Um... Am I done with traditional amps now?

[LucSulla]

So I got a Tone King Imperial Preamp. After I tried running the Royalist in an effects loop I realized I got the wrong box because everything I own is "Marshall-esque." 

So I put that on the market (and one of you who has the opposite issue - all Fender or Vox and no Marshall tones - should buy it) and got the Imperial. OK, now the Bogner Helios has an amazing clean channel and several kinda dirt options along with it's killer lead channel. 

But I was now going down the rabbit hole after seeing all the possibilities here. So I picked up a Friedman IR-X to run as the "amp" with the Tone King Imperial. The Imperial allows you to program an IR onto the bypass, so the Friedman doesn't have to run out of the balanced out to still sound like a cabinet. What this means practically is that you can use the Tone King as the nerve center for everything, and I did.  I ran it into a really shitty Peavey DM 112 powered main speaker. 

"Wait a minute... this is far from awful." What else can I do?

OK, well, my Splawn is sitting here... what if I bypass the IR on the Friedman's output and that run straight into the return of the Splawn?

Oh shit... now things are getting really interesting. This sounds great. In fact, the IR-X preamp section into the Splawn power section sounds better than the BE-50 ever did. But I'm not lugging around a full sized head. What to do about the a power amp...

Use my Quiliter? by just hitting the return? Buy something like a Seymour Duncan Powerstage?

Wait a minute! I own a Fryette PS2!  I always forget that I own it. I bought to run with the Plex and decided to keep it despite moving the Plex along. Seemed like it might come in handy, but it really hadn't yet. So it just kinda got forgotten about. 

So I dig that out and run it into a 4x12 that has two Greenbacks and two Fane m65s. I run the IR-X out to the return on the PS2 with the Tone King still sitting as the control hub for all of this shit and, my god, it's great! 

I've got both channels of the Tone King, both channels of the IR-X, my pedal board works seamlessly with all of them with everything either in front or in the loop as I would with an amp, and I get the reverb and vibe from the Tone King even on the IR-X. 

The PS2 gives me presence and depth control with some additional EQ settings and the best damned "Master Volume" you could ask for. I can also run everything straight to FOH in mono or stereo via the Tone King's L/R XLR outs with IRs on that path but not going to the PS2. I can do all of this at the same time even. I could go with no cab at all (which will never happen) and do the whole quite stage thing (which I also hate) without substantially changing... well, anything. 

This is the lightest, most versatile, and maybe best sounding set-up I've ever run. I'm absolutely gobsmacked.  

Now that I "get" how this stuff can talk to each other, it's basically everything I liked about something like an Axe-FX or Helix without the other bullshit that gave me analysis paralysis. For you dinosaurs like me who have liked the idea of something more portable but still like actual fucking knobs rather than surfing through menus and sub menus, this is the tits! Even the software aspect of the Tone King and Friedman is really user friendly. The options all make sense, and you can fuck around with it while the units are plugged into whatever you want to run them through. It makes dialing it in really easy.

Suddenly, I have a lot of gear that seems completely redundant. 

[Saul Goodman]

I love my Tri-Tube Imperial Tone King. I have it plugged into the Cali Tweed mostly and it sits in front of me on my desk for easy access. It's a game changer in so many ways. I have been playing the hand wired Deluxe Reverb I got from @Dutchman for some time now (it doesn't have a FX loop so the TK wasn't used) and got up to put the guitar cable back in the TK. I was blown away once again as I picked up a Strat for the first time in a minute. I have been playing the SG/LPC almost exclusively as I do when I get great gear. So I plugged in the Strat and was blown away once again. After about 45 minutes I shut it down and marveled over the great tone. I went about my business and a few hours later I realized I had left the Tchula on from the Deluxe Reverb session. It was then that I realized I had never plugged anything in front of the TK. I also haven't plugged anything in the TK FX loop. So now I have a project in front of me to put a delay in the FX loop and more dirt in front. The TK has a perfect reverb and tremolo that can be used even when the TK is bypassed. If you haven't tried the tremolo yet, @LucSulla, it is remarkable and is designed after a harmonic tremolo. So you don't need a reverb pedal or tremolo pedal in the chain with the TK. The options are endless as @LucSullahas pointed out.

