Royal Atlantic has docked

[BostonRedSox]

Good luck, BRS. I'll keep all my digits crossed for ya! Hope the brown shirts don't rain on your parade again!

Yep, I do have a small pedalboard, only dirt box is a Fulltone Plimsoul (and a Keeley Katana clean boost for fattening things up when needed without the distortion), interestingly enough the RA seems to be able to match the Plimsoul's sound and go it one better. I used to use the Plimsoul to provide more dirt to the amp's front end, was needed sometimes with the Lonestar, however with the RA-100 I find myself using the amp distortion by itself a lot more then I used to, it just sounds so good, and cuts through the mix very well, not an easy task in my band. Definitely has considerably more gain available over different frequency bands, also somewhat more headroom. And, not to be outdone, the clean channel is AMAZING for an EL-34 amp, I just marvel at it every time I use it. I'm gonna gig with the RA-100 head and the cabs for a few gigs and see how things work out before I think about bringing in the Lonestar. Funny the other fellow mentioned the dude with cast and crutches - I broke my ankle and foot about 3 weeks ago, have a cast and crutches, and am now gigging sitting down, so schlepping the Lonestar 2X12 combo will definitely not be an option for a few weeks yet. The RA-100 head will get a thorough tryout. We're doing a number of outdoor festival type gigs throughout the summer and early fall, as well as a few club and party-type dates, so it will be used in varied environments. More will be forthcoming.

Thanks for the info ucnick! I've been thinking about getting the Katana. So this pedal does exactly what, just boosts your signal without adding dirt? How does it boost it? More low end, treble, mids?

Your review of the amp is very helpful in that you have played it in a band setting. I hate the whole, "it sounds great in my bedroom" review. Those reviews are fine, but can be misleading when you bring an amp to a band mix.

Did you find the mids to be overbearing? I didn't really at all, but I've heard jeffp talk about this. Also, is your amp noisy on the blue or red channels with the gain at 1 o'clock? Noisy at all loud?

 

[jeffp]

BRS..Waiting on MONDAY?..........I`m waiting on Friday for my ED.Let us know how you like it. I like the look of the one you`re getting with the white knobs too ! Good choice there. I know you`re ready for you`re truck. I`m waiting on mine! I will greet the truck too. Took a vacation just to be sure!JEFFP

 

[BostonRedSox]

BRS..Waiting on MONDAY?..........I`m waiting on Friday for my ED.Let us know how you like it. I like the look of the one you`re getting with the white knobs too ! Good choice there. I know you`re ready for you`re truck. I`m waiting on mine! I will greet the truck too. Took a vacation just to be sure!JEFFP

Good thinking JeffP. Yeah, I have the day off too. I am just going to be waiting for the UPS guy to come by. I just want to take the amp out of the box and have it be in perfect condition so I can rock on it all day.

I'll post comprehensive pictures of the amp, as well as new clips. You should do the same Jeff!

Thanks!

 

[jeffp]

Are you ready?Another day...another dollar.....Tommorrow is the bid day for BRS! Lets see what brown can do for you this time.Good Luck! jeffp

 

[BostonRedSox]

Are you ready?Another day...another dollar.....Tommorrow is the bid day for BRS! Lets see what brown can do for you this time.Good Luck! jeffp

Thanks!

 

[jeffp]

BRS...Let me know what you think about the mids...What speaker(s) will be in the combo?jeffp

 

[ucnick]

BRS... I'm a bit pokey with answers... sorry about that.

The Katana has an internal voltage doubler so it has much more headroom than a regular boost pedal, have to bear that in mind when driving stuff downstream. It has two modes: (1) a wideband, very clean boost mode, unity gain is at about 2 or 3, I generally run in this mode at about 4 or 5, the pedal is on 95% of the time; and (2) a "fat" mode, you pull out the level knob, it attenuates the highs and some of the mids and gives it a thicker feel, good for playing "Smooth" or something from the neck pickup in woman tone mode, or helps tame "icepick in ear syndrome" if you have a very bright bridge pickup. I usually use the non-fat mode. Not that I'm dieting.

Mids seem to be just fine and definitely controllable, seems to be a function of the cabs. I run it through a Carvin V212 cab in rehearsal and had it tuned for that, at the gig I used the Marshall Silver Jubilee 2X12 with Eminence Wizard and Texas Heat speaker, also a Carvin 4X10 with V0s, and got a lot more high end, the sound guy had me bring treble and mid controls down on both clean and dirty. Still has a hecka lot of cut. I have a recording you can access if you want to hear it in performance. I'm still learning its characteristics in a band situation. I can give you the settings if you'd like, it's sitting here behind me. Looking at me. Play me, please, play me. Oh all right what the heck...

