New Maverick Owner with questions!

[RR]

Yeah, I exactly experience what you experience but with the ToV.

Oh, for the record I still have the ToV and Maverick. For me these are keepers.

Since I bought the ToV before the Maverick my approach to the Maverick was different. I think from my experience with the ToV, I've decided experiment with speakers before adjusting the Maverick's tone, volumes, mode controls. Like I mentioned before Vintage 30s are versatile speakers but sometimes you want "specific" tones out an amp than versatile tone. 'Cause then you say: "Yeah, something like that but a little more roundness, less midrange, more prescene region etc ..."

So I kind have a good grasp what speakers could do for an amp. Of course its preference too.

So I stock pile plenty of speakers and enclosures to experiment with. Many guitarists like to experiment with different aftermarket, boutique pickups while me, I like to experiement with speakers, and speaker combinations.

I may get flame for this and probably will : I would hear someone play a Bogner, VHT, Soldano, Diezel or what have you hi-gain amp and I would say to myself: "I could have sworn I got my ToV sounding pretty close to the vincinity of that amp's tone."

 

[Monsta-Tone]

I may get flame for this and probably will : I would hear someone play a Bogner, VHT, Soldano, Diezel or what have you hi-gain amp and I would say to myself: "I could have sworn I got my ToV sounding pretty close to the vincinity of that amp's tone."

A lot of high gain amps have very similar circuits. I think that you are onto something with speakers, just as much as others are onto something when experimenting with tubes, pickups, etc.

 

[RR]

YEah, speakers are sometimes an overlook component in your chain of tone.

... and just because you have a nice sound out of amp and speaker combination, doesn't mean the same speaker system will sound great in another amp.

For me Fane Crescendos sound great with Mark II, doesn't sound as good with Dual Rectifiers.

 

[94Tremoverb]

No flame from me. One of my little games when I get a nice or unusual amp to work on (I'm a professional tech, in case you wondered!) is to try to duplicate the tone with the Tremoverb. For such an apparently massively powerful, preamp-distortion-only, limited signal path (all the modes share the *same* architecture, just with different components added or removed) amp, it's astonishing how close it can get to some really very different amps. Randall Smith really designed a lot of flexibility into it, either on purpose or by accident, and to me it goes to show how much of 'tone' is in the ear, not the amp. If you make an amp with enough control, you can get almost anything out of it when you know how. The remarkable thing about the Tremoverb is that it not only does this, it's also very (to me) *un*fussy, and easy to dial - whereas I found the Mark IV perhaps even more flexible overall, but much harder to dial in.

Back to the Maverick - it's an example of an amp with a more definite and identifiable, less variable tone. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I did also only try the two speakers in it - the stock C90, and the V30. I'm well aware of the difference speakers make, but I never got around to experimenting more widely. The speaker is the final tone shaping component, and so is the filter through which everything else is passed, and so in the end is the single most important of all.

A friend of mine recently got another Maverick 1x12", and since he got it cheap and seems to flip gear all the time I do have some hope that he may one day want to part with it ;-).

 

[212Mavguy]

Hey RR,

Nothing but praise from me for your post... no flame from here.

Mine is a 2/12 combo. I too have quite a few different 12 and 15 inch speakers and cabs. Right now I have a pair of JBL MI 12's in mine wired in series for 16 ohms, they are dark and very smooth, but capable of some serious recto-like chug if palm muting is used. I might stick in a vintage Jensen Vibranto 100 watter with a seamed cone in place of one of the JBL's for a bit more top end detail to go with the awesome low end and fat mids of the JBL. It is also smooth.

This amp is dead nuts easy to dial in and sounds great every single time I fire it up, big room or small, the master volume circuit sounds great whether really loud or closer to practice/bedroom volume. Lately I've been using a Weber MASS and with that I get some amazing sustains out of either channel.

 

[Monsta-Tone]

I love how portable my 1x12 is, but I really wanted the 2x12.
Guess I'll have to find a matching 1x12 cab!

 

[lyman]

The design of it is quite weird, it has more gain stages for the clean channel than the overdrive, so every stage in the overdrive channel is pushed to the very max...

So when you say that every gain stage is pushed to the max, are you talking voltage? What does this mean in terms of dialing in sounds and how the eq stages work compared to, say, the rhythm channel? Just wondering. Thanks for elaborating!

 

[94Tremoverb]

Just that each stage is used to generate about as much gain as it can. This seems to make the response a bit peaky and more dependent on the tube characteristics - instead of running them more conservatively, when the response becomes more even and more controlled by the other components. It's a bit like running the amp and guitar wide open and trying to control all your dynamics and tone with your hands alone - it does work, but it's really touchy and it does more what *it* wants to do than if you turn down the amp and/or guitar a bit, so you can play with a bit more range.

The overdrive channel only uses three tube stages, which is very few for most amps. The clean channel also uses three - or four in Fat mode, the extra one is a cathode follower so it doesn't actually add more gain, but widens the frequency response - so each stage is adding a lot less gain than on the overdrive channel.

 

[lyman]

Thanks, 94Tremoverb. I've always felt like the maverick was like 2 amps in 1, rather than 1 channel switching amp. They're both cool voices, once you figure out how to optimize them. Right now I've got a JAN Phillips 5751 as the 1st tube in the lead channel. Sounds cool, a little smoother perhaps.

 

[vitor gracie]

I own both a TOV and a Mav and I can tell you this.. the TOV can mimic any of the sounds that the Mav has. From loose and creamy like a blob of Ben and Jerey's to crisp and AC30-ish on the clean. However, the Mav can't go anywhere near the extreme settings that the TOV can get. The advantage to me of keeping my Mav for a while is the wattage. I can get more saturated tones at a way lower volume level. The TOV on the other hand has to open up a little bit particularly in the dirty sounds. If you play very quietly on the TOV you dont get the fullness of the distortion as with any other Recto amp.

On a side note, both amps clean channels distort in a beautiful way as well. Experiment with the clean channel of the TOV with it on the orange setting and the red setting. The drive sounds almost marshall-ish. (yes the clean channel distorts) Also play around with the spongy/bold setting and the rectifier setting with that same setting (clean channel's drive set very high) I found some fantastic dirty british tones with the spongy switch on and the tube rectifier setting with the clean set to "vintage" or orange.

I repeat, the TOV's CLEAN setting not the overdrive has some fantastic sounds as does the Maverick's clean channel.

p.s. I, of course, am enamored with the TOV's dirty as well

Have fun.