Never being satisfied. What's with me?

[wesarvin]

I don't want to throw this off topic, but more proof that the rig doesn't matter. This dude will sound bad on even Pete Thorn's rig!


http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?feature=related&v=YdLUAPL6-8w

 

[kurtisqpublic]

I go through this with friends of mine all the time. You can chase the dragon by constantly switching rigs or you can settle on 95% there and concentrate on your playing and little by little tweak towards your greatest end result. I have been playing for 30ish years and have only owned 10 amps and that includes practice amps and my very first sears special amp bought at the very beginning. I am completely satisfied with my current rig and not really looking to move along.

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

Sounds like you are a bit all over the place dude!

Class 1 sees the CAA take on the Fryette. the I find it ironic because CAA and Fryette MTS mods are my most used modules. Anyhow, I love how both amps sound. The CAA is stupid expensive. I had a SigX for a short time a few years ago and it gave me horrid headaches. I loved the tone, but my head HURT! So both amps have their low points. Unless I can find a cheap PT100, I'm probable going for a SigX. The Fryette comes with 2 KT88's. If I wanted an EL34 conversion, could it be done? Coule an additional 2 tube sockets be added to an the amp?

You`ll have to explain in more depth what `horrid headaches`refer to. Was it too bright an amp etc.. if that is the case, not sure why you would want to purchase another one.

As for KT88`s, you wouldn`t add two power tube sockets. For one, it is a 50 watt amp with a tranny spec`d for that. second, you would devalue your amp doing that. (put it out of your head, you won`t be doing that). What you would need to do is have a few resistors swapped in order to acomodate KT-88`s. I think they might be interchangeable with 6550`s so all you would need to get done is have someone convert it from EL34`s to 6550-kt88 (alla John Norum) and you`d be good to go. You won`t really be able to switch between on the fly though. So yup, you`ll have to decide!

EDIT - i read that wrong but info still stands.. you`d need to go from 6550 to EL34`s which i did with my JCM800. It`s easy breezy.

 

[The Rossness]

Sounds like you are a bit all over the place dude!

Class 1 sees the CAA take on the Fryette. the I find it ironic because CAA and Fryette MTS mods are my most used modules. Anyhow, I love how both amps sound. The CAA is stupid expensive. I had a SigX for a short time a few years ago and it gave me horrid headaches. I loved the tone, but my head HURT! So both amps have their low points. Unless I can find a cheap PT100, I'm probable going for a SigX. The Fryette comes with 2 KT88's. If I wanted an EL34 conversion, could it be done? Coule an additional 2 tube sockets be added to an the amp?

You`ll have to explain in more depth what `horrid headaches`refer to. Was it too bright an amp etc.. if that is the case, not sure why you would want to purchase another one.

As for KT88`s, you wouldn`t add two power tube sockets. For one, it is a 50 watt amp with a tranny spec`d for that. second, you would devalue your amp doing that. (put it out of your head, you won`t be doing that). What you would need to do is have a few resistors swapped in order to acomodate KT-88`s. I think they might be interchangeable with 6550`s so all you would need to get done is have someone convert it from EL34`s to 6550-kt88 (alla John Norum) and you`d be good to go. You won`t really be able to switch between on the fly though. So yup, you`ll have to decide!

EDIT - i read that wrong but info still stands.. you`d need to go from 6550 to EL34`s which i did with my JCM800. It`s easy breezy.

The Sig X is a 100 watt amp with 2 KT88 tubes. My question was- to keep it at 100 watts, could 2 extra tube sockets be added so insted of 2 (2) kt88's, the amps had (4) EL34's.

As for the headaches and the Sig X story... Back in 2009 or so, I had a chance to play a SiGX at a studio and fell in love. It was the reason I sold my MTS rig back then, so I could buy the amp. I loved the tone and to a degree, I still do. However, every time I played the amp, it gave me a headache. It didn't seem to matter if the amp was loud or quiet. Initially, I thought it was the frequency the SigX ran at. So After 2 weeks of headaches, I sold the amp. It was unfortunate, because I really dug the tone. Fast-forward a couple of years, and I'm at a Guitar Center demoing a "DV Mark Triple Six". The Triple 6 is a Heavy Metal amp, 120 watts, powered by a pair of KT88's. I wasn't playing loud, it was a GC after all, and the amp sounded nice, but I got a big headache. It made me think that maybe my problem with the SigX wasn't the frequency the amp was using, but rather that my brain didn't like the frequency kt88 tubes ran at.

