DV Mark Little Jazz vs. micro 50 II - a revelation shared

[DonEsteban]

Hi guys,

I own both of the aforementioned amps and always assumed, that the characteristic of both amps are pretty much the same or let's say similar. Then this happened yesterday:

I'm in a recording process at this moment and have to play super silently because we're not in a real studio.

I started using the Little Jazz but didn't like it. I then used several preamps, a Boss multi effect unit etc. now having the Little Jazz mainly as my personal, latency free monitor while the recording went straight into the interface - I was still rather unhappy with anything I heard, be it the recording as well as the direct sound.

When I suddenly had the idea to use the micro 50 as a preamp, utilizing the FX send as an output going directly into the computer and parallel into the Little Jazz.

Incredible improvement! Premium sound as well on the hard disc as live through the Little Jazz. All this muffled, mid-rangy, narrow thing is gone and ... here comes the sun... ....

Seems they did something right at the input stage of the micro50 that is not there at the Little Jazz, though I was always rather happy with it playing live gigs. (When there where some)

Just thought I'd share... have a nice Sunday!

[Gitterbug]

Don, the lack of response to your finding goes to prove the Forum members' bias towards things that were, not those that are. In my opinion, amps and speakers are extremely important components in the signal chain, yet they seem to deserve very little attention here.

[Alter]

It sounds like a mix of electric and acoustic type sounds, which is usually great. I 've gotten great sounds live mixing an Aer and a Princeton, or a Henriksen and a Pro junior.

[lawson-stone]

I think there is a lot of interest on this sort of thing here. I have posted tons on using various pedals, such as the BruteEQ, the Boss Deluxe Reverb pedal, etc. as a front end into various amps, including the effects return of a tube amp. Side-by side comparison clips, etc. These always get helpful reactions from forum members.

I suspect the issue here is most wouldn't have both the Micro50 and the Little Jazz to compare. My Micro50 is the old one with no effects loop, but the XLR out on the back, so I can't try the experiment. I would be curious how using essentially the same pre-amp as a pre-amp to the virtually identical pre-amp could help.

One possible explanation, though, is that the Micro50 head has two channels, and they do in fact interact. If you turn on the "lead" channel that has the gain control, not only do its EQ knobs work, but the EQ controls for the CLEAN channel also continue to shape the tone, as well as the level knob. That's weird, to me, but I wonder if that has something to do with the results? Maybe you're driving the Little Jazz with the "lead" channel of the Micro50? Just a guess.

[jads57]

Whatever works best is always found by experimenting. And what sounds great for live doesn't always translate to a great studio recording. Remember that's why good engineers have so much tone shaping with eq , tube preamps,etc.

Probably the best for home use would be direct with some sort of amp modeling and eq shaping modules. It all depends what the track itself dictates.