I shared this over at Brown Note ... but just in case someone here might benefit ...
I built my amp back in January of last year ... set the OD trimmer at about 11:00 and just left it. It has sounded really good all this time but I had a bit of trouble at band volumes. Ended up doing a lot of work to get what I wanted ... not the least of which was changing the speaker to EVM12L. All was pretty good.
A couple of weeks ago I moved the trimmer down a bit ... to about 10:00 or 30k which tightened it up a bit. Played inside and outside last weekend and the amp sounded better than it ever has before. Still has the growl just a bit tighter ... can also more easily roll off and get the cleans using the OD channel ... saving the clean channel for the cleanest of cleans. It tightened up the sound ... I was very pleased.
I was even more thrilled that it sounded even better than before at my house ... where I record.
I think playing with this adjustment earlier would have saved me some time. Don't underestimate it's effect.
Yup, the OD input trimmer is probably the single most important tweek spot in the amp...it's essentially determining the harmonic content of the overdrive by controlling the symmetry of clipping. The lower it goes, the more asymmetrical the clipping is and the stronger the even order harmonics will be. Turn it up too high and you start to get cancellation of even orders, causing the amp to lose the smooth OD honk.
I shared this over at Brown Note ... but just in case someone here might benefit ...
I built my amp back in January of last year ... set the OD trimmer at about 11:00 and just left it. It has sounded really good all this time but I had a bit of trouble at band volumes. Ended up doing a lot of work to get what I wanted ... not the least of which was changing the speaker to EVM12L. All was pretty good.
A couple of weeks ago I moved the trimmer down a bit ... to about 10:00 or 30k which tightened it up a bit. Played inside and outside last weekend and the amp sounded better than it ever has before. Still has the growl just a bit tighter ... can also more easily roll off and get the cleans using the OD channel ... saving the clean channel for the cleanest of cleans. It tightened up the sound ... I was very pleased.
I was even more thrilled that it sounded even better than before at my house ... where I record.
I think playing with this adjustment earlier would have saved me some time. Don't underestimate it's effect.
On just about all of the customs I build I'll put this control on the back right next to V2...I find myself tweaking this control quite a bit when I change guitars especially if you switch from Single coils to Humbuckers (set a little higher for single coils to thicken things up)...Also when you change tubes in V2..Newer tubes like the JJ's will keep the low end tighter longer than a NOS RCA, Funkin etc.. newer production tubes give the top end more articulation Especially with humbuckers allowing you to squeeze more gain out of it while still keeping the low end tight...Older tubes no doubt serve up a smoother creamer tone though..
The drive control works to my ears opposite..As you raise it there is less series resistance being fed into grid V2b causing the tone to get slightly brighter...If you listen to the demo clip of the D-6V6 amp you can hear it when he dimes the content...slightly brighter
talbany wrote: On just about all of the customs I build I'll put this control on the back right next to V2...I find myself tweaking this control quite a bit when I change guitars especially if you switch from Single coils to Humbuckers (set a little higher for single coils to thicken things up)...Also when you change tubes in V2.
How do you mount it? How do you adjust it ... small hole for plastic screw driver? Anything to reduce noise doing it this way? You actually adjust when changing guitars while playing a gig ... man that's tweaking?
Kind of funny.. I built that amp on a dare!! Lou didn't think I could build an overdrive amp on that small a platform.. Henry (Red Plate amps has built them on even smaller chassis with loops) he is AMAZING!!.. I didn't enjoy that build very much... Too time consuming and tedious.. If I never had to build another would be fine by me!!.. Building amps for those guy's is pretty cool..They are very picky about there tone however rightly so...Probably the coolist thing was my friend Robbie Flint( pedal steel/slide player) for Alan Jackson recorded his slide work on one of my amps for the song Good Time that went #1 for a few weeks..All three guitar players in Brooks and Dunn Lou Toomey, Tony King, and slide player Gary Morse use my amps live..They both have 2 amps in there rack 1 for a backup and the other main.. there all VVT's... When you see a B&D show it's pretty much all VVT amps pushing the electrics.. That's pretty cool..Going on 2 years now.. The last tour they did with ZZ Top Lou called and said Billy Gibbons played through his rig and really liked the tone.. I can die a happy man now!!
Tony VVT
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