New practice amp - Yamaha THR 10ii

[Jehu]

I have a THR 100 single head and the original THR 10.

Both are great tools with a few quirks to deal with (easily enough), but they are completely different beasts. Naming them in a similar way may inspire some to assume they are similar. They are very very different.

Can you expand on this a bit? The head had piqued my interest as well.

[Bezoeker]

Woody and Jehu,

I suppose the THR 10 in all its variations are covered here some.

So to describe the THR 100:

It is a rather unusual modeling head. The general idea is to present the controls as very analog and traditional.

There are no effects except reverb.

There is a (foot and panel) switchable boost that is programmable to three different levels of cleanliness (or dirty-ness I suppose). This provides a remarkably useful tool for quick and easy comp vs. solo/lead. Set up with a modest boost and programmed to clean it is great.

The front end has the same basic character selections as the THR 10 (or many Roland amps as well). So you get flat/clean (called “SOLID” like they said on the Mod Squad, but then mean a dry “solid state”), then “CLEAN” sort of between a JC and Fender, then CRUNCH - AC30-ish, then LEAD - the Marshall idea, then MODERN - the Mesa sound.

You may disagree with their (and my) descriptions, but you get the idea.

The 4 band (B,M,T, Presence) tone controls are VERY effective and range far wider than any tone stack.

AND, on the back you can choose class A or A/B (I suppose AB1 really) power amp emulation, and power tube character from the following: 6V6, EL84, KT88, 6L6, and EL34.

This all is modeling so happens before the final VOLUME control.

This makes for some interesting combinations.

You can select CRUNCH, Class A, and EL84 and damn it gets very AC30.

Or other classic combinations for Fender (clean, A/B, 6L6), Marshall 50w (LEAD, A/B, EL34), MESA (MODERN, A/B, 6L6) etc. - and they work pretty well.

The quirks come with odd combinations. For example SOLID or CLEAN, combined with class A , and EL84 yields a VERY VERY faint noise that sounds to me like quantization noise (but likely not an A/D conversion artifact).

But this is easily fixed by not making such an odd choice of settings. You can make the amp misbehave, but you do not have to.

Also note that there are three volume controls.

So you have the modeling equivalent of GAIN, MASTER, and a post power amp “Power Soak”.

This all sounds ridiculous in a pure jazz context. But there are plenty of pure jazz sounds in there that make the modeling quite useful. You just may be ignoring the bulk of the modeling work that Yamaha did.

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I have left a lot out, but I hope this helps.

I think that compared to a Henriksen or other jazz-o-centric amp, many players here will at first find the THR 100 a little sandpapery at first. Then after a rainy afternoon of fiddling with settings and programming will note what a remarkable (and mostly unknown) amp it is.

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In that sense only the THR 100 is EXACTLY like the THR 10. Which I did not like at all at first. Then I stared playing with the knobs and programming presets to tame the absurd panel reverb. The I used the VERY fine programmable (and incredibly subtle) compressor on the THR 10 and ended up with an amazing amp, as already reported.

EDIT: The programmable compressor on the THR 10 gives incredible (and I suppose, unintended) control over the attack character of the amp.

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These are superb products that for whatever reason seem to not be presented well in the market.

My understanding is that the look of the original THR 10 evokes an “old times” radio look in Japan that is lost on most of us, much like the movie “My Neighbor Totoro”

The THR 100 styling may be a mess of mixed metaphors, but it works incredibly well.

Anyway, there is my dump of irresponsible opinion.

Zoeker, B.