Lake Placid Blues
New member
A friend picked up one of those new LP superleads at GC and wanted me to try it out. In light of my slight anti-pedal bias https://forum.seymourduncan.com/showthread.php?t=202218 I thought it would be fun to see if I could get it to sound like striaght ahead Marshalls.
I used two NMV heads, my Metro JTM45, a borrowed 50 watt PTP Plexi with split cathode and EL34s, and my 50 watt Jubilee head. I used my Silver Jubilee 4x12 loaded with re-issue Green Backs. I used the same guitar throughout, my swamp ash HSS strat loaded with Surfers and a PGb.
I first established each NMV amp's cranked tone and then tryed to cop that tone at a lower volume with the pedal in the circuit. To be fair my friend said that the literature for the pedal reads that it is designed to cause small combo amps to sound more like big cranked Marshalls, so using it to cause big Marshalls to sound like their cranked selfs but at lower volumes, and run more clean, may not be what this pedal can do best.
At first the pedal just sounded terrible. Really. Then I decided to try a fresh battery and it sounded fine. I had to set the pedal different for each amp to get it close to the amps cranked tone. With the 45 I had to set the volume probably about 70% and gain about 60% and crank up the tone to get the KT66 top end in there. With the plexi I had to dial in more gain. After much fiddling I could get it to sound probably 90% close to the amps' natural cranked tones. This is pretty darn good for any pedal in my experience.
The pedal didn't clean up by backing off on the pick attack or guitar volume a bit as good as with just the straight amps, so its doesn't have quite the same picking dynamics. On the other hand you can run the guitar's volume knob down a bit more without dropping out.
I ran the Jubilee by itself too. I noticed that the Jub pretty closely nailed the sound of the cranked 50 watt plexi with Jub's gain channel, but it could do it a more moderate volume levels. I run the Jub's master always at least ~6 though. No wonder this amp has been my number one for so long. I ran the pedal both in front of the amp and also in the amp's FX loop. I had to use totally different settings with the pedal in the loop than with it in front of the amp. Basically I had to run pedal's volume full up and then set the pedals gain to taste. With the pedal in the circuit you can't run the pedal with much gain and through the Jubilee's gain Ch at the same time. It will just squeel. Just the pedal with about 1/2 way up or a bit more through the clean gives about the same gain (but not exactly the same tone) as the Jubilee's gain channel, so the pedal by itself can go very high gain. But by running the pedal as an overdrive only it does provide essentially four foot switchable modes. Clean, crunch, the amps gain tone, and insane very high gain, with the amp's gain channel and the pedal together.
I ran the amps through a V30 loaded cab afterward as comparison. The V30 really made the extra high gain set ups shine, with rich sustain blossoming into glorious feedback. The V30 and high gain distortion tones work together well. I also noticed again that the Jubilee gets a glassier clean through V30's.
I used two NMV heads, my Metro JTM45, a borrowed 50 watt PTP Plexi with split cathode and EL34s, and my 50 watt Jubilee head. I used my Silver Jubilee 4x12 loaded with re-issue Green Backs. I used the same guitar throughout, my swamp ash HSS strat loaded with Surfers and a PGb.
I first established each NMV amp's cranked tone and then tryed to cop that tone at a lower volume with the pedal in the circuit. To be fair my friend said that the literature for the pedal reads that it is designed to cause small combo amps to sound more like big cranked Marshalls, so using it to cause big Marshalls to sound like their cranked selfs but at lower volumes, and run more clean, may not be what this pedal can do best.
At first the pedal just sounded terrible. Really. Then I decided to try a fresh battery and it sounded fine. I had to set the pedal different for each amp to get it close to the amps cranked tone. With the 45 I had to set the volume probably about 70% and gain about 60% and crank up the tone to get the KT66 top end in there. With the plexi I had to dial in more gain. After much fiddling I could get it to sound probably 90% close to the amps' natural cranked tones. This is pretty darn good for any pedal in my experience.
The pedal didn't clean up by backing off on the pick attack or guitar volume a bit as good as with just the straight amps, so its doesn't have quite the same picking dynamics. On the other hand you can run the guitar's volume knob down a bit more without dropping out.
I ran the Jubilee by itself too. I noticed that the Jub pretty closely nailed the sound of the cranked 50 watt plexi with Jub's gain channel, but it could do it a more moderate volume levels. I run the Jub's master always at least ~6 though. No wonder this amp has been my number one for so long. I ran the pedal both in front of the amp and also in the amp's FX loop. I had to use totally different settings with the pedal in the loop than with it in front of the amp. Basically I had to run pedal's volume full up and then set the pedals gain to taste. With the pedal in the circuit you can't run the pedal with much gain and through the Jubilee's gain Ch at the same time. It will just squeel. Just the pedal with about 1/2 way up or a bit more through the clean gives about the same gain (but not exactly the same tone) as the Jubilee's gain channel, so the pedal by itself can go very high gain. But by running the pedal as an overdrive only it does provide essentially four foot switchable modes. Clean, crunch, the amps gain tone, and insane very high gain, with the amp's gain channel and the pedal together.
I ran the amps through a V30 loaded cab afterward as comparison. The V30 really made the extra high gain set ups shine, with rich sustain blossoming into glorious feedback. The V30 and high gain distortion tones work together well. I also noticed again that the Jubilee gets a glassier clean through V30's.
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