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JGale

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London Power ICON 6-Channel Tube Guitar Preamplifier 

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ICON has six fully independent all-tube preamplifier channels that can be used individually, all at the same time, or chained. Each channel has its own Input and Output jacks on the rear panel, along with dedicated tube(s) accessible on the rear panel without removing ICON from the rack. ICON is the only one that lets you use all these sounds at once – in fact, six different players can use ICON simultaneously!

Toobs! Tooobs! Tooooobs!

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Each channel of ICON accepts a wide range of tube types, and each type provides an entirely different soundscape and range of clean or distorted textures.

Channel-1 is the Fender clean sound, following the classic architecture that all Fender guitar amps had by the early 1960s. Use a 12AX7 here for that tone; use a 12AT7 for a mellower sound that includes a bit of the speaker treble roll-off; go to 12AY7 for use with harmonica, or to 12AU7 for the mellowest tone possible. Add some reverb for the quintessential Fender clean sound and for surf sound.

Channel-2 is the Vox “Top Boost” preamp, which Vox used to balance the muddiness of their cathode-biased EL-84 power amp in the AC-30. On its own, the top-boost preamp sounds rather thin, but when combined with a modern “18W” amp it will sound like a vintage AC-30. You may also chain Channel-2 into Channel-1 using Channel-1 to mimic an over-driven power amp. Use a 12AX7 for the original tone, or mellow it out to an “octal” tone with the T, Y or U.

Channel-3 is the Marshall “master volume amp” sound of the earliest 800s, or the 2203 and 2204 amps. This is like Eddy van Halen’s “brown” sound if you add an EL-34 power amp and a phase pedal at the input. Use two 12AX7s for the original tone, or take it down with one or more of a 12AT7, Y, or U.

Channel-4 is the London Power Standard Preamp high-gain path, which represents hundreds of hot-rodded amp models of the 1980s and 1990s. Two 12AX7s achieve the full saturation, but less heavy sounds with a hot-rodded voicing can be attained using one or more of the T, Y or U.

Channel-5 is the Dumble over-drive sound set for jazz voicing. We’ve included two front panel controls to give the topology more versatility. The sound of an over-driven Fender amp was the original goal, the same as the Mesa mark-1 and Mark-2 – a parallel development of Howard’s idea by Randall Smith. Use two 12AX7s for the original sound, or take it down a notch or more using one or more of T, Y or U.

Channel-6 is the Soldano SLO path – the basis for most modern “mid-sucking” metal tones. Use  two 12AT7s or 5751s for the original tone. Use 12AX7s for the Mesa rectifier tones or Peavey and Fender’s 5150 tones – dead copies of the SLO. Take it down a notch using one or more Y or U.

RTFM

The site with more info HERE

$2110 USD

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I'd love to hear that preamp with my digital delay & tube stereo power amp, but you would have to use a Voodoo Labs GCX audio switcher just to switch between all of the channels since there's no MIDI control and the audio outs needs its own switching system. 

                                                                                                                                                                                         Guitar George

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13 hours ago, Ed Rechts said:

This brings to mind the kind of device the former soviet union would create to compete with the Kemper profiler

Edited to add: No offense to all the Russian  HFC members we have.  Za zdorev'el!

 

7 hours ago, killerteddybear said:

Worse! It's the Canadians!

Maybe there's not that much going on in Thunder Bay, so they've got to occupy their time during the long winter nights building excessively featured gear.  The flip side of that is I've found that other Canadian gear I've encountered to be user friendly and straight-forward in use.  Traynors come to mind, and my 15-watt Mack Skyraider amp is pretty minimalistic, but sounds great and has a solid place in my gear lineup:

 

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WHOA. Finally a tube preamp that has more Tubes and Channels than the Carvin Quad-X!

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I mean, lt looks like it would be great for a certain type of person, but that person is not me.  I look at it and think "they only worried about whether they COULD and not whether they SHOULD". 

I know someone out there really has always wanted to Patch a marshall preamp into a Dumble into a SLO preamp and see if it opens a gate to some dark dimension.

Man, I just referenced not one but TWO movies with Sam Neill in the same post.

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25 minutes ago, tbonesullivan said:

WHOA. Finally a tube preamp that has more Tubes and Channels than the Carvin Quad-X!

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I mean, lt looks like it would be great for a certain type of person, but that person is not me.  I look at it and think "they only worried about whether they COULD and not whether they SHOULD". 

I know someone out there really has always wanted to Patch a marshall preamp into a Dumble into a SLO preamp and see if it opens a gate to some dark dimension.

Man, I just referenced not one but TWO movies with Sam Neill in the same post.

Jurassic Park and in the mouth of madness. What do I win...?

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41 minutes ago, tbonesullivan said:

WHOA. Finally a tube preamp that has more Tubes and Channels than the Carvin Quad-X!

spacer.png

 

I mean, lt looks like it would be great for a certain type of person, but that person is not me.  I look at it and think "they only worried about whether they COULD and not whether they SHOULD". 

I know someone out there really has always wanted to Patch a marshall preamp into a Dumble into a SLO preamp and see if it opens a gate to some dark dimension.

Man, I just referenced not one but TWO movies with Sam Neill in the same post.

Every time I see something with that many tubes in it, it reminds me of the tube-powered gear in the movie The Philadelphia Experiment.  :blink: :wacko: :ph34r:

 

 

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44 minutes ago, killerteddybear said:

Jurassic Park and Event Horizon?

