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Favorite 5E3 settings?

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12/18/2003 7:07 PM

Favorite 5E3 settings?

Just curious what kind of settings people are using with their 5E3 amps. I am having fun just playing with the various interactions of the knobs, jumpering channels, etc., but am kind of curious what kinds of tones you folks have settled on. Most of you have probably logged more miles on your 5E3 than I have so far.

What are you playing with and setting your amp at? What kinds of tones are you getting? I see someone below is trying to get into the Jimmie Vaughan ballpark. Anybody else shooting for a particular artist's tone and coming up close?

12/18/2003 10:46 PM

I have a few 5E3s, my favorite settings that I generally return to are about 9-12 on the 2nd channel bright, and about 9.9 on the unused channel. I use either a high gain pickup, or a fulltone '69 pedal in front of a reverb tank, then into an alesis microverb to the amp. If the amp is too loud at those settings, I lower the current with a light bulb in series with the plug and drop all the voltages, generally using a 75W to 100W bulb, and ensuring the heater voltages don't drop more than ~15%. I also use a Weber Mini Mass 10W attenuator, but note that the power from most 5E3s is going to exceed that, so use at your own risk. Speaker is a P12R, of course.

12/18/2003 10:58 PM
anonymous	I like to run mine in series with a Kenmore Dishwasher and a craftsman Model II screw drive garage door opener. It the amp sounds too trebley I skip the heat dry mode on the washer and lower the door to about 2 feet off the ground. If it's too loud I use the state of the art feather pillow and down blanket from Walmart. Just kidding.

12/19/2003 12:18 AM
Al Lang	Holy Sh_t, ted m, what happened to plug and play? And I'm not kidding. I guess, to each his own but you can't beat a single coil strat and the 5E3 at almost any setting. Al

12/19/2003 3:02 AM
ted m	hahaha, well heck, at least i'm not soldering in and out "paul C" mods. Bruce knows that it's best I don't use that soldering iron

12/19/2003 1:06 PM

I have been using mine exclusively with my Weber Mass 50 watt attenuator. I crank up both channels to 10 or so, sometimes I back the tone off to about 6, sometimes at 10, but I get the most gain and edge with the tone set at 12. Lately I have played it exclusively with the channels jumpered together, gives it a bit more "depth" to the sound, for lack of a better word.

I also like the semi clean tone of the amp with both channels set to about 3, and back the guitar volume down to clean it up even more.

With the 15 watt Weber Blue Dog in it, this amp has some magical blues tones. The amp also sounds very good with my Real Tube overdrive pedal in front of it for insane amounts of gain, but it gets muddy with too much additional drive. I set the pedal's treble control to give more edge than just plugging into the amp, and back off on the mids and bass to taste. I can get a very convincing Cowgirl In The Sand, or Down By The River, etc. Neil Young tone out of it.

My next "mod" will be to try a matched 12AX7 in the PI position. I have been doing some reading on this recently, and it sounds like a good thing to do to any amp in the PI position. Apparently, if the two sides of the triode are not matched in output, it causes cancelling of frequencies, or what we all hear as "dead" spots. Tubes are cheap, so it's worth a shot.

Mike G.

12/19/2003 4:50 PM

Bruce /Mission Amps

quote:
"My next "mod" will be to try a matched 12AX7 in the PI position. I have been doing some reading on this recently, and it sounds like a good thing to do to any amp in the PI position. Apparently, if the two sides of the triode are not matched in output, it causes cancelling of frequencies, or what we all hear as "dead" spots. Tubes are cheap, so it's worth a shot."

Save it for an amp that uses both sides of the premap tube as the driver.
The 5E3, and others, use a PI form called a concertina or sometimes called a cathodyne driver.
There is no gain and only one side of the tube, a single triode, is used to drive the power tube's grids.
An intersting edge mod I've played with is to stick a 220k to 470k resistor in front of the grid on the first 12AX7 triode and bypass that resistor with a medium value brightening cap.
Something like a 470pF to 1200pF.
Bruce

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