Which choke to go with?

white room · Post by **white room** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 11:30 am

I have been thinking of changing out the stock choke in my SLP R/I to try to get rid of some slight ghosting problems. I am not sure what value the stock choke is ( anyone know?) I have a heavy pick attack which may be contributing to this problem but I figured I would do the swap.

Does anyone have any oppinions, as far as tone, between Heyboer and MM chokes or is there not much of difference?

dynaman · Post by **dynaman** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 12:05 pm

Ask bmf5150. Judging from his posts here and the PlexiPalace, He's gotta be an absolute choke wizard. I think he's tried all of them.

Billy Batz · Post by **Billy Batz** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 12:08 pm

This topic has come up so much lately. The stock chokes according to most of the guys around here are 3H. I think the specs of the chokes have more to do with the tone then the slight variables in the make since the choke has an indirect effetc on the tone same as filter caps since its in the power supply. Im almost positive going higher would help with ghosting but Im sure the techies here will clarify that. I use both a 6H and 10H (not sure in my Super Bass probably 3H) and I really like the sound of the amp with the 10H which is a really strong, grinding, focused drive but many other things like increased NFB add to that in that amp.

white room · Post by **white room** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 12:53 pm

Strong,grinding, focused tone huh? Hmm, the 10H may be a good thing for me then. I have been trying to get that sound for a long time and I am getting pretty close to it. I put a .68 across the 820 Rk on V2 the other night and it helped get me closer to that sound so, maybe a 10H choke would help even more.

Flames1950 · Post by **Flames1950** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 2:58 pm

white room wrote:Strong,grinding, focused tone huh? Hmm, the 10H may be a good thing for me then. I have been trying to get that sound for a long time and I am getting pretty close to it. I put a .68 across the 820 Rk on V2 the other night and it helped get me closer to that sound so, maybe a 10H choke would help even more.

I put a 100uF/100uF cap can in place of the first 50uF/50uF in both my 50-watters, which serves much of the same purpose; I've got no ghost notes anymore, and it did add some focus to the sound. I wouldn't truly say it "stiffened" the amp up as some people describe it, just really gave it an immediacy to the notes when I really smack down on the strings.
But the current choke discussions here and at Plexi Palace have me wondering whether the choke is a better way to achieve these results, or leave things as I have them.

white room · Post by **white room** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 3:39 pm

I have a bad tendancy to smack the strings too and I have been wondering whether I should up the filtering and risk stiffening the amp up too much or just leave the 50x50 cans in there. I have been looking at some of the schematics of the early 100 watt amps and I see that some of them had 32x32 and 16x16 filtering and I thought about going that route just to see what happens but I really don't think that is going to be suitable to my playing style and tone preference, not sure. I'm afraid that I would loose that dark "grinding" tone so I think I may give the 10H a shot and see what that does. I'm getting some grind from the amp but not enough, it's like I can hear it under the surface and just need to bring it up more to the surface, so to speak.

The sound that I am after ( if you can believe this) is EVH's tone on the song Mean Streets and I am very close to getting it. I think that is probably the most favorite EVH tone for me.

I don't want to sound like him and my playing style doesn't reflect that, my playing comes out more like EC on the Beano album. I just like that tight, mid focused grind with very little compression.

Billy Batz · Post by **Billy Batz** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 4:40 pm

I just realized my description was bad. Strong grind and focus can mean many things and they all sound good. What I mean is the drive is less distorted and hairy and, at the expense of a bit of gain, is a more complex focused grind as opposed to compressed saturated drive.

white room · Post by **white room** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 10:22 am

Billy Batz,

That's exactly what I took your description to mean and that is just the sound I am working on.

Actually since I put the .68 cap in I can hear that sound better and last night I put the WCR Crossroads pickups back in the LP to see how they would sound now ( before the .68 they sounded too dark and muffled) and now I get an almost dead on Malcom Young tone, which is very cool with me.

I'm going to swap out the JJ EL34's for JJE34L's in a few minutes here and, I have a good feeling about how that is going to sound