Small Amps for recording Guitar

[thedug]

I am currently evaluating small amps for recording guitar as I have heard that this is a good technique. Anybody got any recomendations on which ones to try out?

I am currently considering the vox Pathfinder 15 with the reverb. I have noticed that they have the "Brian May" recording amp but I don't know what this sounds like. They also have some smaller models but I figured the 15 watts would be small enough.

Also, I am also considering the Roland JC60, the fender princeton, and the small orange(crush?)

d./

[Bear's Gone Fission]

This really isn't the right forum for this, but I'll be a lax moderator and indulge it, since I'm going to slant my answer a little tech.

If you're looking for saturated tones at low volumes, smaller amps can be a great way to go. There are some things to be aware of, though. First, the wattage will go a lot further than you'd imagine. A little 5 watt Champ through the stock 8 inch speaker can easily exceed 100 dB. There are two reasons that people need more than 20 watts for club use: clean headroom, and to keep up with loud bandmates (usually hard hitting drummers). Either of these concerns can come up in studio situations, but for typical one-instrument-at-a-time home studio use, the later is certainly irrelevant.

There are certain tonalities that high powered amp topologies deliver that might not be as easily realized in lower powered amps. That being said, there are possible gains in terms of signal integrity due to fewer components in the chain, and also lower powered amps are often designed in such away that they will exhibit compression characteristics often favored for lead playing.

BTW, I am speaking in the context of tube amps. Low powered solid state amps IME tend not to have any particular benefit relative to their tube counterparts.

Particular online resources you might check out for DIY include the AX-84 project, which has several low powered projects associated with it, www.18watt.org (I think), which is a group focused on DIY builds based on the 18 watt Marshall tube amps, and www.firebottle.com/ampage for more general discussion.

Bear

[kent]

I'll slant with Bear. Build the 18 watter. I did and I'm happier than Ron Jeremy at a Crisco convention [img]smile.gif[/img]

kent

[Infernal_Death]

Cool threat [img]smile.gif[/img] Yeah a small watt amp is louder than you think. 5 watts sounds quiet and small but through a 4x12 cab it can rip your head apart :D
But you definitely can drive your tubes easier into saturation before going completely deaf. Ah man it's really a shame that tube amps have to get really driven to the max before they sound the best.

Oh since we are in a DIY forum :D anybody has a schematic for a power brake or better the THD Hot plate ? I am running a 100W Mesa Rectifier through a Marshall 4x12 in my room (call me crazy but i love that amp [img]smile.gif[/img] ) but i often wish that it wouldn't be that loud. I really heard quite bad things about the Marshall power brake but the THD Hotplate gets quite good reviews (not altering the sound and doesn't damage or wear down the amp) so it would be cool if there are some informations/schematics/layouts out there.

Flo

[Bear's Gone Fission]

I haven't heard many bad things about the Marshall Powerbrake. The Scholz/Rockman Power Soak, however, is evil to tone and bad for your amp. Unlike the Marshall and THD devices, it is just a high wattage resistor and completely static in impedence. I don't recall the reason, but the Power Soak will put strain on your amp. The Marshall and THD are both "reactive load" devices where the impedence seen by the amp fluctuates as it would with an actual speaker. The THD also has a tuned network of inductors to provide tonal compensation for the volume reduction.

I haven't seen THD schems, but I'd have to imagine that it's cheaper to buy than to build. If you still want to build something like this, I'd start looking at www.firebottle.com/ampage, which is a good hub for guitar centered DIY.

Bear

[Infernal_Death]

Bear thanks for the link. I will pay this site a visit to see what they have available.

I just found a marshall power brake schematic. It's from Schematic heaven
http://www.schematicheaven.com
Under Marshall and then under misc.

Flo

[Mark Burnley]

Yeah,

Speaker simulator/power soaks are great.

I picked up a Palmer PDI03 for silly money (cheap cheap) a few years ago. It's rated 120W, but I haven't taken it up that far. It's got four large 27R aluminium resistors in parallel, but also a nice big air cored inductor in series, which I presume simulates an average speaker inductance.

This feeds the primary of a transformer, with two secondaries. One goes to a pot and line outs, which is the straight output, and the second secondary goes to a filter circuit. There's two double-throw centre-off switches that allow flat/norm/deep and mellow/norm/bright. using a few C's and parallel inductor. There's an unbal o/p and transformer balanced mic-level out. (yep, I've 'ad it to bits and traced it out :D )

Sounds great. I run it with an old 35W PA amp- 4xEL84's with customised input stages. Grindy.

I built a DIY version before I owned the PDI-03. Just an 8R sink and transformer isolation, worked ok, but I realised it was purely "resistive". It sounded a bit "brittle". I tried measuring speaker inductances to add a home-wound inductor, but the PDI came along and I gave up......might try again, coz I need a second sink for my girlfriends' 100W bass amp :D

The joys of recording late at night at home

Mark

--------------------------
"Oscillators don't, amplifiers do....."
Anon.

[Kev]

Originally posted by Bear's Gone Fission:
I haven't seen THD schems, but I'd have to imagine that it's cheaper to buy than to build.

I am looking for these but no luck yet. :(
That doesn't really surprise me.

Kent's 18 watter looks cool.
Fender Champ and Super Champ
AND the Fender Bassman are recording favorites.
The Champ is simple and can be found at Scematic Heaven.

I have a vague plan to try to make a power amp version of the SRPP ... ala the Gyraf Tubed EQ.

[Infernal_Death]

I also will look out for a schematic of the THD.

After all i don't think building one of those small amps is a alternative for me. While i love my rectifier because of it's main sound it isn't brutal enough for my kind of music. So i need to use a preamp (digitech if anybody is familiar with those) in front of the Rectifier. I was called crazy before because i run this preamp into the high gain red channel of the rectifier but oh well that's the only way i can get the sound i want :D . And all those small amps don't look like to be a good choice for a death metal sound. So that's why i search for a way to bring my rectifier to a smaller volume.

Flo

[Bear's Gone Fission]

For those sorts of sounds, the high powered amps can be at quite an advantage. The big two elements of most of the amps preferred for those sounds are a high gain preamp and a high-headroom power amp section. VHT and Soldanno have made some quite modern amps with low wattages, so it's not impossible.

One trick to try with your standard rig, even though it's usually not the best thing for tone, is to just run your standard rig but with the master set very low and the tone controls adjusted to compensate a little. Sometimes it sounds bigger to the mic than it does in the room.

You might checkout the THD YellowJacket adapter sockets that allow you to use EL-84's in an octal socket without having to adjust the amp. You might even be able to use just a pair instead of the full quartet to really cut some volume, or a pair of Yellowjackets in conjunction with some higher powered tubes. (Check with THD to see what applications they recomend.) The Yellowjackets ought to soften and sweeten the tone a little in addition to reducing the volume. This could be good or bad, depending on your needs.

Bear