Ancient Mariner

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1434389004' post='2799140'] Yes indeed; this one ... You're right, of course, about dedicated bass stuff being more suited to bass, in general, but folks' tastes vary quite a lot, and anyway, rules are made to be broken, no..? [/quote] Like talking religion in Off Topic? Oh, maybe not that rule (unless you happen to have the correct faith). That's a very fine guitar amp and cab you have there sir, very fine indeed.

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1434382829' post='2799074'] But also ... Not really OT, but my Bassman 50 into my 2x15 sounds very good for guitar, to me. (straight, no pedals, usually a Samick 335 look-alike...). Some bass rigs are guitar-friendly (depending on what one plays, of course...). [/quote] Fair play in that case - skimmed up & down the thread a couple of times looking to see if I'd missed anything, but somehow overlooked that one. Is that a valve bassman 50? Even so, you ARE a drummer. But seriously, old bass gear from the 60s and 70s was little more than guitar stuff toughened up to cope with the lower frequencies mostly. Very very different from a modern ported cab and SS amp.

[quote name='1970' timestamp='1434375608' post='2798999'] Funny how everyone is saying 'no' apart from the 1 person who has actually done this? [/quote] [quote name='Bigwan' timestamp='1434296440' post='2798395'] I remember one of the early midget reviews mentioning that the reviewer's guitarist was VERY impressed with it if that's any help... [/quote] Not exactly direct personal experience there, versus at least a couple of us that have played guitars through bass rigs.

TBH because using the correct speaker is so much a part of creating guitar tone, it's hard to imagine that a bass cab could do a good job without considerable EQ re-shaping or using a modeller with a cab sim that's designed to run direct to PA. I have tried bass combos for guitar in the past, and universally they sounded lousy (thin, flabby and uninspiring) but that's not to say with the right tweaking you couldn't make it sound tolerable. Guitar is all about the mids, and subtle variations of them. If you really want to do this then I'd suggest picking up a modeller like a Behringer V-amp or POD and running it through your bass amp with the EQ on the amp set flat and the modeller set to cab sim. You could also try an analogue modeller like the Harley Benton/Joyo American Sound amp sim pedal - they have a very effective EQ that might allow you to dial out some of the harshness, and they're only 30 euros..

The G12H is very loud and efficient, with very big and tightly controlled bass, slightly mid-scooped and a bit of a sting in the high frequencies. It's a great classic rock speaker, without the harsh upper-mid spike of the V30. I'm not sure it would be a great complement with the WF55, because IIRC that amp will be mostly about the mids, but would certainly give it a big sound. Worth asking, what kind of tone do you like - hard/soft, bright/dark, smooth/crunchy etc etc. I have a distinct preference for cleans to be fat and smooth in the mids, with a sparkle in the top end and warm, rich bass. For drive I like clear and crunchy, higher gain to be clear and singing and hate splattiness in any form. My favourite 12" speakers are a 70s 20W G12M (very soft and warm - not at all like a modern 25W greenback, which is bright & harsh) and an eminence Red Fang (alnico Celestion Blue clone with a smoother top end). So far my fave 10" speaker is the celestion G10-L35, now out of production and it's a lot like a 10" G12M with a less harsh top end. I ought to slim down my speaker collection some time...

I'd like a decent reverb pedal, preferably in a small format and good value (I suspect I can choose any 2 out of 3, but anyway) having not found anything affordable that works well in the last few years. I briefly had a Mooer shimverb, and I've also got a Biyang triverb and Donner Surge Rotator. All of them tend toward high frequency artefacts and fail to cover the echo-aspects of reverb well (reverb needs to be more than just a sonic halo). A Strymon Bigsky would be lovely, but it's way too spendy and too big. So, any suggestions?

It IS surprising how loud a small amp can be, especially if you run it through an efficient speaker. If you want something tiny that can be used for playing out then try a Ragin Cajun speaker (eminence) - it's very efficient for a 10" speaker, and sounds great too, though it will make the amp heavy. Alternatively for home use look at a Jensen, because they are often low-efficiency and sound good when not pushed too hard.

How does the WF55 sound - do you like it?

