Home › Forums › The Lounge › Fender Amps: The Devil is in the Details
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January 16, 2009 at 7:44 am #77558John JMember
I recently formed a drone band with a longtime collaborator, and we’ve been killing ourselves trying to find rad tones. I had decent results with a Big Muff but found it too loose for the more defined riffs, and the Boss Metal Zone was tight enough for most of it but I hated the fizz. Also, I’ve never been able to capture that stoner Muff roar – something was always ‘off’ in the sound, there was a strange lack of ‘oomph’ or it was too trebley, or crackly, or Lord knows what else. I thought it was my amp but the cleans sounded great so I just dealt with it.
I’ve been playing a Twin Reverb for a while and had just resigned myself to lo-gain; I have some fuzz pedals that I keep for leads but I was always disappointed with the way they sounded, and every medium-to-high gain distortion I’ve ever owned has left my collection nearly immediately. Nonetheless, I went optimistically high gain shopping and settled on the Box of Metal, the finest sounding device that Long & Mcquade had in stock that day (no 3-band Metal Muff, unfortunately). When I got it home, the pedal sounded boomy and lame, so I re-EQ’d my amp until I found something passable and headed off to band practice.
We were getting really frustrated because his rig (Les Paul -> Boss ODB-3 -> Holy Grail -> Fender Hot Rod Deluxe) sounded a million times better than mine (Jazzmaster -> Box of Metal -> Sixteen Second Digital Delay -> Twin Reverb). Now, I have tried near every combination of the tone knobs on my amp but I’ve only ever been satisfied with the clean or mildly overdriven tones. In a last ditch effort, I checked his settings thinking that since they were both Fenders, the tone controls might have a similar voicing. He had set his tone Treble: 6 Middle: 6 Bass: 6 (without realizing it). We got a kick out of this, but when I tried it I was stunned… Not only was my clean tone better than ever, but my amp sounded incredible no matter what I had in front of it. My Muff sounds like a Muff and the Box of Metal sounds like the finest high-gain tube amps, yet my cleans sparkle in the way only a Twin Reverb can. My Strat’s neck pickup is finally bright enough but the bridge pickup has enough warmth to thwart the icepick-tones I’ve had so much trouble avoiding as of late. Has anyone else ever tried these settings and had similar results, or is it just us?
I’m honestly considering starting my own sect of the “Committee to Keep Music Evil” because of this.
January 16, 2009 at 8:15 am #90881julianModeratorMy guitar channel on my Bassman 135 is set 9, 9, 5, and my bass channel (which I use for delay and loops) is set 6, 5, 4 (yet at a higher volume setting)
Generally if I set my treble, mids, and bass all the same, it’s really really really bassy.
January 16, 2009 at 8:17 am #90882julianModeratorBTW some scholars believe 666 to be code for the name of a Roman Emperor, and the mark of the beast in some copies is actually 616. It’s been conjectured that it may be either Nero, Caligula, or someone else.
January 16, 2009 at 8:20 am #90884electro-melxModeratornice…..
it doesn’t really suprise me having all the tone controls at the same place should give you the most full sounds because nothing is being taken out of the amps natural tone… in theory you could put everything on 777, or just put them all on 10 and get a similar results, but louder…as most amps have passive tone controls.
…anyway that kind of ruins the story so I’ll just say..
666 Rock :metal:
January 17, 2009 at 3:09 pm #90996amm2911ParticipantI thought it was Diocletian.
January 17, 2009 at 9:42 pm #91029Ned FlandersModeratorA bit of trivia for you guys: the box of metal is just FIVE super hard ons in series with a marshall tonestack! When I got the schematic I was surprised at first but then it dawned on me, this kind of thing is normal for zach as almost all his pedals contain at least one SHO.
January 18, 2009 at 4:50 pm #91061John JMemberI remember hearing about that 666 thing; I forget the exact logic behind it, but I know they convinced me. I must admit that the story seemed 10x less interesting about ten seconds after I posted it… but whatever, rock + roll.
On a side note: The Box of Metal… Don’t get me wrong, it sounds good, but the cost : sound quality ratio is horrendously imbalanced, even in the Vexter version. Had I paid full price or traded in pedals I still like for it, I would be super super bummed out. However, if you’re working off of trades or gift certificates or something, it’s worth checking out. The gate control is a great addition for us single coil users, and it makes a great fuzz because it can sit anywhere in the chain. I also must admit I just like having it on my board – especially in my non-metal band. Any pedal with bloody graphics deserves some space, right?
Also worth mentioning: They didn’t have any Metal Muffs at the store I checked out, but going off of the Dan Miller demo, the boxes sound mighty similar…
January 18, 2009 at 7:11 pm #91068electro-melxModeratorMy favorite ‘Metal’ pedal is the Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal, it’s great (probably because it doesn’t sound very metal really)
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