We do another festival gig Thurs night so it will be a learning experience, next Sat we play a club and will get to use the attenuators - oh yeah forgot to mention outdoors I am defeating the attenuators, I'm running at 100W outdoors. Anyway, I will likely need them for the inside gig (although our band is kind of loud, yow, I gotta wear earplugs!). Plan is to run at 100W to get enough clean headroom and attenuate the dirt channels to get the power tubes to sweat a bit. Still trying to decide which cab to use, and that isn't trivial - the stage at Main Street Brewery ain't huge, and our lead singer is quite the active fellow. Me, I'm trapped on a rollaround chair praying like crazy he doesn't tromp on my broken foot... yikes!

 

[ucnick]

Oh yeah forgot to mention... noticed a lot of 60 cycle hum in rehearsal, with the amp at 100W in either dirt channel get loud 60 Hz hum. Drops significantly in clean mode. This is with my pedalboard all the way down. At the gig I run a my pedalboard from a Pedal Juice battery and with a pre-Line 6 X2 wireless, the hum seemed to have disappeared, but I was so busy perhaps I didn't notice. I didn't notice it at home either (although I was playing much lower), I'll have to check it out, it may be (a) either a ground loop or (b) fluorescent lighting - induced hum (we have fluorescent lights in the rehearsal garage).

What I'll likely do is hook it up to a cab, and put just a guitar cable into the amp input and short the signal to ground and then check the hum level at volume. Hm - might do it tonight. Doing this stuff with a broken foot can be a drag. Anyway I'll let you know what I find. Maybe Mesa needs some more/bigger filter caps in the supply? BTW, I'd LOVE to have a schematic of this amp... Mr Smith or Mr West, if you're reading this, I promise not to steal any part of the design, I just need it for reference, if you don't mind...

 

[BostonRedSox]

Oh yeah forgot to mention... noticed a lot of 60 cycle hum in rehearsal, with the amp at 100W in either dirt channel get loud 60 Hz hum. Drops significantly in clean mode. This is with my pedalboard all the way down. At the gig I run a my pedalboard from a Pedal Juice battery and with a pre-Line 6 X2 wireless, the hum seemed to have disappeared, but I was so busy perhaps I didn't notice. I didn't notice it at home either (although I was playing much lower), I'll have to check it out, it may be (a) either a ground loop or (b) fluorescent lighting - induced hum (we have fluorescent lights in the rehearsal garage).

What I'll likely do is hook it up to a cab, and put just a guitar cable into the amp input and short the signal to ground and then check the hum level at volume. Hm - might do it tonight. Doing this stuff with a broken foot can be a drag. Anyway I'll let you know what I find. Maybe Mesa needs some more/bigger filter caps in the supply? BTW, I'd LOVE to have a schematic of this amp... Mr Smith or Mr West, if you're reading this, I promise not to steal any part of the design, I just need it for reference, if you don't mind...

Thanks ucnick. I would like to hear your clips very much so. Post a link please!

I received mine today and found there to be very little noise, just some slight 60 cycle hum. Nothing major, and mostly a power issue. I would characterize the amp, compared to other tube amps, as being dead silent.

I don't find the mids a challenge to dial out at all. I do find that since it sits in a different area of the mix, than say a Roadster or Dual Recto, it naturally just cuts through. Some like this, some hate it. I get the hate part. Especially for cleans, it means your are right there, up and front. There is less room for mistakes.

Did you read my new thread about the RA? There (on the Modern Forum, scroll down), I posted my settings of the RA. The settings I posted are cool in that you can really get more bottom end to your sound when you want it.

Thanks man! Happy rockin'!

 

[HaggertysMusic]

Our in depth review of the Royal Atlantic is finally available on YouTube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byibQRfiH_U

Hope you enjoy!

 

[primal]

Oh yeah forgot to mention... noticed a lot of 60 cycle hum in rehearsal, with the amp at 100W in either dirt channel get loud 60 Hz hum.

I received mine today and found there to be very little noise, just some slight 60 cycle hum. Nothing major, and mostly a power issue. I would characterize the amp, compared to other tube amps, as being dead silent.

Buy this!!!!
It really freaking works, and works well.
http://www.guitarcenter.com/Ebtech-Hum-X-Hum-Exterminator-102570686-i1124325.gc

I had attempted to plug my axe fx into the fx return or my Electra Dyne before I got this and the 60 cycle hum was deafening.
With this it is dead quiet.

If it can tame that 60 cycle hum, it can tame anything.