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Topic: Yet another Black Box question |
P Gleespen
From:
Toledo, OH USA
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Posted 1 May 2007 12:08 pm |
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Okay, I apologize if this has been covered before, but I did a quick search and didn't see it.
Will the Black Box do it's "magic" if I'm already playing through a tube amp? ...or is it primarily designed to give a solid state amp a warmer "tube" sound?
And I guess while I'm asking questions, does the black box take care of impedance matching problems like a match box?
Thanks!
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Patrick |
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Colby Tipton
From:
Crosby, Texas, USA
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Posted 1 May 2007 1:02 pm
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Just my 2 cents and a question. If you are playing on a tube amp, how could you want anything more mellow tone? I am looking into a Black Box for a Session 400 so I can get more of a tube tone on it, I am playing through a tube amp now and it has the tone, I think if I added anything more to it I would start getting into some distortion. Just a question to add to your's.
Colby |
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Dan Tyack
From:
Olympia, WA USA
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Posted 1 May 2007 1:24 pm
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I think the BB does improve tone overall, but it's not nearly as dramatic with a tube amp as with a SS amp.
It definitely does help if you are using a bunch of stomp boxes.
_________________
www.tyack.com
Capetown girls sing this wrong: "da doo, da doo" |
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Ben Jones
From:
Seattle, Washington, USA
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Posted 1 May 2007 3:04 pm
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Hey Patrick, do you get TapeOp magazine by any chance? Its a great free recording oriented magazine (cool forum too). Highly recommend it (did I mention its free?!) Anyway, they reviewed the black box a while back. I dont know if this will be helpful at all with your question but I found the review at Brad's site and here it is:
These days, it's important to optimize every link of the audio chain, starting at the source. Often this source is a guitar pickup. Despite the name, the Steel Guitar Black Box is a device that fills a long-time need for studio rats and guitarists of all types. The tube-driven SGBB is intended to be placed immediately after a guitar pickup (and before any pedals and effects). It optimizes the pickup/amp relationship by matching impedances and circumventing capacitive loads.
A handsome, minimalist box (yes, it's black), the SGBB is about 8'' _ 5'' _ 2'' and is a surprisingly hefty 5 lbs. There's an attached 120 V power cable, a user-changeable fuse, a blue pilot light, and 1/4'' I/O jacks. No on/off switch—it's on when you plug it in. The unit that I tried was outfitted with a true-bypass switch (very handy for A/B'ing sounds), but production models do not have this feature (nor do they need it, really).
During a recent recording session with The Self Righteous Brothers at Verdant Studios, I hooked up the band's pedal steel player with the SGBB. He flipped. With his steel plugged into the Black Box, then into his volume pedal, then amp, his pickup was noticeably more responsive than without the Black Box. Not louder, not driven, just more "present." He said it felt like playing was a bit easier, like you could "feel" the notes a little better. In any case, the steel tone that went to tape was superb. This was not a passing fancy; the steel player wrote down the Black Box's website address and said he planned to buy one. Later, I tried the device out with a few conventional guitars. Same kind of results: more presence, improved "feel." The tone was "strong" and not overly-colored. It just sounded like the guitar and amp were perfectly matched.
Because it is a tube buffer, the Black Box imparts a bit of harmonic distortion on whatever signal it is fed. There is no gain. In addition to improving guitar and steel performance, it is also quite effective at "warming up" unbalanced, line-level signals from the likes of keyboards and drum machines. All in all, it's a great tool to have kicking around the studio or as part of a stellar guitar rig.
Cheers! |
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Stephan Miller
From:
Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
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Posted 1 May 2007 4:34 pm
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Most of the good buzz on this Forum about the SGBB has come from pedal steelers using solid-state amps. I'm not a pedal steeler, but here's how I've been using mine... a) between an acoustic guitar and a solid-state acoustic amp b) between my electric 6-string or lap steel and pedal chain (1-3 pedals)into a tube amp c) for recording the above instruments, plus electric bass. The variable impedance control is very effective for further tuning in the tone I want.
Even without the stompboxes, when the chain is reduced to instrument--> SGBB--> tube amp, there's a subtle improvement in tone, to my ears. In that scenario I would use it for recording but probably wouldn't "need" it onstage. And no, it doesn't add any audible distortion (as in overdrive, fuzz,etc).
--Steve |
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Brad Sarno
From:
St. Louis, MO USA
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Posted 1 May 2007 4:51 pm
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Patrick.
If you are using a tube amp, you are already getting a good deal of warmth and tube goodness. The Black Box does help add that factor to a transistor amp or any amp for that matter, but there's a whole other thing that happens as well. It does the impedance matching thing as a matchbox would. It also has a variable impedance loading which acts as a different type of tone control. Also, if you use an active volume pedal or any effects pedal, the Black Box can insure that the very first thing that your pickup sees is a tube. That's a very critical stage right there where the passive pickup gets driven or made active with an electronic circuit. If that first stage is a tube, your pickup will respond differently and take on a different tone than if that stage was a transistor. The Revelation Tube Preamp is sort of a Black Box and a Tube Preamp all in one. That's an example of a Black Box first, and then a tube amp after it. The BB is very clean too, so you wouldn't introduce distortion by adding it. But you may find that it just doesn't really add much of what you're after because your amp itself is so full of tubeyness.
Your question is a good one, and I don't really have an answer. I guess I'd say that if you're simply using a pot pedal and a cord and no active devices in between the pickup and amp, then you probably don't need the BB. But if you have any kind of pedal like delay, reverb, active volume pedal, etc. then I'd say you may want to have a tube in front of that stuff.
Lately I've kind of been seeing it two ways. There is amp tone, and then there's pickup tone. The Black Box and pickup relationship is all part of what I'd call the pickup tone. A lot happens right there that can only happen if the pickup directly sees a tube first.
So short answer is, sure, uh, yea, maybe.  What was the question? 
_________________
Brad Sarno
'82 Emmons S-10 push/pull, Revelation Tube Preamp, Furlong SPLIT powered speaker cab, V8 Octal Tube Preamp, Ganz Straight Ahead power amp - JBL D130 |
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Colby Tipton
From:
Crosby, Texas, USA
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Posted 1 May 2007 5:45 pm
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Brad,
That is the first time I have heard you explain the SGBB that way, it is the best you have ever done. Thats why I want one to use one with the session 400, that little bit of warmth. I'll contact you next week to order one.
Colby |
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P Gleespen
From:
Toledo, OH USA
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Posted 2 May 2007 3:23 am
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Thanks everybody!
And particular thanks to Brad! I really appreciate you taking the time to give such an in depth answer to my question. Very helpful and informative.
Sometimes the forum makes me feel all warm and toasty.
...sort of like I was running through a black box!
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Patrick |
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Bob Kagy
From:
Lafayette, CO USA
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Posted 2 May 2007 2:33 pm
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Marlin Smoot
From:
Kansas
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Posted 2 May 2007 8:26 pm
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| The SGBB is like salt...put it on everything. |
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