Looper's Delight Archive Top (Search)
Date Index
Thread Index
Author Index
Looper's Delight Home
Mailing List Info

[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Date Index][Thread Index][Author Index]

Re: Amplification



>On Tue, 24 Sep 1996, Tom Attix* wrote:
>
>> > also, are there any amp designers/builders among us?
>> > I'd spoken with matthias about this before.
>>
>> I've been poking the idea around. A nice all tube stereo amp (for my
>> Stick). I suspect I'm going end up building something more like a PA 
>than
>> a guitar amp. Do you know of any good sources for schematics?
>>
>> -Tom Attix
>
>I'd say your choice of amps and speakers is highly dependent on the
>manner in which you intend to present the music.  Is this for a home
>studio, or live playing?  Since you're playing Stick, you're going to
>need to hit some REALLY low bass notes.  There are two ways to
>approach this.  One is to use a heavy-duty biamped system with big
>subwoofers to capture those low fundamentals (a Stick tuned down to
>low A produces a 27.5hz fundamental!) where typical speakers (especially
>guitar speakers) crap out.  Another is to just roll off that
>fundamental octave and concentrate on a tight sound (this is why the
>old Ampeg SVT bass amps with the 8 10" speakers sounded so great.
>They rolled the fundamental right off, and just reproduced the first
>order harmonic of the low notes.  The amp and speakers weren't
>overstressed and sounded much tighter).

Very interesting post Dave. I agree, the cleaner the amplification of your
loops, the better. I had a thought about amplifying a Stick, though. Might
be obvious to stick players, I don't know.

Charlie Hunter plays an eight string guitar with 3 bass strings and 5
guitar strings. He does a rather remarkable job of playing both at once,
often getting bass melodies and chords all at once. That's not too amazing
with a good guitarist, but he manages to really make it sound like he is
two musicians. (Bass player and an Organ player oddly enough.) Part of the
seperation comes from using seperate pickups and amplifiers for the bass
and guitar strings on the instrument. So the bass side runs through a good
bass amp, and the guitar through a rotary speaker effect and into a good
guitar amp. Both are small and portable.

Seems like tubes would be better for the higher strings on the stick, since
a little bit of tube distortion would probably give a good sustain for
them.

Of course, this falls apart for looping, where you need something cleaner.
Then you probably want something like Dave is suggesting.

kim



______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                   | Looper's Delight
kflint@annihilist.com       | http://www.annihilist.com/loop/loop.html
http://www.annihilist.com/  | Loopers-Delight-request@annihilist.com