Hybrid hotness! Rediscovering my Randall T2HL

[El Dunco]

Yeah, my first choice would be a Recto as well. I've always gassed for one. One of the new 3 ch Multi-watts will do just fine.. A SLO would be my absolute first choice but only if I could magically get it at Recto prices

Other amps I would'nt mind: A big 400W Randall T2/V2 Ninja, An Engl (Smolski, Inferno or Fireball preferably...or a Retro-Tube 100 ) and though I was'nt crazy about the Krankenstein I tried (way too dry sounding) I really like the Nineteen 80 (?) I think it was called & the Rev1 (one I tried had El34's)...Oooh and I love a Laney TI/Tony Iommi. Though Imy Ironheart 120 kicks a whole lot of ass anyway & could nail most of the tones, if not all of them..


The funny thing is every time I think of getting a Marshall (pretty often) I always end up w/ something else instead. I like how they sound but when I play them ..they are'nt my thing..or least other amp's are more my thing. Though I'm guessing I would'nt mind a JVM either. Again I like the tones of a regular JVM when I hear other people play them, but I think if it came to actually playing them myself I'd like a JS more....just for the kind of compression, lows and mids it has

The JVM ia my favourite amp. With some minor mods, pushed the with my Cornhole overdrive (though it’s not always necessary with EMTYs or EMGs) and through my favourite speakers, it’s the sound I’ve been wanting my whole life. Modern, cutting yet smooth, chug heaven yet amazing clarity string to string.

The power amp with the resonance control up so you can keep the bass low on the tone stack is worth the price of admission alone. I’m a real blend freak so blending it in the studio about 50:50 with the Rev F dual rec is a sound to behold.​

 

[Rex_Rocker]

Heard the Amott's used them on Doomsday Machine which had a pretty sweet production

Yeah, Krank and Recto blended through a Krank cab with V30's (cause the V12's that those used to come with kinda suck, LOL).

I like the production on that record, but as far as guitar tones, my favorite from them is either Khaos Legions (JVM through Peavey XXX cab) or Anthems (Peavey XXX through Marshall 1960V cab).

 

[Phantasmagoria]

The JVM ia my favourite amp. With some minor mods, pushed the with my Cornhole overdrive (though it’s not always necessary with EMTYs or EMGs) and through my favourite speakers, it’s the sound I’ve been wanting my whole life. Modern, cutting yet smooth, chug heaven yet amazing clarity string to string.

The power amp with the resonance control up so you can keep the bass low on the tone stack is worth the price of admission alone. I’m a real blend freak so blending it in the studio about 50:50 with the Rev F dual rec is a sound to behold.​

I like JVM's....

They are'nt cheap new here though (and never seen a used one for sale) . I could almost pick up a new Recto for what they cost (and I like Recto's more )

 

[Phantasmagoria]

Yeah, Krank and Recto blended through a Krank cab with V30's (cause the V12's that those used to come with kinda suck, LOL).

I like the production on that record, but as far as guitar tones, my favorite from them is either Khaos Legions (JVM through Peavey XXX cab) or Anthems (Peavey XXX through Marshall 1960V cab).

I probably like Burning Bridges best for production/tones.. Any idea what they used on that one?

Though they actually have pretty similar productions on all their albums...so it must all boil down to Andy Sneap :laugh2:

 

[Rex_Rocker]

I probably like Burning Bridges best for production/tones.. Any idea what they used on that one?

Though they actually have pretty similar productions on all their albums...so it must all boil down to Andy Sneap

5150, more than likely. That one was mixed by Fredrik Nordstrom, though. Not Sneap.

They do have a theme going on all the Sneap albums, but I don't think all the albums sound the same. Nor do they sound like many other Sneap productions. Arch Enemy always kinda sounds like Arch Enemy to me.

Then again, I'm the guy that dissects the tiny differences between a TS808 and an OD808, LOL.

 

[Phantasmagoria]

Damn.....I did'nt even know Nordstrom had done anything with them. Makes sense though , between him and Andy Sneap they were producing every second album that came out at that time.. Nordstrom tends to push the mids way more than Sneap does though, with guitar's (& his production's in general.)