I could be wrong, maybe it the headaches were coincidental, that's why I asked about the KT88 to EL34 conversion. With any other tube combo, the headaches don't happen.

 

[crankyrayhanky]

another avenue to consider is going with a one of the smaller guys- Kyle Rhodes has a new Gemini out that seems astounding...Baron amps, Friedman, Surreal, there's a ton of them that hang out at RigTalk. You could probably get an amp tailored to your needs, such as no headache88s.

The Kemper is the real deal, try to find someone in your hometown that wouldn't you jammin out on it. It is awesome for recording but sounds/feels like an amp in live situations too- plugging into the fx return of my Mesa delivers the goods

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

Wow! KT88 = headaches?? Never heard of that but hey, i suppose anything is possible. You should try a blind taste test with tubes. Randalls can take 88's with a quick bias adjustment can they not? Would be interesting to see if out of 4 tubes you got headaches with 88 tubes.

I'm with Cranky.. Kemper for you. You seem to be chasing elusive tones and you need something that can allow you to experiment with all of them. I think the Kemper might be it. Besides that, get one of the cats at rig talk to mod it for you. BFG as I mentioned, seems to have the "chewiness" down in his amp's tones.

 

[Mattfig]

Wow! KT88 = headaches?? Never heard of that but hey, i suppose anything is possible. You should try a blind taste test with tubes. Randalls can take 88's with a quick bias adjustment can they not? Would be interesting to see if out of 4 tubes you got headaches with 88 tubes.

I'm with Cranky.. Kemper for you. You seem to be chasing elusive tones and you need something that can allow you to experiment with all of them. I think the Kemper might be it. Besides that, get one of the cats at rig talk to mod it for you. BFG as I mentioned, seems to have the "chewiness" down in his amp's tones.

They actually mod Kempers? What do they do to them???

 

[DonP]

Remember...much of Joe Satriani's Surfin with the Alien was tracked with a Gorilla practice amp!

Gorilla module....we need a Gorilla mod!! But it must have a "tube stack" switch...

Sadly my first amp. I can't remember what it sounds like but Surfin' sounds about right.

 

[blacksun]

Sometimes the GAS-"problem" , for me at least, is really due to a feeling of wanting to have something new which I confuse with the tone quest issue. Hence the consequence of having bought and sold the same type of gear several times over the years. Usually far easier to buy a new amp than to practice and really improve ones sound as well.

Recently I bought the amp of my dreams since 5 years, hand built from a small scale German boutique builder. I instantly fell in love with the tone but still I felt there was something missing, then I realised - my technique..

If you can afford it, keep most MTS and get that Mark V or whatever amp you're GASing for. Let it sit with you for a while, then you can probably more easily decide what to do, if you're a Mesa MkV guy or not etc.. Just to save you from an other MTS GAS reacquiring race later on

 

[blacksun]

I agree with the modulators evolution problem especially the Axe Fx. When the first version came out, everybody (or at least a lot) praised its authentic tone simulations. In what logic sense could then the ultra and axe fx 2 improve on something that already really did that tube tone perfectly??? The axe fx path would be a constant update race. The Kemper seems like a better choice though.

Again it's the classic versatility vs tone issue. The only mts advantage is TUBE tone 8)

 

[Torpus]

I totally understand the predicament and the arguments from various sides. The thing I do like about the MTS world is the ability to plug into different feeling modules. I'm no guitar king, as a matter of fact I'm actually a keyboard player who's always wanted to be a guitar player. Maybe I get too caught up in semantics as well, but as a piano player I would tend to differentiate tone and style. Grand pianos sound different, i.e. they have a different tone. What a player can get out of those different pianos, how they interact with that tone, to me is what I'd call style. Now, guitars and amps and everything else in the signal path interact with the player in a way that a piano cannot. So, a player's style in guitar also impacts the tone that those various pieces of gear can create. So, I tend to look at the tone of a guitar rig separately from a guitar player's style, but the tone is manipulated by that style (wow, that was a mouthful...)

It's also possible that I'm completely full of crap and don't know what I'm talking about...

Having said that, one of things I find in the MTS world is that when I plug in a different module and I try for different sounds, I enhance my skills as a guitar player. After an hour of bombing through high gain heaven on an Angel E, switching to a VoxLess requires me to interact with my guitar and amp in a different way. Interestingly enough, as I get better at playing my VoxLess, I find more interesting ways to interact with the Angel E. And on and on and on...

