V-Twin Rackmount: OpAmp & clipping diodes for Solo chann

[JT_Marshmallow]

I read this about the V-Twin Pedal:

I'm sad of reading people who think that the V-Twin is an all-tube pedal... Let me clarify some points here:

First, a 12AX7 (or variant like 12AU7, etc) is a dual-triode. So there are two gain-stages available in each tube.

People said that they prefer the clean channel. No wonder, the clean channel on the V-Twin uses one tube (so 2 gain-stages), like most Fender preamps.

For the blues channel, well, it's another story. The gain is provided by a TL072 opamp and the distortion is created by 1N4148 clipping diodes (solid state, same topology as some of your Boss or Ibanez distortion pedal). However, they put ONE tube gain-stage afterward (the clean channel has two!!!) to warm-up the sound a little and the other half of the tube is a cathode follower (no gain, used as a buffer for the tone stack, like in a JCM800).

The lead channel is the same as the blues channel, but the opamp's gain is set higher.

I understand that the rackmount model doesn't have the Blues mode, but does the Solo mode use an OpAmp or is it all-tube? If it is all-tube, is this why its worth a few hundred dollars more?

 

[daveyboogie]

I'm pretty sure that the OD modes on the V-twin rack is opamp/ diode clipping same as in the pedal. The 12AX7 is there to just 'colour' the lead tones a little, as I understand it. Never used a pedal so I can't really compare sounds. I was really impressed with the cleans on the V-twin rack.

I guess the rack is so much more because it uses two individual tone stacks (one for each channel) and there are also a whole load of switching options / effects loop and recording-out etc.

 

[dtrax]

I ran a V-Twin rack for about 10 years - while it was decent, I was never completely happy with it. That said, whether the tubes were placebo or not, it was very warm and musical. It didn't have enough gain for me (most times I used a boost or really hot PU's), but then again, it wasn't exactly designed for metal tones.

 

[Blackface tweed]

I know that it's not all tube preamp, but as long as I like the sound, I don't care!