Making a Tremoverb sound more vintage?

[canon]

OK, yeah maybe I made a mistake buying a tremoverb out of frustration, and it was a sweet deal. I was looking for a _reliable_ 2x12 with reverb that could do fabulous bassman cleans and has nice channel switching to a warm distortion and saw a good deal on a highly rated amp (tremoverb).

A fender dual professional or bogner shiva with those options would have cost me twice as much and the bassman ltd has no reverb, channel switching, or external speaker jacks. (btw, didn't like the lonestar cleans {compressed} or the f50 distortion {flubby}. My old amp was the fender blues deville 2x12 which my tech has given up on, an unreliable hunk of junk that sounded pretty good!

With all those switches and knobs I thought I could get to where I wanted, especiall the spongy/recto options. I am getting somewhere close on the clean sound by switching to el34's on the clean channel, spongy, with gain about halfway up, 100 watts. The gain channel is too raspy, even with cloning. The reverb is sweet!

Anyway, I've read some post about some good results with 5751 tubes in v1 and/or v2, I may swap in a weber california speaker I have lying around (really like that speaker! , and maybe some yellowjackets I have lying around with the EL34's.

Am I silly to even consider this path? Maybe a heartbreaker or f-100 instead? Maybe I'll end up back at the bassman, eh?

Nice board by the way, lots of excellent info!

 

[Micah]

When you say that the Gain Channel is too raspy where do you have your tone controls @? I had a 1996 TOV Head that I ran through a Marshall Cab and it always sounded too warm for me--but then again I am just now figuring out how to tweek my Triple Recto and really understand what Ive been hearing a lack of. Maybe I can blame that on a lack of understanding on my end. I bought that TOV about 4-5 years ago and traded it for my Triple Recto 3 channel about 2 years ago. so I have had a decent amount of expirience with these Recto's. One suggestion I could make to you and it is probably the thing I miss the most about my TOV is the Blues mode. Have you tried Cloning the Clean Channel so that you can get 1 set of tone controls for the cleans and 1 set for the Blues channel? Maybe try that for a warmer solution to your distorted tonal needs. I would also try setting the Blues channel's Bass all of the way down to about 7 or 8 oclock, with the mids About 9 or 9:30 and the Treble about 1 or 2 oclock. Your probably thinking this will sound pretty thin...and it will.....untill you put the gain @ about 1 or 2 oclock to thicken things up but keep it tight enough to hang onto the notes and chords. @ this point I will suggest to you to take the presence knob and start @ noon and start turning the knob clock wise up while alternate picking a note or an open D (if available) untill you achieve the right amount of bottom end chunk and mid-range punch. If it still seems too raspy, back off the presence (counter-clockwise) a touch untill the raspyness is gone and you can still hear the notes' mids. This should take your tone to the right town. Let me know how this works for you!!

 

[canon]

Good point on the bass, of course mine is cranked to 3 oclock. I'll try it, thanks!

 

[canon]

Nice, keeping everything under noon helped.

Also I put a 12ax7 eh in v1 and that helped as well, unfortunately I havent been able to find a 5751 to try.

yellowjackets made the amp sound smaller, preferred to keep the 100 watt headroom.

well, if i'm to pour more money into it, I guess Im off to preamp tube advice land, the new tung sols are getting good reviews. Ill try the amp at practice tonight and see how it goes

 

[PC Biz]

The cleans on my TOV head were excellent, but I didn't have a lot of clean headroom. If you really liked the Deville, you will be a lot closer to home with the F-100. Excellent cleans and excellent blues tones.

 

[RR]

I haven't tried the "channel cloning" yet,

But I find the Red Channel "Blues Mode" running tube rectifier and spongy pretty good vintage break up. But I find the Red Channel a bit on the presence midrange side compared to the more balance Orange Channel.

So if I could clone the Blues Mode to the Orange channel, I would say that's pretty good vintage break up. Time me to read the manual.

Is this what you are looking for a clean to mild break up like a vintage amp? I'm basing this on my friend's '65 preCBS Twin, we could capture 70 - 80% of its tone with the Trem-o-Verb. Of course some vintage aficionado will disagree so this is subjective.

I don't recall the tone control settings or the master and preamp volumes.

 

[jbird]

OK, confusion here! Channel cloning is merely a placement of the channels presence circuit! If you want Red channels "Blues" mode with the Orange channel's Presence affect, clone Red to Vintage!

