Newly discovered tone

Have you ever tried something new, or set up things in a way that you normally wouldn't think would work out too well, but you did it anyway out of curiosity, only to be amazed at the awsome tone you got. Well, this recently happened to me :D .

Here's the story... When jamming at home I had two way's of going about it. 1, bring my PODxt home from practice and hook it up to my computer. While great for recording, it gets a little cramped in the area I have by my computer. 2, plug my Peavey RockMaster preamp into the cd in on my Marshall MG10cd. This sounded ok, and gave me more room to move around. I also have a '61 Gibson GA-5 that's fun to play with, but not suited too well for my type of music. So, I thought, why not plug the RM into the GA-5? But, only problem is, the GA-5 starts to get dirty after the volume goes past 8 o'clock. So, I put a lower gain preamp tube in to get a little more headroom, and proceeded to plug the RM into it. At first I wasn't too sure about it, but after a little tweaking... WOW :eek: This is a truely amazing and versatile set up! I can go from sparkeling, spanky cleans, to fat SRV like dirty blues, to Lynyrd Skynyrd crunch, all on the clean channel. The crunch channel picks up where the clean leaves off and goes into the Marshall crunch area in the vein of Angus and Slash. The ultra channel takes it over the top into heaviest of metal tones. All I need now is a better speaker with more headroom, and I will be set. This set up is perfect for home recording, because it can really be cranked up without bothering the neighbors.

Once I get my music room ready to move into, I'll make some recordings and take some pictures. It's just unfreakingbelievable how BIG this set up sounds. For those that don't know, this amp is 44 years old, 5 watts, all tube combo, with an 8" speaker, and no tone controls. Just input, on, and volume... the essentials :cool: , and the Rockmaster is a 3-channel, all tube preamp.

Anybody else have any success (or dissaster) stories about trying out "different" set-ups?

We (in my first band) circa 1983/4 used to run a 30 W practice amp into a old tube Fender Vibrochamp 50 (no dirty channel). We just unhooked the speaker cables from the 30 W tranny (cant remember the make), fitted a jack and plugged it into the fender. From Beach boys to Motorhead in about 2 seconds !

It sounded great however Im not sure that overloading the input (which was what we were doing) was that good of an idea. Im also not sure Id do it with an amp I cared about !

I only record at a friends house and he has this roland board that does everything! I use a Pandoras Box and plug directly into his mixer. That thing is awesome for that kind of stuff because it's so versitale (spelling?) and I can emulate just about anything.. problem is that it doesn't support an actual pedal so I can't do a wah or turn things on and off.. What I set it at is what I get until I change the setting on the PX4.

Before that, I'd do it into my laptop. Again from the PX4, but using Marty's board.. wow.. the sounds you can squeeze out of that thing.
I'll find out what he has and share it with all of you