Tone and issues with existing build

[Tone freak]

So, I built a Dumble years ago and it never became my favorite amp and it has been mostly sitting since. Like I suppose many of you, I have never played a real one. I've gone back to tweaking mine and I have some questions. Does your clean channel have a lot more gain than the average Fender amp? Mine does. ...and turning up the clear master induces more gain...even when the preamp is set low. To be honest, I don't really understand the tone stack and I'm wondering if some of what I'm hearing is the 250k mid pot inducing gain. Feel free to educate me on that. Mostly, I'm curious if you have gain on your clean channel.

My clean preamp is the skyliner with the bright switch and the mid boost. The amp initially had the HRM in the overdrive section, but I took it out in favor of the 102.

I also have a second issue. When I run effects through the loop (which is always), I'm getting some pretty nasty buzz. This is true whether I'm running it through the outboard dumbleator or not. I've checked all the grounds and don't see any problems. Ground loop? What should I look for.?

Thanks!!!

[fred.violleau]

Hey Tone Freak,

A schematic would help to understand which version you built, and where the issue with the gain on the clean channel is located.

AFAIK, I Built a HRM with skyliner tone stack, High plate, and I can push the clean channel at least half way without any breakup or distortion.
The master volume does not add distortion unless I would push the Power section very hard, wich is very loud...

As for the Loop and the nasty buzz, it could be cable isolation, did you use some shielded cable for the long runs? Is it an active or a passive Loop ?

Do you have gutshot of your amp? The proximity of some cables might induce buzz.. did you pushed cables at connection points with a chopstick to see if you had a bad solder joint?

Did you try tube swapping? You may have a bad one..

Fred.

[norburybrook]

I'm with Fred, I've built about 5 ODS amps of all variants and the clean channel is hard to push into any sort of break up unless you Dime it on 10. I don't use guitars with very high output pickups though, single coils vintage spec PAF's .

the Dumble is one amp that the master works very well so it should have no effect really on the amount of breakup as it's all in the pre amp with a dumble, again if you dime it on 10 then yes but you'd loose your hearing pretty quickly



MC

[xtian]

Sounds to me like your tone stack isn't doing it's job. To the Treble/Mid/Bass controls make much change in the sound?