The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    Nice amp but I'm working on getting a jazz tone out of it. What settings are you using?

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    If you don't know on the Deluxe Reverb the Reverb channel has would would be the Bright switch permanently on. There is a cap's that can be easily clip one leg of it to turn off the Bright. When I had my DRRI I ended up using the Normal channel all the time it sounded better to me.

    Some mod's people do is have the reverb on both channel, change the reverb tube to a lower gain one to get better control of the amount of reverb.

  4. #3

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    Here's my ES-335 with volume and tone on the neck pickup around 6 through the second vibrato channel of my DRRI in a large room with amp volume at 6, treble at 4, bass at 4 and reverb, speed and intensity all at 2.



    https://soundcloud.com/geechnyc/summ...10december2015
    Last edited by Geechnyc; 12-19-2015 at 04:23 PM.

  5. #4

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    Blackface amps can be hard to eq with humbuckers. Bass response can be overwhelmingly strong with archtops and lowering the bass makes the sound thin. The mid scoop is not ideal for some archtops (but perfect for others) and the stock mid combination (47n cap and 10k pot) is useless. The treble is very sweet if set low on older amps but on the RI series they always sound bright to me, even with treble really low.

    As doc said avoiding the reverb channel (or clipping the cap) is a good idea. What is it exactly you don't like in the amp?

  6. #5

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    Try this extreme setting (on the vibrato channel): bass - 0, mid-10, treble - 0. See how you like it.

  7. #6

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    I am not having a DRRI but a twin RI and some things may carry over. I use input 1 on the vibrato channel.

    As Jorge said the bass response on the Fenders can be overwhelming and hence this is set really low. For some guitars even bass set to 1 can be boomy. It helps to have an eq pedal that cuts below 160 Hz. My twin RI has more mellow tubes and has sweet rather than harsh highs (the stock tubes indeed sounded harsh to me. I have replaced all of them with quality tubes but I forgot which ones exactly). It still sounds best to me with an archtop with the treble set low (below, say 3) and then turn the mids to 6 or seven (not far off littlejays recommendation).

    I like to run the amp loud (say 4-5, with that much bass and treble cut the amp is far less loud than with a, say 666 setting) and turn the volume knob on the guitar down and the tone knob a tad down. I feel that this is the most lifely tone.

    These days, I mostly play my twin amp profile through a Kemper and a Bose compact L1. The sound dispersion in the room is better and after tweaking the profile it miracoulously sounds better to me than the amp itself (thanks to the "pure cabinet" option) .. But that's off topic and I don't want to derail the thread.

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by Little Jay
    Try this extreme setting (on the vibrato channel): bass - 0, mid-10, treble - 0. See how you like it.
    ... and if you don't like it at 0 10 0, tweak the bass and treble up little by little until you do.

    When the bass and treble are near zero, the mid knob acts more as a volume control than a mid cut, so you may as well leave it near 10.

  9. #8

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    docbop is correct. You must remove the power board and remove the cap labeled C10. It is a permanent bright switch cap. Just cut it off and you will be amazed how warm sounding the amp will be.

  10. #9

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    Seems a little paradoxical but to get a good bass tone from an archtop, turn the BASS control on an amp made for solid-body guitars, all the way off, as a starting point. Fender single coils have not much bass response so the classic Fender amp circuits has a lot of bass response. Not what is wanted for an archtop that has a resonant top.

    Control the balance of the treble strings to the bass strings with your tone pot on the guitar. Depending on the taper of your tone pot, the sweet spot can be just 1/2 number wide.

  11. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by FrankLearns
    I am not having a DRRI but a twin RI and some things may carry over. I use input 1 on the vibrato channel.

    As Jorge said the bass response on the Fenders can be overwhelming and hence this is set really low. For some guitars even bass set to 1 can be boomy. It helps to have an eq pedal that cuts below 160 Hz. My twin RI has more mellow tubes and has sweet rather than harsh highs (the stock tubes indeed sounded harsh to me. I have replaced all of them with quality tubes but I forgot which ones exactly). It still sounds best to me with an archtop with the treble set low (below, say 3) and then turn the mids to 6 or seven (not far off littlejays recommendation).

    I like to run the amp loud (say 4-5, with that much bass and treble cut the amp is far less loud than with a, say 666 setting) and turn the volume knob on the guitar down and the tone knob a tad down. I feel that this is the most lifely tone.

    These days, I mostly play my twin amp profile through a Kemper and a Bose compact L1. The sound dispersion in the room is better and after tweaking the profile it miracoulously sounds better to me than the amp itself (thanks to the "pure cabinet" option) .. But that's off topic and I don't want to derail the thread.
    Couldn't agree more Frank, I can't use a Fender amp without a low cut pedal. And yes, digital rocks!

  12. #11

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    I'm using the graphical eq on the kemper for the cut. Makes such a big difference with archtops. All my amps sounds much better and the boominess is gone. Best money I ever spent on gear.

  13. #12

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    To me many amps their tonestack the Mid-Point 5 is the flat setting and you + or - from there. Fenders to me are + only I start my tweaking at 2. Also remember sometimes instead of boosting something to get more it sound better to cut something else. i.e. want more high end might sound better to cut some bass than to keep boosting the treble. Especially cause boosting treble usually brings with it hiss and other noise.

    Saturday morning soapbox time.....

    Okay I don't get these "what settings" posts, I'm old school and part of learning to play is learning to dial in your gear. We didn't have thousand of brands of amps and pedal this and pedal that you had a guitar maybe two, and one amp. If you had a back up amp you were a rock star. The same as practicing your scales and chords you had to spend time learning to dial in your gear. Main reason is every room you play is different, every guitar is different, how you play that guitar is different, so you better learn how to find your sound on any guitar or amp. That's why any of the great guitarist like a Robben Ford, Wes Montgomery, and on and on were consistent in sound. The Jazz greats most the time were using backline amps or rented amps so they were always on a strange amp and needed to know how to dial it in. As I beieve Barney Kessel said..."if an amp worked, it was a good amp".

    Also as I said already we didn't have a lot of choices for gear in the 60's-70's especially when it came to amps so weren't like people today don't can't get sound I want this second, must be something I can buy to fix it. No spend time finding the best sound your gear can get and you might like the old guys find a different sound that you didn't expect and like even more.

    Last you want to be a musician your head needs to be filled with music, notes, chords, rhythms, musical ideas, not thoughts of this guitar to that pedal with these string and those picks. Those gear thoughts only make Guitar Center happy in the long run.

    Okay, okay I'll shutup now you can go back to your Guitar Player or Vintage Guitar magazine with one page of articles and 100 pages of gear ad's.

    off soapbox and back to the woodshed

  14. #13

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    All great suggestions. I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned subbing the 12ax7 V1 with a lower gain valve like a 5751, for example. This allows the amp to operate in its more linear cleaner sounding range.

    Pots don't work well at their extremes due to the way their resistive tracks are made. A lower gain valve allows you to set the knobs in the middle range for a clean tone.

    The bright cap is meant to take care of the Fletcher-Munson curve where at low volumes the ears' response to treble and bass falls off much faster than the midrange. That is what the LOUD button on home rack stereos does: boost the treble and bass frequencies at low volumes. Most people hit the LOUD button at high volumes anyway thus leading to many blown tweeters and drivers.

    As for the overpowering bass, one trick is to switch the 12" speaker out for a 10" with an adapter, such as a Celestion Gold. The bigger cab of a DRRI actuaĺly helps the 10" to sound full in the bass without its being flabby.

    You could use a Weber Copper Cap WS1 solid-state rectifier in place of the 5AR4 for less sag but it may sound hard. Getting a better quality hifi valve 5AR4 helps a lot to keep it clean. In general, when you get valves sorted out for hifi audiophile preamps or amps your Deluxe Reverb will sound clean with less distortion at the same settings.

    Jazz guitarists are mainly looking for hifi valve amps meant for amplifying recorded music. Accurate, transparent, low distortion, well behaved, no crapping out. Wes Montgomery played a Standel for good reason. A Standel is a hifi valve amp. Jerry Garcia runs a valve BF preamp tone stack into a valve Mcintosh MC275, I understand.
    Last edited by Jabberwocky; 12-20-2015 at 01:15 AM.

  15. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by FrankLearns
    I'm using the graphical eq on the kemper for the cut. Makes such a big difference with archtops. All my amps sounds much better and the boominess is gone. Best money I ever spent on gear.
    One of these days I won't resist the Kemper...

  16. #15
    Man, it's a new amp.😀

  17. #16

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    Old thread but still relevant.
    I find that tone knobs on DRRI shouldn't be treated as EQ controls. That probably generalizes to many tube amps. Some suggest turning bass and treble all the way down to get a flat response but I find that the amp doesn't sound very good in that setting.

    The thing is tone knobs don't control isolated eq ranges. They affect the whole spectrum and the gain level. When bass turned down and up, mids go in the opposite direction. Changing trebles moves the mid scoop frequency left and right (like a parametric eq) as well as changing treble and bass levels. Both knobs change the preamp gain level. When gain level changes, the rest of the amp reacts differently.
    So basically each tone knob setting is a different amp (or different version of the amp). I think it's best to play with the knobs to find characteristics you like and use an EQ pedal to adjust frequencies after.