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How did this post turn into all this?

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5/24/2006 3:02 PM
GTarman	How did this post turn into all this? The original thread was about reverse engineering now it has gone off to left field?

5/24/2006 5:34 PM
Greg Simon	Welcome to the Ampage pickup forum. This often happens here, and to some it is annoying, and to others it is interesting. Sometimes it can start as one thing and lead into another that can be very enlightening, and other times it leads to stuff that is a waste of time. Each to his/her own is my motto and I just let things go as they do and roll with it. Greg

5/25/2006 3:51 PM

Re: not a problem at all

Actually, if an amp is properly looked after and was good quality to begin with, it will probably sound 'good', or as good as it gets anyway. It's true that I look after my gear before I go to a show, but it isn't all in the amp. I have played my pickups through many amps, good and bad, and there are two things I have noticed -

1) The pickup can only amplify what is already 'there'. A 'laminated' (multipiece) body will never sound as good as a one or two piece body, and construction details like materials or 'neck thru body' do leave their marks on a guitar's tone. This is why cheaper guitars never sound as good a a more expensive one, within reason.

2) Most people have never really heard their instruments. It's surprising to me how many musicians will not even bother to change tubes or power capacitors until their amps are actually dead. If they only did some maintenance on their gear, they would get the performance from their guitars, amps, and pickups that they paid for.

Some amps are 'workhorses' known for their tone quality (Marshall JCM800, tweed Fender Deluxe, blackface Twin or Super...), but a good pickup in a good guitar will sound good through just about any amp, up to the amp's capability.

In other words, a crappy amp is no excuse for a crappy tone.

Ken

5/25/2006 11:34 PM
Dave Stephens	Well, I had the unfortunate experience of plugging an early model of my P90s into a Vox modeling amp. The pickups are hot winds, sound really great through tube amps, through a Vox solid state modeling amp they sounded horrible. Those kinds of amps respond better to factory made low wind pickups, I don't think I would ever buy one of those, they don't sound right at all to me....

5/26/2006 8:43 PM

Everything sounds bad through one of those Voxes.

I think all 'compuamps' like that one only react well to very clean signals, distorted ones confuse the amp.

Every maker should own a halfway decent amp to play their pickups through. Anyone who can afford to drop $100. or more on one of our pups probably has decent amps to play through, or at least good enough to lisen to clean. I use an old Deluxe, my rule is if it sounds good clean, it'll rock in overdrive.

Ken

5/26/2006 11:17 PM

For a modelling amp, those Voxes sound better than a lot of the others like Fender's Cybertwin, the Line 6, etc. They actually use a tube in the output circuit and mix that signal with the transistor signal that is giving all the power. Of course not all the Vox modelling amps use that....only the more expensive ones.

But I'm a tube guy all the way and use an all tube Vox AC30 or the Deluxes at the jam, so you'll never see me playing a modelling amp except when I'm killing time at guitar center.

Greg

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