Did you intentionally find the advert for that Marshall rack unit in Cardiff? My new office is in Cardiff. I'm not quite ready for rack gear yet - when I get the 3rd floor put on my house and move my studio into the roof (yes, all that boarding out I did was in vain) I'll have a lot more space and I'm also going to get the builders to put neoprene under the floor boards.Greg_L wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 10:51 amYeah I don't know how to make it powerful but small without custom circuit boards and transformers.JD01 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 6:12 am
Yeah, while I mentioned the Victory ones (I briefly considered buying one of them, not Kraken, when they first came out) it was more for the idea of a preamp that you can plug into your power amp. I know you wouldn't be able to keep the size right down and I wouldn't expect you to.
I get the idea and appeal of those tube preamp pedals. I just don't know how "true" they really are. I'm also not an electrical engineer. So maybe they're awesome and I'm just too ignorant to understand how they're doing it.
There are tons of preamps out there. All of those floor modelers and AxeFX things are basically just preamps. You can run them into the power stage of a regular amp if the amp allows it. The JMP-1 and ADA MP1 were super popular with the rack mount guys. Lots of people still use them, and they're a good value for all the shit they can do.
https://reverb.com/item/50640323-marsha ... e-amp-unit
https://reverb.com/item/57722071-a-da-m ... tar-preamp
I don't know if they can just be inserted into an FX loop return though. I think if your loop can handle line level signal then any of that stuff can go right into it. I'm not that tuned in with external preamps and FX loop stuff. I never went down that path.
Sort of, but not really. That's generally how it works, but some amps have horrible FX loops that tap in and out of the amp at bad spots. Some of them are after the master volume which throws everything in the loop out of whack every time you change the volume. Some of them tap out before the tone stack so everything gets bogged down coming back in. Not all FX loops are set up to be used the way we're talking about. Some of them are nearly useless at all times. I remember Minerman's beloved Chupacabra had a horrible FX loop. That amp sounded great on it's own, but if you put anything into the loop it went to shit. There's a lot of stuff with buffering and impedances and level compensation that needs to be considered when designing or using an FX loop properly.I started thinking about the 1W thing and then I thought it would be even more convenient and useful for me if I could just integrate it into my current setup. One thing I don't know about is how the H&K tonestack and FX loop is set up. I assumed it was guitar>tonestack>FX Loop>Power amp... but that's cos I thought all amps worked this way!
The JTM45 gets it's goods from being cranked. Those old non-master Plexi Marshalls have very weak preamps. Having one as a "pre amp" is not a good idea. The sounds we all like from those amps pretty much solely relies on power stage meltdown.I seem to remember the one I liked being the JTM45, but I'll have to check through them all again to check. There was something about it that wasn't quite as "spikey" sounding as the JCM800.
The 2203/2204 amps can be a little spiky. That's the beauty of them. They're rock and roll grunt with sharp teeth. A full size version is a little much to sit in front of just noodling around at home. But live or in a mix, for rock and roll they're very hard to beat.
Do you think the 1W JTM45 would work. I'm sure that was what the Anderton's special 1W amp was but I can't find the video of it - it sounded fucking glorious anyway.
If you could find out if you think you'd be able to get something to work with my H&K in the FX Loop way we describe that would be great. If not, I'd still be up for just a 1W head 'cos shipping only appears to be 50 quid.