 

[Micah]

Nice, keeping everything under noon helped.

Also I put a 12ax7 eh in v1 and that helped as well, unfortunately I havent been able to find a 5751 to try.

yellowjackets made the amp sound smaller, preferred to keep the 100 watt headroom.

well, if i'm to pour more money into it, I guess Im off to preamp tube advice land, the new tung sols are getting good reviews. Ill try the amp at practice tonight and see how it goes

I will say that when I attempted to pull 2 tubes out on my old TOV it sucked the punch right out of the amp and over all it wasnt a great change to my ear....but it was quieter! :wink:

 

[RR]

OK, confusion here! Channel cloning is merely a placement of the channels presence circuit! If you want Red channels "Blues" mode with the Orange channel's Presence affect, clone Red to Vintage!

Gee, that was easy explanation...

My intuition on this "Channel Cloning" was exactly what you said. I just never played with cloning switch.

Thanks jbird.

p.s. Sacto Kings' Brad Miller is doing pretty good in the US Basketball Team 8)

 

[canon]

Ha, didn't help that the guy next door was playing a tone-perfect 'sultans of swing': that tone makes you question everything! Of course, distortion through his setup probably sounds pretty bad. :}

 

[Micah]

Ha, didn't help that the guy next door was playing a tone-perfect 'sultans of swing': that tone makes you question everything! Of course, distortion through his setup probably sounds pretty bad. :}

Let me know how that works for you @ practice and if you make any changes to the tone settings that I suggested. Im interested to know how that works for you. I really liked the blues setting on my TOV, its just that with the style of music I played I required more umph in the modern mode. The TOV for some reason was a little more lax in the Chunk/Punch department than I needed, so I had to trade it for my current Triple which seemed to make all of the difference, although I would really like to try out those GZ34 Rectifier Tubes from JJ that "Ibanez4life" has been raving about--if it makes that much of a difference in the feel of the amp.

 

[Mr_You]

Sorry I haven't read the thread thoroughly only canons comments. I'm not sure exactly what/where your complaint is so here are some "random" comments. I'm waiting on a Roadster.

- I believe Sovtek is now making 5751s. You might check Electro-Harmonix or Tung Sol for "premium" 5751s. Yay for new 5751s!
- I've thought about the idea of possibly swapping the 5U4 rectifier tube(s) for a more saggy 5Y3 which is used in the Lone Star. You'll want to check with Mesa to make sure this is ok. I think this would give it a more vintage *feel*, but not change the tone much.

 

[canon]

Yeah, I think I'll try a 5751 and a tungsol 12ax7, maybe a jj ecc803.

The tremoverb was sweet at practice last night even at low volumes. Going for a more 'vintage' sound which to me is a nice upper mids hump, more clarity, and high end chime. Sounds like I'm describing a weber california?

I need a solo boost badly though. I'll probably end up with the eq in the effects loop trick.

 

[Mr_You]

Hmm, by your description. Yeah you might try YellowJackets though they are EL84s, or for the same price or less you could probably have the amp mod'ed for an EL34 bias and try those. I had a 50/50 mod'ed for 6V6s then back to 6L6s at one time.

 

[canon]

Tried one loud today, did all the right things to the tone, smoothed it out so much I could go back to using 6l6's again (STR 425) and get a Fendery breakup. I might have to go back for another. Thanks Doug at Doug's tubes!

 

[Micah]

Tried one loud today, did all the right things to the tone, smoothed it out so much I could go back to using 6l6's again (STR 425) and get a Fendery breakup. I might have to go back for another. Thanks Doug at Doug's tubes!

Definatly!! For your application get rid of the EL34's!! Another Idea, since your into the old Fender-like tones is to try some 6V6's. I hear they break up really quick and are an all time blues favorite. :wink:

 

[canon]

Yeah, with my previous set of preamp tubes (12ax7eh, 12ax7eh and the rest mesa) 6l6's were just grating, actually some str 420's I have still sound like *** (thin, wimpy), and the el34's have that "not-fender" breakup like when I used to borrow my friend's jcm800.

The 425's are thicker sounding. I guess maybe I'm a 5881 kind of guy.

All these tubes make a difference.

Maybe in a few months I'll replace the v30 with an eminence patriot of some sort (swamp thang?).

 

[Micah]

Definatly--cool!