Tbh I mostly gravitae towards the lead tones when I'm listening to an album. For me the Amott brother's had their best tones on BB. Though as I said. I've found that most good players sound like themselves and have really similar tones no matter who's producing or what they're plugged into...

 

[El Dunco]

I like JVM's....

They are'nt cheap new here though (and never seen a used one for sale) . I could almost pick up a new Recto for what they cost (and I like Recto's more )

I got mine new half price, even the cab was because it’s white and everyone wants a black cab, but I love how the white stands out on stage. My favourite mode is actually the much maligned OD2 voicing. It’s basically instant Fear Factory Demanufacture/Obsolete (when Dino was still using a modded Marshall before it got stolen)

The recto was only $2000AUD. Some poor guy’s wife made him sell it and he didn’t seem to know what he had. Has literally none of the issues rectifier haters complain about. It isn’t fizzy or muddy at all and with the 18v EMG81 straight in, no pedals, it gets that awesome Rammstein snarl from Reise Reise, then with a few twists of the knobs, The Black Album rhythm tone straight out the box.

The right boost will easily have it compete with the newer amps built to “djent” or do modern death metal from the ground up. They definitely gave the clean channel some attention on this revision, has almost Fendery cleans and can cover a lot of ground pairing the clean or vintage modes with the modern (no nfb) power mode or setting it to spongy with the rectifier tubes. There’s not much it can’t do when you know how to dial it in and what it can do. I can’t believe people don’t think it can do decent lead tones. Are they forgetting it’s based on the SLO circuit and what the L stands for?

There’s a good reason it’s still one of the most ubiquitous amps in hard rock and metal and the interactive nature of the tone stack means each rectifier user seldom sounds the same. The 6L6s are finally starting to die though so I’m looking into the best possible power tubes to replace them with.

 

[Inflames626]

Randall's old RM100M MTS 3 channel modular tube preamp series was an interesting idea from the 00s. Kind of did with hardware what we now do with software.

https://reverb.com/p/randall-rm100m-mts-series-3-channel-100-watt-modular-tube-guitar-amp-head

 

[Phantasmagoria]

Yeah those were cool. Kind of what Synergy is doing now....

 

[El Dunco]

Yeah those were cool. Kind of what Synergy is doing now....

I have an idea for a modular amp I’d love to try and build in my lifetime. It would house analog effects as well as the real tube preamp modules. You would be able to choose the order, run in stereo and blend multiple preamp types in parallel either in mono or panned. All you would need out front is a foot controller and everything would be set, all knobs secure in a compact, vertical rack, styled like loading magazines into a machine gun.

”Weapons Grade Amplification!”

 

[Rex_Rocker]

Damn.....I did'nt even know Nordstrom had done anything with them. Makes sense though , between him and Andy Sneap they were producing every second album that came out at that time.. Nordstrom tends to push the mids way more than Sneap does though, with guitar's (& his production's in general.)

Depends on the era.

Clayman is certainly not mid-pushed.

The stuff Sneap did with Judas Priest is certainly not scooped. Nor is The End of Heartache, IMO.

I don't join in the sentiment that Sneap's stuff always sounds the same. Not saying you're saying that, but it's common forum talk. Yes, he's got a theme going, but does The Gathering sound anything like The End of Heartache? Even just focusing on Nevermore, Dead Heart in a Dead World sounds 180 degrees different from This Godless Endeavour. Or Alive or Just Breathing vs. The End of Heartache.

 

[Inflames626]

Fredrik Nordstrom stopped producing a lot of the big Gothenburg scene bands around 2002. He mentioned during an interview in 2002 during In Flames Reroute to Remain era that they were starting to sound like Korn and I don't think he's recorded with them since.

IF started working with Daniel Bergstrand and has remained with him more or less ever since I think.

Most Swedish bands started trying to commercialize around 2002 in order to compete with metalcore bands and start touring regularly over here. They chose different producers and whatnot.

For me, 2002 is for Gothenburg what 1992 was to thrash--everyone had "sold out" and was commercializing. There's a huge quality drop off in Swedish death metal pre 2000 and post 2000.

Also, for me, this is a rack--or at least it was when I was in high school in the late 1990s and a lot of people were still using late 80s/early 90s kit:



I thought of this when El Dunco mentioned vertically mounted preamps.

