DC5 Head: Max Headroom

[fdesalvo]

Hey, guys. I'm about to go and test drive a nice DC5 head and was curious about the headroom available. With my setup, I will be running it into a 400w G12K100 cab.

Where on the master/channel volume do you start to notice undesireable breakup? I am wondering if it will be clean enough for gigging.

As a note, I had a DC10 head and ran through a Marshall 1960a. With the channels on 3-4 and the master on 3-4, it would totally rumble the speakers, which I hated. Is there a perceivable difference in tone/headroom at equivalent volumes?

 

[user 7737]

i never try dc5 or 10... i have a caliber 50+ which is the "big brother" of the dc series i think... with gain/volume at 5 and master at 5 the sound is perfectly clean but really tooooooo loouuud... usually i have gain 4 and volume between 2-3...

well my post don't help i think :?

 

[edward]

Your clean headroom depends largely upon your pickups, and then on your choice of tubes.

For reference (since you asked), my Strat/Tele will stay clean with more preamp gain than my LP or other humbucker guitars. Also, stick with "harder" 12ax7 and 6L6s. By contrast, I purposely went with 12at7s and a "softer" SED 6L6 for the smoother/rounder tone I wanted ...sounds like you want the exact opposite of me.

But to the point of your testdrive, bring your overall amp master up to around 6, and your clean channel master up to about 5-6, and start at 1 on your clean channel's first gain pot ...adjust overall volume from here. This is just a starting point as what you're trying to do is intorduce as little early-preamp gain as you can to get the cleanest power-amp tone you can (if I'm reading you correctly). There is good headroom here, plenty for gigging any small room up to medium venues, depending on how "spanky" you want it. As for the DC10 you tried, that is a greaaat amp ...if you didn't have enough clean headroom there, I suspect it was your cab.

Edward

 

[Platypus]

 

[fdesalvo]

^lol

Thanks, guys.