The key for me is continuing to feel inspired by whay I'm playing. I think it was mentioned that playing and improving your playing will improve your tone. So, what keeps you playing? For me, it's partly that quest for different sounds and directions. MTS certainly makes that quest more affordable, but it does come with certain compromises. My VoxLess module, running through my stereo 6L6 Engl poweramp, probably doesn't sound "authentic," but, it sounds radically different than my SL+ module and I have to develop different techniques in order to sound worth a crap playing through it.

I don't see me getting completely out of the MTS world...but that doesn't make me want a PT100 any less...

 

[JKD]

Great post Torpus.

 

[The Rossness]

Great post Torpus.

+1
I couldn't agree more.

I've heard the common MTS complaint that while it sounds like the original amp, the "Feel" is off. I forgot who it was, but someone posted they sold their MTS rig for a 5150 and while the tonal versatility wasn't there, the 5150 sounded and felt like a sonic boom, which the MTS amp couldn't do.

I think feel might have to do with my decision. In all honesty, I've got a lot of marshall based mods and while I might want an amp like a Fryette Sig:x or a PT100 (yea, I like that amp too), my MTS system really has those tones covered. I want something with more touch sensitivity. my Grail tone, besides the 80's thing, is Third Eye Blind's first album. Its fot this cool vibe- jazz and rock and a little grit and its very touch sensitive. I had Voodoo build me a custom 3EB module, and it kind of has that feeling, but it kind of dosen't (might be a limit of the MTS platform).

So I continue to look elsewhere. I'm still not sure if I should get a MarkV or a Kemper or an AC30. Then I think about marshall tones. OI OI OI. I have no real modern tones with my MTS rig. BTW, what is modern, besides metal (which I don't play)? Tone is a mind ****, it really it

 

[JD]

My MTS has awesome feel! Sometimes it's a matter of finding the right guitar/module combination.

 

[Mattfig]

My breaking point comes when I find myself playing the same 5 riffs through 10 different modules in a module battle...

What I've learned from my experience is to pick a couple mods, tweak, and play...I let myself have a few nights here and there for battles, but I want to make music not just study tone...

I worry if I got a Kemper I may never actually do anything but tweak...That is also a downside of MTS but it really comes down to what you wanna do- make tunes or find tones...

Tones or tunes? Tunes or tones? That is the question.

A great tune can survive without a great tone...But not the opposite...

 

[JD]

Speaking of great tunes, I just bought a Rory Gallagher greatest hits cd. Where has this guy been all my life!? This guy made music!

 

[Mike361]

I was playing my 59 plat today and was on the plexi side learning some riffs that were pretty clean based on the verge of breakup. I actually was pretty darn happy with the tone I was getting. The amp responds to light and heavy picking and if you can turn it up has great feel like any tube amp. I think if you or anyone is not happy with your gear, you might as well move on. Why bother if it's not putting a smile on your face. My amp ain't goin nowhere

 

[BigBrewtus]

Speaking of great tunes, I just bought a Rory Gallagher greatest hits cd. Where has this guy been all my life!? This guy made music!

Man I thought the same thing last year when I watched a live show of his on dvd. I was blown away. His fusion stuff was crazy cool too!

 

[reprimand]

the mesa Mark V is a great amp and they are coming down in used prices a bit finally. It is a tweakers delight if that is what you are interested with all the various switches power options routing and graphic EQ it puts the Mark 4 to shame. I never could gel with the Mark 4's and the 3' could get alot of different tones but you had to turn so many knobs and pull out all the switches and then pretty much stay in the one sound for the whole song.
While the axe fx's sound great as well you may be playing with the parameters more than you play your giutar thru it. modeling stuff can be great but you have to put time into the programming of your patches to get the most benefit out of them.


If you do sell your MTS stuff though I call dibs on the camerock :wink:

 

[reprimand]

the mesa Mark V is a great amp and they are coming down in used prices a bit finally. It is a tweakers delight if that is what you are interested with all the various switches power options routing and graphic EQ it puts the Mark 4 to shame. I never could gel with the Mark 4's and the 3' could get alot of different tones but you had to turn so many knobs and pull out all the switches and then pretty much stay in the one sound for the whole song.
While the axe fx's sound great as well you may be playing with the parameters more than you play your giutar thru it. modeling stuff can be great but you have to put time into the programming of your patches to get the most benefit out of them.


If you do sell your MTS stuff though I call dibs on the camerock :wink: