MusicMan amp for guitar, ever set it this way?.........

Jerry Hayes · From: Virginia Beach, Va.

Last night at my gig I took a different guitar and found I'd left my Rat distortion box in my other Tele case and we do a couple of rock songs where I use distortion. The amp I use is an old MusicMan HD One Fifty 2-12 model hybrid. I thought I'd just try to overdrive it so I turned the master volume down to a little over 2 1/2 and the channel volume up to around 8. To my surprise, the amp didn't distort but all of a sudden I had the tone I've been missing and trying to find for years. It was a sweet singing slightly compressed tone and worked beatifully on ballads or uptempo tunes.

I've really always relied mostly on pedals for the last 30 years or so instead of trying to get the best out of an amp. I'm going to start experimenting with some of my other amps to see what's hidden in them that I've been missing.

Anyone else ever set their amp(s) this way? (Guitar, not steel).......JH in Va.
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Don't matter who's in Austin (or anywhere else) Ralph Mooney is still the king!!!

Donny Hinson · From: Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.

Yes, Jerry. I've done it, and I guess a lot of other straight players have, too. That's the secret of getting the "overdriven" sound straight players are in love with..."pre-up" and "master-down".

Predictably, it's just the opposite of what a pedal steel player would probably want.

Steve Norman · From: Seattle Washington, USA

Yep,,I use a music man that way when I record 6 string stuff. Great Great Great tone. Mine breaks up nicely at 9. Guitar, echo amp is all I need when I play my music man. I wish I had 2, I would a/b them for clean/dirty.
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GFI D10, Fender Steel King, Hilton Vpedal,BoBro, National D dobro, Marrs RGS

Ben Jones · From: Seattle, Washington, USA

I have a musicman 210RD. There is no master volume, only volume and "gain". Turning up the "gain" yeilds the single worst "distortion" sound i have ever heard from any amp or pedal...ever. Totally farty and lame. I guess you cats have the heads, so maybe its the speakers in these combos that make the gain sound so awful to me?

Stephen Gambrell · From: Over there

Some MM amps are hybrids, and NOTHING sounds worse than solid-state pre-amp distortion. That trick doesn't even work well with all tube amps, IMHO. The good stuff comes out of the power tubes.

Jeremy Steele · From: Princeton, NJ USA

I have a Musicman 2 X 10 65 watter. I use the setup you describe for lap steel...sounds even better with the half power switch activated.

Jerry Hayes · From: Virginia Beach, Va.

Thanks Jeremy, I have a gig tonight and I think I'll try the low power switch to see what happens. I'm really in love with this amp again. I have a couple of 12" ElectroVoice speakers with very large magnets that I'm thinking of putting in it. They came from Mesa Boogie amps. I know they'll increase the weight but the only time I lift the amp is to set it in the back of the van and then onto a milk crate at the gig, thank God for hand trucks!.......JH in Va.
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Don't matter who's in Austin (or anywhere else) Ralph Mooney is still the king!!!

Gino Iorfida · From: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Jerry,
Actually you are setting it RIGHT, even for clean. by running the master lower, you can actually feed the tone stack enough signal that it hits a sweet spot. Even on steel, with Nashvilles or Sessions, I NEVER ran the master up all the way, and the gain low-- if it were meant to run that way, why even have a master, just set it from the factory wide open! Instead, I'd run the gain as high as I could without breaking up, then raise the master to where I had my volume... sometiems, you will even find that you can turn the preamp up even further when the master is higher as well...
Glad to see you stumbled on to this though... and btw, those old Music Man amps do have some great tones in them!!

Jim Konrad · From: The Great Black Swamp USA

I just recently bought a blond 112 RD Fifty. Mine is a half breed with tube power and SS preamp. It has 2 channels, no master volume. I agree the distortion is not the best but I don't really get into that to much anyway.

The clean channel is a different story all together!! I have been looking for for this sound for a long time, when I first heard it I could not stop smiling! It was like I found a key to a treasure chest I have never been able to open. It has a lot of volume and a great reverb also. It came with 12 inch EV that has a magnet that looks like it belongs on a 15. I ended up scoring it off craigs list for $250. It has a 2 button foot switch for the distortion and reverb.

Does anyone know what year they made these blond amps? Sorry Jerry I really don't want to hijack your thread but but it looks like there are a few Music Man gurus here.

<*)))>{

Jerry Hayes · From: Virginia Beach, Va.

I used it at the gig again last night and tried it on the low power setting. It seemed to break up slightly which was pretty cool for blues or some rock stuff, etc. but I think I'm going to keep using the full power setting with the master volume low. I'm sorry I hadn't found this before as I've been missing some great tones. With the master set low I haven't had to hardly use my compressor at all for some reason. The guitar seems to sustain and "sing" more!.........JH in Va.
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Don't matter who's in Austin (or anywhere else) Ralph Mooney is still the king!!!

Lefty · From: Grayson, Ga.

Jim wrote "Half Breed"..Now that song by Cher came to mind "Um pa pa pa Um pa pa pa..Now I will have that song in my head all day, and see her with the head band and pigtails.
I have two HD130 2-12's. I usually run mine at about 8 master, but with the treble dialed down to about 3.5. In the past i tried to use the master low/ volume high for distortion but it was too much knob twisting between songs. Great amps though, but the reason why my back hurts this morning.
"Whole world was agin me since the day I was bowennn" , Cher.
Lefty

Jim Sliff · From: Lawndale California, USA

Like Ben, my MM experience has been that the SS preamp models probably have the worst distortion tone imaginable when the preamp is used for gain...but like Ben, I've used the combos, not the heads. I *did* have an early all-tube combo (I seem to recall it was an RD60 or something similar) that DID work ok that way.

But I've never found preamp distortion very palatable, unless it's from being slapped with high input voltage from a good OD like a Klon, the older MXR Micro Amp or ZVex SHO. It always seems to sound nasally and thin. But, hey, if it works don't fight it - use it!
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No chops, but great tone
1930's/40's Rickenbacher/Rickenbacker 6&8 string lap steels
1921 Weissenborn Style 2; Hilo&Schireson hollownecks
Appalachian, Regal & Dobro squarenecks
1959 Fender 400 9+2 B6;1960's Fender 800 3+3+2; 1948 Fender Dual-8 Professional

Ben Jones · From: Seattle, Washington, USA

I bought my 210 RD brand new when I was a kid from Sam's Golf in Cleveland OH. A combination golf/music store seems weird now but this was maybe 1979 or so, and cleveland, both of which were very strange.
I remember the salesman saying "this is the cadillac of amps!". I had no idea what i was doing, i was in maybe 8th grade? I remeber being really pissed years later when I realized the amp wasnt really suited to the hard rock I wanted to play. I was so embarassed by the amp that I removed the badge and nameplate from the front and of course lost those. I did use this amp with a pedal in front of it for hard rock/punk for a while along with a 2x12 extension cab...but it was far from ideal for that. Now its in my bedroom atop the 2x12 and being used for my practice steel amp. Too heavy to gig with.

someday i would like to try one of the non hybrid ones, I bet they are actually really great. Thats SS preamp is a real downer.

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