Cray Cray.

[Stike]

I have four very good sounding tube heads BUT- if they all went away and all I had left was my IR-J and PS-2A I'd be perfectly happy, it doesn't look near as cool but..., 😂 

[diablo175]

1 hour ago, Stike said:

I have four very good sounding tube heads BUT- if they all went away and all I had left was my IR-J and PS-2A I'd be perfectly happy, it doesn't look near as cool but..., 😂 

Meh, if the band is doing it up right, they won't be paying attention to your amp/modeler (unless it some gear geek, like we have on here ) More to the point, 99% of the audience doesn't give a fat rat's ass about what guitar you're playing, what amp/pedals you're using, or even if you hit every note of that solo. Especially if they've been drinking.  

If it sounds good and makes life easier for you, re- load in load out, then fuggem.  

[Stike]

18 minutes ago, diablo175 said:

Meh, if the band is doing it up right, they won't be paying attention to your amp/modeler (unless it some gear geek, like we have on here ) More to the point, 99% of the audience doesn't give a fat rat's ass about what guitar you're playing, what amp/pedals you're using, or even if you hit every note of that solo. Especially if they've been drinking.  

If it sounds good and makes life easier for you, re- load in load out, then fuggem.  

More often than not for band practice I'm using the IR-J because I don't want to haul anything. For shows though a full backline has "the look". 😄

[velorush]

16 minutes ago, Stike said:

For shows though a full backline has "the look". 😄

Empty Marshall Cabinet | eBay 😉

[Jimbilly]

17 minutes ago, velorush said:

Empty Marshall Cabinet | eBay 😉

the VH tribute Best of Both Worlds has 5150 striped roll-up panels that look like stacked 4x12s, just graphics printed on a flat surface.  They do the job pretty well

[LucSulla]

4 hours ago, Saul Goodman said:

I love my Tri-Tube Imperial Tone King. I have it plugged into the Cali Tweed mostly and it sits in front of me on my desk for easy access. It's a game changer in so many ways. I have been playing the hand wired Deluxe Reverb I got from @Dutchman for some time now (it doesn't have a FX loop so the TK wasn't used) and got up to put the guitar cable back in the TK. I was blown away once again as I picked up a Strat for the first time in a minute. I have been playing the SG/LPC almost exclusively as I do when I get great gear. So I plugged in the Strat and was blown away once again. After about 45 minutes I shut it down and marveled over the great tone. I went about my business and a few hours later I realized I had left the Tchula on from the Deluxe Reverb session. It was then that I realized I had never plugged anything in front of the TK. I also haven't plugged anything in the TK FX loop. So now I have a project in front of me to put a delay in the FX loop and more dirt in front. The TK has a perfect reverb and tremolo that can be used even when the TK is bypassed. If you haven't tried the tremolo yet, @LucSulla, it is remarkable and is designed after a harmonic tremolo. So you don't need a reverb pedal or tremolo pedal in the chain with the TK. The options are endless as @LucSullahas pointed out.

Cray Cray.

I bought it FOR the tremolo more than anything else.  I incorrectly called it a vibe in the OP, but I meant the Trem. When I first started playing, although all I wanted was all the metal and all the gain, I loved this Vibroverb reissue they had at the local music shop. Seemed like a one-trick pony to me though, and learning to play guitar in the 90s vs the 80s meant also learning to play in an era where tons of amps got all the gain you could ever want. The idea of needing pedals for dirt never crossed my mind. 

