Volume pedals, overdrive, and sustain

Eric Jaeger · From: Oakland, California, USA

Here's a question for the crew.

I have a small pile of small tube amps whose tone I like, all are old enough to not have effects loops. Here's the problem:

All of my steels are quite capable of overdriving the inputs of these amps. Note that this doesn't seem to be output overdrive -- it isn't volume dependent. Volume pedal down: overdrive. Pedal up: it cleans up. This gets annoying when you don't want massive tone shifts when the pedal moves. Of course, if you're trying to sustain you need the pedal down...

Short of "don't use those amps" (if hitting yourself with a hammer hurts, stop it), anybody got any ideas?

-eric

Jon Light (deceased) · From: Saugerties, NY

Can you elaborate, Eric? I'm totally confused by your post----you say that it is not volume dependent but then you say that it is a pedal down/pedal up issue. I'm missing something.

Eric Jaeger · From: Oakland, California, USA

Ah, what I meant is that it's not dependent on the volume setting of the AMPLIFIER. So I'm guessing this is a case of overdriving the preamp.

-eric

Jon Light (deceased) · From: Saugerties, NY

Ah. Gotcha. And I'm sure you already know that yes, that is the problem. Steel guitar pickups are hot. I would certainly use an attenuated input if you've got one. But you would have done that without my saying it.
Altering your volume pedal technique is one option. If your general average pedal position is 75% down, alter it to 50%, using the rest of your sweep for milking sustain.
A preamping sort of effects pedal (a boost pedal, eg.), with an output level pot can be used to take a good full output from the pickup and reduce the signal (ostensibly without tone loss). That might serve as a limiter to your signal before it hits the amp's input.
Bottom line--you are using underpowered amps and attempting to ignore that fact. They sound great but there's a reason people invented 4 x 6L6 machines. The lightest rig I use with PSG is a Deluxe Reverb and there's no getting around its limitations when I need serious bottom or clean decibels.
Good luck.

(I suspect that you are just expressing frustration rather than expecting some magic solution to your problem).

Eric Jaeger · From: Oakland, California, USA

Absolutely right, Jon. They do sound great, but they are indeed "underpowered". I was thinking that a volume pedal with a buffer and attenuator was just the ticket,but had no idea such thing existed :-)

-eric

Bobby Lee · From: Cloverdale, California, USA

If you use a POD for effects (without amp emulations), you can set the output of the POD low enough that it will never overdrive the first stage of your vintage amp. I've done that with my little Princeton, and it works well.

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Bob Metzger · From: Waltham (Boston), MA, USA

If any of these amps are tube amps, and use a 12AX7A for the first preamp tube, try a 12AT7 or a 12AY7 instead.

Steel guitar pickups may produce a stronger signal than the input of your various amps were designed to see. You can always seek out an enlightened amp tech who can rebuild your amp's input to work in a cleaner fashion with the gear you're using.

Bob M.

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

I pretty much assume that I need to attenuate a steel guitar signal in order to drive effects pedals built for guitars correctly. What consistently works for me is either a little stompbox compressor set not to compress but as a signal attenuator, or a stompbox graphic equalizer used to lower the output feeding into the next stage. It is one more preamp in the chain, so you have to pay attention to the noise issues. In theory you could just build a box with a passive volume pot in it, but you'd certainly have some tone losses pushing a signal through it and the cords with no power whatsoever.

P.S. Put the box right after the pickup, before the volume pedal if you want the pedal to affect the overdriven tubiness aspect; put the stompbox after the volume pedal if you are shooting for maxi-clean.

[This message was edited by David Mason on 20 September 2006 at 04:12 AM.]

David Wren · From: Placerville, California, USA

The Hilton VPs do have an adjustble "sweep" of the pedal, and "tone" adjustments too. This might help, but for the cost you could buy a larger tube amp as well. Hope this helps.

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Dave Wren
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Walter Killam · From: Nebraska, USA

replacing the 12ax7 preamp tube with a 12au7a made all the difference with my SF Champ. If you can afford to spring for a few different 12A*** preamp tubes you can experiment to find the right combination of attenuation and gain.

Eric Jaeger · From: Oakland, California, USA

(Eric is now giving himself the legendary dope slap... duuuhhh). Of course, I should have thought of dropping from a 12AX7 to an AT or AY.