Hmm...  yes, event Horizon would also satisfy that criteria...

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2 hours ago, Travis said:

Jurassic Park and in the mouth of madness. What do I win...?

 

1 hour ago, killerteddybear said:

Jurassic Park and Event Horizon?

Both would work I guess. Sam Neill really was in a bunch of screwed up horror movies. 

Of course, part of me wants to know what DOES happen if you put all of the channels chained together.  It somewhat reminds me of the early Mesa Boogie amps, where the volume and gain knobs for the clean channel also affected the lead channel.

For the Carvin Quad-X, the thing has 9 tubes, or 18 triodes.  1 for each of the clean channels. 5 triodes for the crunch channel. ELEVEN triodes for the "Sustain" channel. I have no idea why they needed 11 gain stages, or why even with that many, it was surprisingly not very raw. Very "civilized".

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My studio is already full of more pre-amps than I can use:

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Not shown is the Line 6 Pod Pro rack mount pre-amp.

I just manually plug into the unit I want.  And the Carvin Quad gets used a lot.

 

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11 minutes ago, Aoresteen said:

My studio is already full of more pre-amps than I can use:

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Not shown is the Line 6 Pod Pro rack mount pre-amp.

I just manually plug into the unit I want.  And the Carvin Quad gets used a lot.

 

It‘s missing a Rockman XPR as I see. I have one in spare I could sell to you.

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23 hours ago, Ed Rechts said:

This brings to mind the kind of device the former soviet union would create to compete with the Kemper profiler

 

Edited to add: No offense to all the Russian  HFC members we have.  Za zdorev'el!

...that would certainly be robust to survive Russian winters.

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1 hour ago, JGale said:

Yes, yes, yes. But overlooking the fact they are best suited for studio work, they still are fabulous sounding amplifiers.

Ask me how I know.

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Quite possibly the very end of "The Search."

Is that a rackmounted London Power Aurora amp head? I've never seen one before. How many watts is it? It looks like it's a one channel amp. How does it sound? 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Guitar George

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Yup. Keep popping the top to change out toobs. It's a wonderful laboratory for sussing old tubes.

It is single channel, series effect loop with adjustable send and return gain. The loop is solid state.

Listed at 25W, but the Mesa 20/20 I have here is much, much louder. However, the Mesa (with PSA) does not sprinkle the honey dew, sparkly, tinkly, bubbly yum yum this one does.

Four 12A_7 gain stages, two octal output tubes. Takes any combination of 6V6, 6L6, KT66, EL34 and variants. A GearGeeks(c) wet dream.

No EQ. At least not an intuitive one. According to the manual:

DRIVE is the gatekeeper for the uncontrolled 1st gain stage. It affects the gain of the rest of the amplifier.

EDGE increases gain and high frequency emphasis of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th gain stages simultaneously. It is active and starts at fully CCW.

SHIMMER is an active control for bass and mid frequencies. Cut or boost from 12 O'clock position.

GRIND apparently controls the gain of the 2nd and 3rd stages in some discrete combination. Increases sustain in clean settings.

LOUD is the gatekeeper for the preamp. It is post RETURN loop which can be used for additional gain.

BODY continuously varies the output of the two output tubes from Single-Ended (V1 only) to Push-Pull (V1 and V2). And anything in between. SE is softer, P-P is fuller (more body, heh).

POWER SCALE dials down the output section for lower volumes with little to no change in tone. LOUD and POWER SCALE are normally set equal but you can vary them to emphasize either preamp or power amp distortion.

The clean is everything I have been looking for and plenty loud. High gain seems to be had at a cost in volume. Starting at maximum clean power, the two suggestions are turn the LOUD up and the POWER SCALE down to emphasize power tube distortion, back off the LOUD control and crank the POWER SCALE to emphasize preamp distortion. Preamp settings to taste. Both result in less volume than the full clean setting.

I have not seen anything online concerning the amps. Ser O'conner doesn't seem to want discuss it. He was very helpful though getting this thing running again after a transistor in the active hum circuit failed.

 

 

 

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Wow.. I can barely find anything on those amplifiers.  That definitely is a very unique way of having the controls laid out.   The boost only Edge seems a little odd, but I guess he knew what he was doing. Must take some adjustment to get used to that kind of control setup.

Also, it can work in push-pull mode with two differently rated tubes? Does it automatically detect the tube type, or is it just set to very low output?

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Yes. It works P-P with two differing octal output tubes. I have a 6V6GT and an EL34 in there now.

No auto discovery. There are three taps (V1 GRD, V2) and two bias trimmers (V1, V2) on the back.

Procedure is: Set bias for V1 between V1 tap and GRD. Set bias for V2 to zero using V1 tap and V2 tap! 

He suggests setting V2 to minimum hum for best results and tighter bass. Right! Hum. As if I can hear any. This mofo is exceedingly quiet.

You discover differences in each tube. It has been quite educational. BONUS DISCOVERY! Sovtek 6L6WXT+ is good tube comrade. Clean and tight.

I have been using a 6V6GT in V1, and setting V2 to match cuz the 6V6s are old  and the EL34 doesn't seem to care.

6V6 and KT66 is pretty fun too.

More pics

Aurora Guts.jpg

Aurora Oblique.jpg

Back.jpg

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Wow... Those are some big toroids. Don't see many makers using them, as everyone always wants the old school bell ended type.

Sovtek tubes are nice. I think the 6L6WXT and 5881WXT are relabled Russian tubes, but they are still great.

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