In fact, I was a member of this group and had been playing guitar for 20 years before I even understood properly what an effects loop did, much less a boost. Hell, I was buying boost pedals for a couple of years in the 2010s to use for distortion before I learned the trick turning the gain down and the volume up to hit the front end harder. 

This is all to say that I've always been a raging Marshall guy, and out of sheer ignorance was also a pretty much plug straight into the amp guy too in my salad days, which is weird. I went through the RIM program at MTSU, did a ton of studio and live stuff, was known locally as a pretty damn good player, and read guitar magazines religiously. Just never connected the dots that an SD-1 wasn't just for JCM-800s. The first time I ran a good boost into an already distorted amp, I thought, "Oh... so that's why everyone does that. What have I been doing to myself for 25 years?"

So I've never owned a Fender-style circuit unless it was included in something - the clean channel on the BE-50 or the Shiva for example. This started out with the Royalist as an attempt to do a quiet stage thing but turned into an effort to get a good, Fender-style clean channel into a Quickrod or Helios. It's now expanded a bit beyond that. 

[Saul Goodman]

34 minutes ago, LucSulla said:

I bought it FOR the tremolo more than anything else.  I incorrectly called it a vibe in the OP, but I meant the Trem.

To be fair, I also read your post at 4:45 this morning with the morning news in the background so I didn't quite get what vibe you meant as in, "I get your vibe, man."

Also, back when Fender introduced the tube driven tremolo they did call it Vibrato. And that circuit was correctly named. The future circuits were also called Vibrato when in fact, they are more tremolo. The Vibrato is actually a change in pitch where tremolo is a change in volume. I went down that rabbit hole for a few weeks recently when I thought I wanted another amp. Thankfully I remembered the "Tremolo" on the Tri-Tube TKI before I made that mistake.

[LucSulla]

1 minute ago, Saul Goodman said:

To be fair, I also read your post at 4:45 this morning with the morning news in the background so I didn't quite get what vibe you meant as in, "I get your vibe, man."

Also, back when Fender introduced the tube driven tremolo they did call it Vibrato. And that circuit was correctly named. The future circuits were also called Vibrato when in fact, they are more tremolo. The Vibrato is actually a change in pitch where tremolo is a change in volume. I went down that rabbit hole for a few weeks recently when I thought I wanted another amp. Thankfully I remembered the "Tremolo" on the Tri-Tube TKI before I made that mistake.

As smart as Leo Fender was, his company sure did have an issue with understanding what "vibrato" and what "tremolo" meant, haha. 

[Saul Goodman]

Just now, LucSulla said:

As smart as Leo Fender was, his company sure did have an issue with understanding what "vibrato" and what "tremolo" meant, haha. 

Well they sure confused my young mind and way back when, my first "real" amp was a Peavey Classic 50 with a tremolo. Like you, I wanted all the distortion I could get back then and I was like, "What the hell is this stuttering tremolo thing?" and thought it worthless. I traded it back in for one that had a phase shifter which I found I could use for the style of music I was after. This was around '77 when I was listening to KISS Alive! and the Alice Cooper live album with Dick Wagner on guitar. Man, what a killer tone he had. If only I had known he was using a Wah.

[mrjamiam]

2 hours ago, Stike said:

More often than not for band practice I'm using the IR-J because I don't want to haul anything. For shows though a full backline has "the look". 😄

 

1 hour ago, velorush said:

Empty Marshall Cabinet | eBay 😉

I remember reading, WAY back when, that KISS started out in the clubs with a wall of empty 4x12 cabinets for "the look".  Maybe some of them had lights instead of speakers.

[django49]

Getting great tones without the heavy lifting is what I have gone to for a bit now. Not really anyone I need to impress with a "stack". (Side note...I built a 1 x 8 cab with a 100 watt speaker that stood up admirably to an Orange half stack live, but that is another story). 

