Slaved clip on halloween with Jnew

[Jeremy1283]

Im gonna see how managable its is live then go from there. Im digging thetone im getting from the echoplex and amp. I added a 6 band at james place and it sounded killer. I will see soon enough.

[Jeremy1283]

Cool ! So you have a dual tap PT, and your running the lower voltage tap of it, via the three way standby switch (virtual variac). That along with the variac slightly taking it down a hair.. So what did your actual plate voltage end up being ? You could have just ran the high tap and lowered everything just a tad more, via the variac, right.

My plate voltage was 278 on the low variac setting. LOL

[jnew]

Hey guys Jeremy, I don't think you're plate voltages were that low. Although I don't remember exactly, I want to say it was in the neighborhood of the mid 3 hundreds.

As far as Ed needing a noise gate with a 6 band, I don't completely agree. The echo-plex pre-amp circuit has high and low band pass filters and when I use the 6 band in front of my EP-3 pre-amp, it tames that otherwise noisy hiss quite a bit. Without the pre-amp, I would agree. The hiss would be difficult to tolerate so IMO, just another important role of that EP-3 circuit.

[Jeremy1283]

Yup plate voltages were 278 i checked the email we did with the notes we took that day james. Bias set to 62

[jnew]

Hmm. I trust you.

[rgalpin]

i have listened to this clip a couple times now - the grind sounds right on - but it seems to have an eq/voice to it that is shaped in a way is not vh I sounding. like i guess a it's hollow sounding boost around 1k maybe? idk. as if i am listening to it through a tunnel. (exaggerating to try and describe what i hear)... is it close mic'd?

listened again - maybe it's the EQ of the reverb i am hearing that is boosted in the tunnel area of the mids. ??

[jnew]

I just sent Jeremy the clip without any post reverb. He'll probably post it shortly for comparison.

BTW, yeah it was close mic'd. SM-57 on the grill and although in line with the dust cap, pointing more or less to where the corner of the dust cover and cone would meet (or thereabouts).

[Jeremy1283]

here ya go. Just the amp sm 57 and garage band.
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12968416

[rgalpin]

yeah - much easier to hear the sound of the amp - that verb was emphasizing some areas of the sound that move it away from the vh i sound. i would say that there is something in the pick attack and general AIR of the tone that is less dense than the album tone. the quick response is right there though - but that quick response is possibly at the expense of the organic squish.

I had to A/B your clip with the album ISO to try and figure out what I was hearing - because the grind is just right. one clue is (and this happens to me and drives me nuts) listen to the string noise as your hands move on the strings in between notes - compare it to ed's iso and you realize he gets virtually none of that - that has something to do with something and my first thought is that it's about the difference between creating the vh grind at bedroom volume vs creating the vh grind at stage volume - two different recipes.

[jnew]

I have thought about that a lot. And I think therein lies the magic of the Landee/Templeman techniques as well. So, you have Ed's cab, probably loud as hell (you can hear the smashing of those poor greenies, so to speak) and somehow those string noises are really well filtered. I have to believe those string noises would have been just as prevalent with these amp arrangements but with the cab raging, it may have been easier to capture the notes and chords proper and filter out the in between garbage. Just a thought.

[rgalpin]

that does seem logical - added to that if some (maybe lots) of the grind is coming from driving the speakers so hard then the amp could be cleaner - which means it would be delivering more punch more power and less distortion because the speaker distortion is doing some (maybe lots ) of the the work as far as creating grind.

an example that strikes me is listen how quickly ed's sustain fades at the beginning of SGMAD - after the intro chords, he hangs on an E chord that goes dead relatively quickly - i think that's because his amp is not producing the same gain and preamp push as we are in a lot of our clips. part of that is the relatively less gain heard on VH II compared to VH I - but now i am digressing all over the place...

i think the string sound is, as you say, lessened by virtue of the fact that the speakers are WAY INVOLVED in what we hear on the album. i am adding to that that this would mean we are developing recipes that make up for that lack of speaker involvement (distortion) by adding it to our amps. OR OR OR we are adding an enormous amount of compression when we squeeze the power down to BR vol with an attenuator - compression of course makes quiet things loud and loud things quiet. quiet things like hand movement across the strings.

i wonder if the compression we add with attenuation is a simulation (albeit insufficient) of what the speaker adds when there is no attenuator and it's getting pummelled.

[Strat78]

I think it could be the slaving too, it's just too polite and room friendly. We really need to all get together in some huge warehouse where we can really take these amps around the block properly. You just can't be timid and self conscience when doing this. No wives, no neighbors and no attenuators!

[jnew]

I'm scared at how alike we're thinking right now. When I did this clip of SGMAD:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_so ... D=12585071

I used that same E chord and rolled back Vol I until I realized about the same rate of decay as the album. I actually still have a little more sustain I think but that was the barometer I used. I think Vol I was on about 5. It was pretty loud when I did this so some of the speaker smashing is going on and I had to smack down on the strings as well but I think it's a good example of what we're talking about.

[jnew]

I think it could be the slaving too, it's just too polite and room friendly. We really need to all get together in some huge warehouse where we can really take these amps around the block properly. You just can't be timid and self conscience when doing this. No wives, no neighbors and no attenuators!

Too right mate.

[rgalpin]

I'm scared at how alike we're thinking right now. When I did this clip of SGMAD:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_so ... D=12585071

I used that same E chord and rolled back Vol I until I realized about the same rate of decay as the album. I actually still have a little more sustain I think but that was the barometer I used. I think Vol I was on about 5. It was pretty loud when I did this so some of the speaker smashing is going on and I had to smack down on the strings as well but I think it's a good example of what we're talking about.

from what i can hear man - that sounds sweet! really alive. but i am listening by pulling my left ear phone off my ear - so, a tad awkward when someone walks by my office... sounds angry when you hit the G A kind of staccato like ed does - BAMP BAHRRRM. haha. cool! i don't hear much string noise!! proves the point?