Took an Electra-Dyne head for a test drive last night at my local store, played it for about 40 minutes through a Recto 4x12 slant at moderate volume (enough to bother everyone else in the store with my half-assed playing, lol)
Used two HB guitars, both mahogany, one with a Jazz and a Distortion and the other with 59's.
My main impression was that Clean is so good it makes me want to cry, High *really* reminded me of my Mark IIIs except with knobs that actually do stuff, and I had a really hard time with Low.
On Clean and High the happy place was with Volume around 4:30. I just could not get a sound I didn't like out of the Clean channel and holy crap is there a lot of reverb available. I was also getting gorgeous light feedback anytime I wanted. I could have played that all **** day.
High sounded, like I said, a lot like my Mark IIIs-- tight, midrangey but fat, aggressive, lots of sustain but not compressed-- but with more variation available from the tone stack and the Presence actually being useful instead of horrible. The III certainly has more gain available but I never use it all, so the ED at close-to-dimed was perfect.
This led to my problems with Low where Volume 4:30 sounded kind of poorly defined and muddy with either guitar with a lot of definition in the highs going away. I use a "crunch" channel mostly for rhythm and this seemed to be kind of a weak point; it was like they were trying too hard to make Low not sound "Marshall-y". It reminded me of R2 on my purple stripe which is awesome for fat bluesy leads but kind of flubby/undefined for rhythm, where R2 on my green is Marshall-y to the point of legal action. If I rolled Volume down to about 2:00 Low sounded great though I still think it would lack some "cut" in a band mix. Turning the Mid up made Low sound better but Clean sound plinky and High sound nasal.
Rolling off guitar volume just gave a less driven version of the same thing, so I think it's partially in the voicing not just the gain structure.
I'm kind of wondering if this is a preamp tube thing, and whatever handles Low gain needs to be swapped for something brighter.
Anyway, I don't think I am going to pick one up but this is mostly a price point issue-- in Canada an ED head is CA$2100 with taxes in and I can't quite justify it just to get a godlike clean channel, because even if Low worked awesome for me I was still just dialing in High to sound like a Mark III. If the ED was say $350 cheaper I'd probably bite and start screwing around with tubes to fix Low.
Used two HB guitars, both mahogany, one with a Jazz and a Distortion and the other with 59's.
My main impression was that Clean is so good it makes me want to cry, High *really* reminded me of my Mark IIIs except with knobs that actually do stuff, and I had a really hard time with Low.
On Clean and High the happy place was with Volume around 4:30. I just could not get a sound I didn't like out of the Clean channel and holy crap is there a lot of reverb available. I was also getting gorgeous light feedback anytime I wanted. I could have played that all **** day.
High sounded, like I said, a lot like my Mark IIIs-- tight, midrangey but fat, aggressive, lots of sustain but not compressed-- but with more variation available from the tone stack and the Presence actually being useful instead of horrible. The III certainly has more gain available but I never use it all, so the ED at close-to-dimed was perfect.
This led to my problems with Low where Volume 4:30 sounded kind of poorly defined and muddy with either guitar with a lot of definition in the highs going away. I use a "crunch" channel mostly for rhythm and this seemed to be kind of a weak point; it was like they were trying too hard to make Low not sound "Marshall-y". It reminded me of R2 on my purple stripe which is awesome for fat bluesy leads but kind of flubby/undefined for rhythm, where R2 on my green is Marshall-y to the point of legal action. If I rolled Volume down to about 2:00 Low sounded great though I still think it would lack some "cut" in a band mix. Turning the Mid up made Low sound better but Clean sound plinky and High sound nasal.
Rolling off guitar volume just gave a less driven version of the same thing, so I think it's partially in the voicing not just the gain structure.
I'm kind of wondering if this is a preamp tube thing, and whatever handles Low gain needs to be swapped for something brighter.
Anyway, I don't think I am going to pick one up but this is mostly a price point issue-- in Canada an ED head is CA$2100 with taxes in and I can't quite justify it just to get a godlike clean channel, because even if Low worked awesome for me I was still just dialing in High to sound like a Mark III. If the ED was say $350 cheaper I'd probably bite and start screwing around with tubes to fix Low.