I have put together a setup with the Imperial preamp as a base. Royalist preamp in the bypass. So, more or less F type Blackface and Tweed, plus multiple M type options on call. For those that think the Royalist has insufficient gain, a boost in front works wonders. I happen to like the Chase Bliss Brothers AM (sort of a modern King of Tone without the time and expense to run down) for that. Add FX in the preamp loop, if desired.

I do NOT have experience with the Fryette and am sure it is great. But what I have tried work well for me as pedalboard mounted power amps. (I want stereo and portability). The Duncan stereo works well, but the one I like better is the Thermion Zero (which can be redundant with the F type preamp built in, but can be bypassed or used for a separate preset). And if you want to get by for a lot less, Carvin makes a stereo power amp for $159 that I find very usable.....Downside is that it is small BUT needs the (included) brick of a power supply. Not bad if you can mount it under the board.

Gig bag, pedalboard and small-ish stereo cab......In and out in one easy trip. And as much volume as I ever need.

[crunchee]

14 hours ago, velorush said:

Empty Marshall Cabinet | eBay 😉

I heard/read the same thing years ago, too.  Audiences and musicians alike tend to listen with their eyes anyway, from what I've learned, me included.  

Edited 13 hours ago by crunchee

[Stike]

10 hours ago, crunchee said:

I heard/read the same thing years ago, too.  Audiences and musicians alike tend to listen with their eyes anyway, from what I've learned, me included.  

Agreed but...to be fair, last time the band I'm in played out I had two 4x12s blasting behind me and it was pretty glorious. 🤣

Edited 2 hours ago by Stike

[Steve Haynie]

21 hours ago, LucSulla said:

In fact, I was a member of this group and had been playing guitar for 20 years before I even understood properly what an effects loop did, much less a boost. Hell, I was buying boost pedals for a couple of years in the 2010s to use for distortion before I learned the trick turning the gain down and the volume up to hit the front end harder. 

I have never understood how to make an overdrive/boost pedal work.  Please give us the Boost for Dummies simple explanation.  

[Dave Scepter]

30 minutes ago, Steve Haynie said:

I have never understood how to make an overdrive/boost pedal work.  Please give us the Boost for Dummies simple explanation.  

Turn the knobs 🤷‍♂️

[velorush]

1 hour ago, Stike said:

Agreed but...too be far, last time the band I'm in played out I had two 4x12s blasting behind me and it was pretty glorious. 🤣

Yep, listening with my eyes, that picture sounds phenomenal! 

[veatch]

^- This!  

[murkat]

Great story!

I also have been converted...

heads and cabs sit pretty

while I plug into mu Neural Quad Cortex.

[Saul Goodman]

2 hours ago, Steve Haynie said:

I have never understood how to make an overdrive/boost pedal work.  Please give us the Boost for Dummies simple explanation.  

1. Choose a blood-sky morning.

2. Observe the in and out plug holes.

3. Plug them in correctly.

4. Plug in the proper power source.

5. Turn it on.

6. Turn it up to eleven.

7. Brace yourself for 12.

 

[Steve Haynie]

I have an amp that does quite well without a pedal.  Overdrives have done nothing for me except take out some high frequencies.  The Robin Trower overdrive did nothing for me when it was used with an unmodified Fender Bassman head.  Volume knobs work better for me.  So why do people use overdrives?  What are they doing that I have not learned to do?  

[Dave Scepter]

21 minutes ago, Steve Haynie said:

I have an amp that does quite well without a pedal.  Overdrives have done nothing for me except take out some high frequencies.  The Robin Trower overdrive did nothing for me when it was used with an unmodified Fender Bassman head.  Volume knobs work better for me.  So why do people use overdrives?  What are they doing that I have not learned to do?  

Guitarists primarily use overdrive pedals in two ways:

As a Standalone Tone: Placed in front of a clean amplifier to give it a bluesy "edge-of-breakup" character.