I don't attach any specific fondness or desirability to tubes, mainly because I don't understand electricity well and am afraid of working on my own equipment. It's easier just to go with an Axe FX now. For me tubes are like flying a prop plane vs. a jet. Both get you there, one much faster and with a lot less hassle.

That said, in the mid 90s, I would have said tubes for anything distortion. Solid state could work for some solos and wet effects sounds like reverb/chorus/flange. Occasionally something solid state like a Randall RG100ES could work for rhythm if dialed in right, but it made pretty much one tone, not a rich, Van Halen Plexi-like sound.

Mostly there was the fragility of tubes, microphonics, maybe one of them breaking during load in or out, having to bias them hot, having to find the right mixture. A lot of trouble. If I were as comfortable working on tubes amps as, say, building a PC, I probably wouldn't mind them, but for me it is "no user serviceable parts inside."

I like how much easier it is to program things like an Axe now. My old ART SGX 2000 Express circa 1996 had a little green LCD screen and a scroll wheel. Moving things around in the menus could be a pain. It's now gaining dust in my rack along with my Alesis MEQ 230 and my BBE 482i Sonic Maximizer.

Most of these I would run in the effects loop of my Carvin MTS3200, which I had my best friend from high school with a USAF electronics background rebias hot with a J&J integrated EL34/6L6 quad. Didn't help the distortion much (it had a JCM800/900 style sound), but it did make the already good cleans much more Fender-like.

If I were gigging now I'd go with a used Axe and forget the complexity of the rest. Too many variables--like tuning for the room and such--to get stuck with particulars. Analysis paralysis.

 

[Inflames626]

I had one of the newer ART SGXs. I believe it had a tube pre but solid state power amp. The older version had a very 80s neon pink look. Mine looked something like this. It retailed for around $600-700 USD in 1996 dollars. Maybe $1000-1200 now.

Like most multi effects units of the time it had a lot of settings but few usable ones.

Other stuff you saw during this period was a Mesa Triaxis coupled with a 90:90 and maybe ADA MP1/MP2s.

 

[Inflames626]

Depends on the era.

Clayman is certainly not mid-pushed.

The stuff Sneap did with Judas Priest is certainly not scooped. Nor is The End of Heartache, IMO.

I don't join in the sentiment that Sneap's stuff always sounds the same. Not saying you're saying that, but it's common forum talk. Yes, he's got a theme going, but does The Gathering sound anything like The End of Heartache? Even just focusing on Nevermore, Dead Heart in a Dead World sounds 180 degrees different from This Godless Endeavour. Or Alive or Just Breathing vs. The End of Heartache.

IMO the trend is to get everything as flat, even, and sterile as possible. Colored production jobs are looked down upon. That said, you could say a modern metal production sound went back as far as Machine Head's 1994 "Burn My Eyes" album, with the 5150 sound and Chris Kontos's clicky drums. I believe Colin Richardson, a name I used to see a lot but not so much now, produced that.

For all the other guys out there pushing stuff, Jens Bogren especially, I don't hear a lot of difference in their sounds, and even if I did, they should be capturing the band's sound and not the producer's sound. The thing is most bands sound the same now and want a specific sound which most producers are chasing. So it becomes chicken or egg. The only genre where deliberately colored mixes are accepted just fine is black metal. Try listening to that third Ulver album. The treble makes your ears bleed.

As far as Clayman, that's about as middy, EMG-y, and 5150 as one can get, IMO. Opening riff to "Bullet Ride" is very upper middy. Their live tone from the era via 2001's "Tokyo Showdown" was much warmer and darker, probably because they were using the much maligned 5150 IIs.

Anders Friden wasn't a big fan of the drums on Colony, a rawness/badness I didn't hear so much at the time but I do now. Kind of surprising since he was co-owner/co-engineer with Nordstrom at Studio Fredman at the time, which later split off somehow to IF Studios and from there devolved to a project setup I think. Based on Bjorn Gelotte's interview with Ola Englund, IF recording seems to be wherever Bjorn is, as he does most of the instrument stuff himself now and drums and vocals are added in.

