My DC-5 Just Amazed Me

[brungio]

Preparing for a tribute show on Halloween my band is doing a set of Black Sabbath covers.

Normally I use my DC rhythm channel as the clean with just a small amount of boost to get more AC/DC type tones and rely on the Lead channel for just about everything else. Normally the gain is set to around 7-8 and the master around 3-4.

But last night I decided to do something different and fooled with the Rhythm channel. I dialed the gain to 10, pulled it to boost, and dimed up the master at about 9. Mid and Bass around 7, Presence at 2 and Treble around 5. I ran this out through a Marshall 1922 with greenbacks 8 ohm out to 16 ohn input. I used a Les Paul with BB Pros and the neck pickup.

The sound on this channel thickens up like a milkshake. Not muddy but super rich and really a good match for that Iommi tone. Oddly enough, if you bring the master back lower than 7, it starts to smooth out really quickly.

I'd never heard the amp do this before and was just amazed. I will certainly be using this setting for the show and may just make this the default setting to the channel.

I'll try to post some clips later.

 

[LTE]

Similar thing happened to me. I had used the channels similarly to you, channel 1 for clean, and channel 2 for everything else. The rhythm boost before had really just added volume, fuzz, and fizz haha. But i fooled around with the settings and got the boost to sound like an amazing blues lead. It even made my mex strats stock pickups sound pretty good!

 

[MusicManJP6]

Damn you DC-5 owners with your pull boost...

(Can you tell I have pull boost envy?)

 

[brungio]

The only drawback to this setting is that you can completely crank the lead channel but when you channel switch to it, you don't get a huge difference in volume. But I'm going to overcome this by engaging the EQ on the footswitch when soloing.

I was trying to get a bigger boost out of the lead channel but once I rolled the master rolls down, that tone
just started to smooth out.

This sound convinced me that low output pickups and speakers are certainly the way to go to get a real fat organic sound.

Re: Boost Envy
I'm sure there are plenty of pedals you could use to get the same effect. In fact I think a full drive in front of your setup will likely get you the boost effect. I was able to get a similar tone effect using the full drive on the rhythm channel before I discovered this setting.

 

[MusicManJP6]

Re: Boost Envy
I'm sure there are plenty of pedals you could use to get the same effect. In fact I think a full drive in front of your setup will likely get you the boost effect. I was able to get a similar tone effect using the full drive on the rhythm channel before I discovered this setting.

You are probably right. It's just cool to have that feature built-in to the amp. I recently picked up a MXR classic distortion and it works great as a boost or to fill the gap between clean and high gain which is how I have my two channels set on my DC-3. The pedal sounds very similar to the DC's voicing/gain structure so it's been a very useful pedal. GC is blowing them out right now for $39 brand new. I feel like the DC's lead channel does not do well in the low to mid gain territory so this pedal gives me those tones while retaining my clean channel availability/settings. It's cool because it's like an OD pedal below noon on the gain knob of the pedal and like a distortion pedal past noon. It's not got tons of gain, but that is just what I was looking for.

 

[Erotomaniac1928]

If the boost was footswitchable, it'd be awesome. If it was it's own low gain channel... it'd be perfect

 

[brungio]

I think Monsta Tone is looking into developing that feature. Check in with him. I think it would give you three footswitchable voices which would be nice.

I bet you can use your guitar volume to dial it down and then bring it back up. I was doing that the other day with my treble pickup turned down to 4 and playing the neck pickup on 10. Switching between the pups got me a nice dialed down tone.

For reference this was during rehearsal of the Black Sabbath songs we're doing for Halloween and we were doing Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Over the reprise, the guitar goes really clean so I'd switch to the treble pickup which would then drop in volume and clean up a lot.