit. Its got a cool 50's vibe to it. I have profiled it before and it was difficult for some reason to get a good profile. The deluxe can be noisey and this one with the adjustable bias on the front sure is. But once you start to play it sounds nice. This time I think I finally got some profiles that capture the sound. They are not for everybody, but somebody might can use them. To get this sound I have to play it really loud. I mean stand in the other room while its profiling loud.


    I also profiled a Jet City Vintage 20 amp, did a couple of my old Marshall TSL combo and reworked an old AC15 handwired to try and get BAD profile using two delays. I thought they were good enough to share.

    I am also ready for the new release, but I can wait until its ready. I'm glad I read this post because I did not know anything about the Pure Cab thing. I plan an trying it out tonight. I am Hays by the way and I'll add my two bits on what I think can make a better profile. Get a good mic but be careful. The SM 57 is pretty tough but I have broken a few others by profiling to loud trying to get a good sound. I have learned those things are not very tough. Also, I think its a good idea to take your time. I profile, and wait few days and go back to it to see if it sounds like I thought it did. Your ears get tired pretty quick so its best not to profile and then upload it in the same night. I will also leave the mic where it is so I can reprofile and start right where I left off. I might not even move the mic but perhaps the next profile I will do at a lower level, etc. I do several profiles and over a few weeks I weed out what I think are the bad ones. Then after a month or so, when I have a few I think someone might can use, I upload them.


    Since I have been in the modeling world, line6, eleven rack and now the Kemper, I have found that our other gear and how we like to play makes a big difference. Your headphones, your monitors, etc and the room you are in put each of us in our own unusual situation. I know I try some of the other free rigs and they don't fit me, but they may fit someone else just right. One mans junk could be another mans gold so to speak.


    I know one thing for sure, its just a fact. What we have available to us all now is so much better than my first amp its just amazing. My dad got me a Yamaha G212 in 1974, at least I think thats what it was. It was great at the time, but actually pretty bad. Real tube amps were pretty expensive back then. We also suffered from no information. Other than Guitar Player Mag, there was no way to know how anyone got their sound and some of the info there was inaccurate. I still remember driving around town one day with one of my friends looking for a variac. We needed one because EVH said in an interview thats what he used to get his sound, by turning up the voltage. We now know he turned it down, but thats not what he said at first. We found one but could not afford it, so I guess its a good thing.


    We did not have a nice place like this to come and learn things. Most of us had a guitar, a cord, an amp and we spent allot of time making awful sounds trying to figure out songs.

    It could have been cap polarity, but I checked several times. I think I had the power leads messed up. I'm color blind, almost completely. When I rewired it I had my wife come out and tell me the colors. It probably had something to do with that.


    If any of you remember the old SCTV skit where they blew things up, this was like that. "Blowed up real good"

    I'm not sure what happened and I wish I had taken some pics of the damage but I did not. When I redid the amp I bought a turrent board, removed all of the parts from the old grommet board and completely redid it. I think i had some bad joints on the original grommet board that contributed to the problem. Everything in the original build that blew up was new.


    Here's a pic of the amp with my new favorite mystery guitar. Its a mystery because I have no idea who built it or where it came from.


    [Blocked Image: http://i68.tinypic.com/jr35uf.jpg]

    After some time and many issues in my life not guitar related, I finally finished my first amp build. It started out as a Mojotone 5E3 deluxe build. I spent a few days back in November building it, then a few more days finding mistakes,etc and finally around Thanksgiving I was ready to try it out. At first it sounded very nice, quirky, just like I think the originals were. Then, as I was playing along, it blew up. I don't mean it started smoking or anything like that, it went of like a cherry bomb. Two of the filter capacitors exploded and part of one of them actually stuck in the wall. In a weird way it was kinda awesome.


    When I took it apart it had many components that needed to be replaced, so I ordered some on Ebay and pirated some out of a few trashed stomp base I have, mostly resistors. Most of the values of the replacements are in the ball park. After repairs it did not sound right so I put it in the corner for a few weeks. I figured I had killed the thing. Today I decided to give it one more look over and I found another resistor that had been damaged. Fixed it and it sounds better than it ever did.


    I still do not know what happened the first time to make it blow up, I have no idea. But now finally I have a working amp.


    I put up two profiles tonight of the Normal Channel one is cranked more than the other. I think it sounds good if you are looking for that old school sound. Of all the profiles I have done this one responds the most to changes in the Amp Section for some reason. If you are looking for a Deluxe sound, download one and try it out. I used the Jensen C12Q speaker that came with the kit.


    The profiles are under Hays Deluxe.

    The kemper has driven me into building amps. My first "big" attempt is about to start, a hand wired 58 spec Tweed Deluxe. I'm still waiting on some parts but when I get it built and broken in, it will be profiled.


    I'm also trying to repair a 5150 combo right now, but its really buggered up, so it may become something else soon. The combo cabinet it perfect to put just about anything in. If the Tweed build goes well I'm thinking about a Trainwreck clone, we shall see.

    Wow, thanks. Its been a few weeks since I visited the site. I have some I've been working on and I need to finish them up. I've been learning how to build amps lately and thats where I have been spending my time. I'm glad you like the profiles.

    Have you tried just using the headphone out of the Kemper. I use the same interface and I think I had to dial down the SPDIF from the Kemper. Are you using the software mixer interface to make sure the interface is not being overdriven?