I've just begun my Marshall MG30 conversion. Bought the MG30 from a young friend last year, and bunging my cascode-based SE amp into it. Initial plan was to drill and convert the original steel chassis, but that's a pain to do (and will need custom face plates) and the Hammond ali chassis fits very well, so it looks like a relatively easy swap-out job. In a way it would have been nice to have kept the original appearance as a kind of amplification 'street sleeper', but I don't really want to cart around an apparently stock MG30 with impossible tones. Need to see if I can shoehorn a 12" speaker in there - it may require a new baffle too, but will likely be worth it. Update - I've bunged it together to check it works before prettying it up, and I'm pleased to say it all seems good. Cut a new speaker baffle from 1/2" ply instead of MDF to support an old G12M. I was going to use the MG30 steel chassis and re-build the amp inside that, but it turned out the Hammond ali chassis I'd used fitted well, and was just a little thinner, allowing the speaker more space, though I had to create a mounting system for it where the original chassis would have solved that easily. Darn thing weighs double what it did before, with some decent iron in there and that G12M (tempted to try a G12H, but that may be just too big). Soundwise it's come out quite voxy, with the cascode being jangly and the G12M having a very sparkly and sharp-edged tone, it reminds me of the bright channel on my old AC30 a little. With the amp gain dimed it does a great drive tone that cleans up nicely with guitar volume rolled off. Need to try it a bit more to find out what I like & what to change. There's still some space in the chassis, so I might add a second channel for a more Fendery, less sharp-edged tone. Then I'll need to add speaker cloth to protect the speaker and make a faceplate for the amp to pretty her face up a little. For obvious reasons I'm calling it the Moxy amp.

Wish they had a trem and phase version of those pedals in HB, especially if the trem had the same internals as a trelicopter.

[quote name='jensenmann' timestamp='1426880895' post='2723163'] I´ve DIYed the Madamp BP1 a few month ago. The kit was incomplete, with some faults in the documentation, some parts didn´t fit and the mains tranny was defective. Not that great if you´re a beginner in DIY-land (which I am not). After having sorted all that out + some mods and tweaks to the circuit it turned out as a nice bass preamp. But it couldn´t hold a candle to the G9! This convinced me to build another version of the G9 as a basspreamp in PTP. Since it has no EQ I´ll add an AMEK M2500 EQ which I have sitting in the corner and pre/post EQ DI outs. [/quote] Is Martin still doing the amps, or are Musikding looking after everything now?

Something the guitarist can do to help is the hoof their mids a bit, if they're not middly already, and leave you more space than you had with 3 guitars. Better separation between the instruments will give a bigger sound than cramming everything in, and the punters will hear a clearer band too.

I had a P10R and it was rather low output & harsh when overdriven. Is the Q higher power handling similar or is it a bit smoother and less sharp-edged?

[quote name='3below' timestamp='1432297743' post='2780147'] 1982 - 86. Wiring on an eyelet board, spaghetti rather than Hi-Watt precision. Some excellent pictures and info here: [url="http://www.stratopastor.org.uk/strato/amps/prii/PRII_hub.html"]http://www.stratopas...i/PRII_hub.html[/url] [/quote] Spaghetti is standard Fender practice, but seems to work OK regardless. I came here wondering what a Reverb 11 was - d'oh. Sometime I need to build a 5E3 and a 5D4 & compare them.

I did try mine for bass, and it worked well too. Sadly the basses all sit around idly right now, but maybe I'll pick them up again one day.

Too long : did not read. I have the American Sound, which I use for tone shaping (scoop mids for acoustic-type clean tones, boost mids & bass, cut highs for fat, jazzy tones) and haven't noticed a hiss when clean. I also have the California version, which does the Boogie MkI-style gain thing really well for Santana impersonation, but hisses badly when wound up. The AS normally stays on the board, but I wanted something crunchier & more solid than the 2 overdrive/distortion pedals I've been using.

I usually play in church with either a keyboard player or solo, usually using my Godin xtSA for a mix of cleanish acoustic and electric sounds, but this weekend just passed I was invited to play with a band for a larger regional meeting. Knowing it was going to be a bit different, I took a variety of pedals on the board including the usual suspects of digital and analogue delays, chorus, univibe, a TS-9 clone and the British Sound Marshall modeller, set up for a good solid crunch through a cleanish valve amp. I ended up using this sound about half the time. It was like being wrapped in a warm, energising blanket, and although there's a lot of emotion involved in playing songs like we were using, the tone from this pedal really encouraged me to 'have at it' as well. Sometimes budget overdrive pedals can sound a bit one-dimensional, but not in this case. TL:DR Cheap marshall-sounding pedal works well.

Like Skank, I normally watch guitar effects videos, and I've found there are a bunch of demonstrators that do a great job. It's just really helpful to give an idea of whether the pedal might be worth a punt and cuts down on the amount of disappointments one can have using mail order. Just occasionally the only review will be of useless quality, but there's enough good stuff now for that to be rare.

[quote name='lowdown' timestamp='1431357046' post='2770393'] If it was a Banjo, you would have just [s]retrieved[/s] left it in the bin, I presume? [/quote] Fixed.