On the idea of using stompboxes or PODs as attenuators, do you find it changes the tone? Or rather, since EVERYTHING seem to change the tone, is it detrimental?

thanks!

-eric

Jim Sliff · From: Lawndale California, USA

Eric - I've found the same thing and discussed it with a few builders, pickup people, etc.

Solution - use a Matchbox. the high impedance/high output of the "normal" steel pickup overloads the imput stage of most tube amps, which are designed for guitar pickups with a DC resistance of 6-11k. A 21k steel pickup just isn't compatible. I ran into the same thing, and so have a few others I've talked to - and a Matchbox evens things out.

FWIW my Fender steels, with 8.5-10k pickups don't overload the same amps my MSA with 20k pickups did.

Kevin Ruddell · From: Toledo Ohio USA

I tried the 12AT7 in the first slot of my Peavey Classic 30 tube amp and although EH makes a nice tube I just didn't like what it did to the tone . Their tubes seem really geared towards more of an edgy rock guitar tone although they sound good Although I hate the tinny sound of all the Sovtek tubes I've tried so far their 5751 tube works really well on the 30 in the first preamp tube slot. I had lots of parasitic ossilation noise with an 12AT7 in my Fender Pro Jr. amp, but a 12AY7 really smoothed the response out

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

On the issue of a stompbox changing the tone, as you mentioned everything changes the tone. If you use either a little compressor or graphic EQ as I do, you then have the option of using the properties of the box. I have a MXR Dynacomp which sounds "transparent", they're pretty much legendary for that. I have a DOD 6-band EQ that sounds good and a 7-band Boss that sounds pretty "transistory", to me (so I use that one hooked to a fuzztone and a Morley wah for six-string, HELL-O, transistors!).

There are endless debates about which boxes are more natural, transparent, woody, tinny, some people have boxes and closets full of these things.
Effects Reviews
When I look inside a tube amp I see a bunch of capacitors and circuitry anyway, you want "natural" get a dobro and live in a tree?

To the best of my knowledge, most steel guitar pickups put out a pretty wide-spectrum tone range, and the characteristic tone of a steel through a little tube amp is largely defined and circumscribed by the small size of the speaker cabinet.

Bob Hoffnar · From: Austin, Tx

If the amp is a Fender try the 2nd input.

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Bob
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Dan Tyack · From: Olympia, WA USA

Eric,

The behavior you describe is just what I love about small tube amps (that they break up when you put the volume pedal all the way down).

I would just change my volume pedal technique as Jon suggested. In terms of a preamp tube, I'd try a bunch of ay7, au7, or at7 tubes. They are quite variable in sound.

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Jon Light (deceased) · From: Saugerties, NY

There are several pedals out there that can double as effect pedals and/or basic preamps (clean boost). I often use a Voodoo Labs Sparkle Drive. This is essentially a Tube Screamer with the added feature of an extra knob for mixing in as much or as little of the effected sound (or vice versa, as much clean sound) as you want. When dialed 100% clean, it can function as a clean boost. It's not 100% transparent---maybe a bit brighter than the bypassed signal--but it's not dirty or anything. In this mode, you can turn down the output to whatever level you want.

I'm just giving more detail to my previous suggestion and some of the others, above. There are compressors that can serve this dual function as well as EQ's. And dedicated clean boosts. Hopefully with the duplicated info in this thread you are getting a picture of your options.

Eric Jaeger · From: Oakland, California, USA

Great stuff guys. A lot of ideas to try out. This group is such a wonderful asset, in that anything I might consider SOMEONE here will have tried.

(Of course, I might recommend trying a 1969 Kustom K200 Dual15.... nah.)

-eric

Eric Jaeger · From: Oakland, California, USA

An update: taking some of the advice here, I ended up running the PSG (ShoBud Pro1) straight in to Mesa V-twin preamp pedal (set on clean), thence to a Holy Grail reverb pedal, to a Goodrich volume pedal and then into the amp(s). This seems to work great. I get a very good overdrive tone that I can dial in pretty well, and doesn't shift much when the volume pedal changes.

Thanks for the discussion.

-eric

Mike Wheeler · From: Delaware, Ohio, USA

Eric, you know what you're after more than I, but, I'd put the Holy Grail after the volume pedal so the reverb tail isn't cut off by a volume change.

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