Dumble sounds at home-friendly volume

[JM-1]

I have had a few nice amplifiers, including a Ceriatone OTS50 / OTS20 and a RedPlate Blackverb (the last was the nicest amplifier I ever had) but all of them were too loud in my little spare bedroom - even the 20 W job. And that’s despite the fact that (from my understanding) the power sections of these amplifiers are not designed to be driven hard.

So I found myself a practical and cheap way to get nice Fender blackface style cleans and Dumble overdrive - actually with a

1. Blackstar HT5 Mkii clean channel American voice (scooped blackface cleans) with a
2. Tubesteader Beekeeper directly into the FX return. Dumble mid-rich cleans and overdrive.


The Blackstar has a push-pull power section, using the two halves of the 12BH7.
The 10% powerscaling switch gives me only one reduced volume setting - but it works perfectly.

I previously used a Sennheiser e906 hanging in front of the cab - then changed to a SamSystems Integral mic (so much neater). That goes to a stereo effect processor (TC G-Natural) for stereo chorus, delay and reverb that goes to a pair of stereo full range speakers on either side of my 1x12 (a trick I learned from Larry Carlton) for modulation effects positioned at the very end of the signal chain after the speaker.

The speaker cab has a mild upward angulation which I accentuated by putting bigger feet at the front and smaller feet at the back. I use it open back.

The whole set-up switches on with one power switch and is a lot nicer than plugging into an interface/computer - even though S-Gear does sound lovely.

I’m guessing that since the Beekeeper is a separate unit, it doesn’t allow me that whole negative feedback NFB function but I don’t really know how that works anyway…

My apologies. I don’t know how to post photographs from my mobile phone. Will try again later when I get home.

[martin manning]

I’m guessing that since the Beekeeper is a separate unit, it doesn’t allow me that whole negative feedback NFB function but I don’t really know how that works anyway…

The Beekeeper is the D preamp, and that section is outside of the global feedback loop in the D topology. Same as it is in your setup.

[JM-1]

That's correct - here is a pic of the BeeKeeper

IMG_3374.jpeg

[JM-1]

I’m guessing that since the Beekeeper is a separate unit, it doesn’t allow me that whole negative feedback NFB function but I don’t really know how that works anyway…

The Beekeeper is the D preamp, and that section is outside of the global feedback loop in the D topology. Same as it is in your setup.

Thank you Martin.

Would you please explain what might be the benefit of using:

A Dumble clone (such as Ceriatone LunchBox OTS Mini / OTS 20)

vs

My separate Dumble preamp (BeeKeeper) into the FX return of my Blackstar HT5 (power amp)?

[martin manning]

Dumble power amps are clean, so as long as you are running your Beekeeper into a clean power amp there shouldn't be much difference.