Same with Dark Tranquillity. All Fredman work was eventually phased out for the sake of recording at Martin Brandstrom's Rogue Studios. I'm sure it cut production costs and gave them more studio time.

 

[Inflames626]

The rise and fall of rack effects, per Sweetwater.

I'd still take a lot of these old units used if in good condition. The thing is you have to buy so many of them and, again, with an Axe you get a lot more flexibility with less trouble.

I'd still take these though if I had a tried and true setup that I could dial in quickly. Just good luck fixing 40 year old equipment when it dies.

https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/the-rise-and-fall-of-guitar-rack-effects/

 

[Rex_Rocker]

Clayman? Mid-pushed? I'm not going to agree at all. It's certainly no AJFA, but the top end is searing, and the bottom end is chunky. Plus it came from a time when the fashionable thing to do in Metal was not dialing in 5150's to 6-6-6 like it is today. Plus I'm pretty sure it's not a boosted 5150 either (I remember reading they mixed it it with a Valvestate as well).

I mean, it is a 5150 through V30's and SM57's, so it's middy by default. But as far as that setup can go, that's a pretty standard 90's-early 2000's scooped (good) Metal production.

Did you hear the abomination they did by re-recording a few songs off clayman? That's mid-pushed. And so weak and lo-fi by comparison.

 

[Inflames626]

I don't consider highs to be highs until about 5khz, so if it's 2khz, for me it's upper mids, and all I hear on that intro riff is upper mids.

Of course, the lower mids could be cut, making the upper mids appear more pronounced than what they are, but to me it's a very Slayer type sound, only through a 5150 in C.

The older records were done much more with a AJFA sound, mainly Jester Race and Whoracle. Those sound so similar they might as well be a double album. The fizz I hear on those guitars isn't so much mids as treble.

Yes. I heard (part of) the very bad re-recording when they were trying to promote the rediscovering of their old sound, which really wasn't their old sound. It was the beginning of their commercialized sound.

The Synlakross cover of Colony to me is equally offensive. Oh you have a hot, growling female singer with green hair. How original (by now).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdpjmZmAtI0

 

[Rex_Rocker]

Funny thing is the old stuff is actually two traks of HM-2 mixed with two tracks of Valvestate or some other "prettier" (compared to the HM-2) distorted sound.

I like the tone on Colony A LOT, personally. Clayman I appreciate for the production value of it, but it's not the tone I go for.

And you're right about the scooped lower mids. That's why I always consider lower mids "bad" mids and upper mids "good" mids. At least fo the sound that I like.

Those golden-era Nordstrom records were all his ENGL cab. Much like Andy Sneap's Metalcore Recto cab, that cab is iconic, IMO.

 

[Inflames626]

Funny thing is the old stuff is actually two traks of HM-2 mixed with two tracks of Valvestate or some other "prettier" (compared to the HM-2) distorted sound.

I like the tone on Colony A LOT, personally. Clayman I appreciate for the production value of it, but it's not the tone I go for.

And you're right about the scooped lower mids. That's why I always consider lower mids "bad" mids and upper mids "good" mids. At least fo the sound that I like.

Those golden-era Nordstrom records were all his ENGL cab. Much like Andy Sneap's Metalcore Recto cab, that cab is iconic, IMO.

IMO the best plugin for getting 00s Gothenburg tones is probably Softube's Metal Amp Room. I never used it on a recording, but I did play through it while trying to dial a sound. It has a very Engl-style sound to it.

 

[Phantasmagoria]

Tbh honest I'm not much of a Melodeath fan at all. I don't think I've even heard an album by In Flames . What always put me off was the lack of actual guitar solo's (as opposed to Maiden-ish melody lines) The only band I really liked was Arch Enemy...cuz ..solo's (and a few stray others' I could count on one hand). My thing was Old-school Swedish death metal & I actually preferred Finnish bands like early Sentenced (North From here) and Amorphis (First two only) for anything more melodic. As for Nordstrom I guess I was referencing his work w/ power metal bands (which I am a HUGE fan of..cuz..among oher things....solo's). Anyway in general I think Nordstrom leans more towards stronger mids in his productions for the most part & Sneap leans towards more scooped mids.