As a Booster: Used in front of an already-distorted tube amp to tighten the low-end, add sustain, and boost the volume for a guitar solo.

https://youtu.be/LNTY8a-TjGM?is=tzy7A6F5_FEoYePk

I personally like to stack a BBE Green Screamer over a KHDK Ghoul Screamer 😃👌

Edited 53 minutes ago by Dave Scepter

[LucSulla]

2 minutes ago, Steve Haynie said:

I have an amp that does quite well without a pedal.  Overdrives have done nothing for me except take out some high frequencies.  The Robin Trower overdrive did nothing for me when it was used with an unmodified Fender Bassman head.  Volume knobs work better for me.  So why do people use overdrives?  What are they doing that I have not learned to do?  

As far as what they are doing that you haven't learned to do, it's not something one would learn. It's more a question of if you want/need what they do. They objectively are capable of increasing the voltage of the guitar's output before hitting the preamp section, and often they include the ability to add additional clipping to that signal and tone shaping. Eventually, you've turned up the guitar and amp as much as you can, and if you need more for some things, you can't learn to add more signal or shape it any further. Let's assume that you're willing to do everything via the volume in the guitar or by walking over to the amp and adjusting the control everytime you want to either get louder or get more saturation when using the guitar volume isn't sufficient. There is still a limit. You can't get the sound of something like James Hetfield's rhythm sound on Ride the Lightning on a stock JCM 800. Likewise, you don't get the brute force of the riff on "No More Tears" out of a JCM 800 either. There are lots of ways to get more out of a JCM 800, but you have to add something. The weapons of choice for those two examples were a Tube Screamer and an SD-1 respectively. (For an alternative approach, Kerry King used an EQ pedal into a JCM 800) with the mids boosted for Reign in Blood. 

Now, if those sounds are unappealing or, at the very least, not sounds you are interested in reproducing yourself, then you may not need them at all. Likewise, amps have come a long way since the 1980s, and many can replicate those tones and beyond with nothing out front. Still, a great many people in the metal world still love to use a Tube Screamer or SD-1 (or their many descendants) because they really do tighten the lows on an amp and make it more punchy.

In the case of other genres, they can add sustain and compression to even a clean signal. I find they make country-style solos much easier to pull off, even when I'm running a compression pedal as well. They help hang the notes out there a little longer for me. I also find that when I am living in the clean and edge of breakup world, having the ability to boost volume/saturation and alter EQ with the click of a foot far more convenient than trying to reset the clean channel for each song and/or trying to find a balance between what I need for lead and what i need for rhythm with only the guitar volume. In fact, I probably find them more useful in the world of clean to slightly dirty than I do the high gain world when I think about it more. 

So returning to your two questions - it's not about "learning." That's a bit of false premise, I think. It's possible that, for other players, an overdrive solves a lot of problems that you don't have. You seem to be able to get all the tonal variation that you need out of your volume knob, but that doesn't mean that everyone could too if they tried. Nor does it mean that an OD pedal would be simpler that your solution for your use case. If I a volume knob did it all for me, then I likely wouldn't use ODs either. In fact, another irony is  that, since moving to ODs, I find I do control my saturation far more with the guitar volume than I ever used to because I don't have to drive my lead channel as hard. I can top it out as the most aggressive rhythm tone I want, use the boost for leads, but still be able to get the amp to clean up nicely with the volume because it is no longer set to kill on its own. Which is ultimately why people use them - they don't get (or can't get) what they need out of using just the volume knob and/or they like the convenience of not having to worry about purposely finding the sweet spot on over and over again on potentiometer during a live performance.

For me, when my main band plays, we are doing everything from Creed and Alice in Chains to Waylon Jennings to 70s Soul, depending on our mood and how much we are whoring for that $$$. The easiest way for me to get all the different sounds I need ranging 00s-era nu metal to pop rock to Santo and Johnny is having some overdrive options in the mix. If you have a trick to make a bassman sound in the ballpark of a dual rectifier that doesn't involve 120 dB and is less invasive and cheaper than a pedal in front of some type, I'd love to hear it.