The real thing
We finally got to test with Wes' guitar and pedals. He was very pleased with it and had a great time playing with it for a couple hours. I was very pleased on a couple of accounts. Number one is that the feedback problem is gone. Number two is that one of his first comments was that he loved the clean tone. I figure that if you don't have good clean tones then no amount of peripheral equipment will fix it. Wes also understands now why watts are basically meaningless.
His pedals worked very well running the guitar into the pedals into the amp. Deafening levels in his room were easily obtained with the master volume on about 1 or 2 and the preamp gain controls still allowed a fair amount distortion.
Later that evening we went over to where his band practices and worked with the drummer/sound expert Mike to see how it would integrate into their stage setup. The short answer is very well. Their setup is a largish Behringer mixer and separate power amp feeding a pair of older Peavey 15" plus horn mains. After enjoying a few minutes of playing the amp alone we plugged a DI box into the preamp out jack and connected the DI box to the mixer via a low imp XLR input. After a few minutes of fiddling I could see a smile growing on Mike's face. It was subtle but clearly this was an improvement over what they had been doing. I am no metal expert but it sounded pretty good to me.
After a few minutes of playing Mike said, "Wes, you have a tube amp there. Quit playing it like a solid state amp." He had him turn off the pedals and gave him a few quick instructions on setting the gain and soon we had a really nice smooth roar coming out of the speakers. Needless to say I was very pleased.
Mike confirmed that we do indeed need to tame the bright channel a little bit. I am hoping that the parts will arrive today so that we can get that done before I have to leave.
Wes promised to make some audio clips and send them to me when they have a chance. He is even talking of making a video clip. Will post audio whenever I get some. Hopefully he can get some clips of him with the amp alone and also of the whole band. They do not yet have clips on their web site http://upperdeckmusic.com/ since they don't really have adequate recordings yet.
We had a good time teasing Wes calling him Wesley Van Nuggent. We even have him working on learning "Johnny B. Goode". If he is going to have a classic amp he needs to know some classic songs right?
mike
We finally got to test with Wes' guitar and pedals. He was very pleased with it and had a great time playing with it for a couple hours. I was very pleased on a couple of accounts. Number one is that the feedback problem is gone. Number two is that one of his first comments was that he loved the clean tone. I figure that if you don't have good clean tones then no amount of peripheral equipment will fix it. Wes also understands now why watts are basically meaningless.
His pedals worked very well running the guitar into the pedals into the amp. Deafening levels in his room were easily obtained with the master volume on about 1 or 2 and the preamp gain controls still allowed a fair amount distortion.
Later that evening we went over to where his band practices and worked with the drummer/sound expert Mike to see how it would integrate into their stage setup. The short answer is very well. Their setup is a largish Behringer mixer and separate power amp feeding a pair of older Peavey 15" plus horn mains. After enjoying a few minutes of playing the amp alone we plugged a DI box into the preamp out jack and connected the DI box to the mixer via a low imp XLR input. After a few minutes of fiddling I could see a smile growing on Mike's face. It was subtle but clearly this was an improvement over what they had been doing. I am no metal expert but it sounded pretty good to me.
After a few minutes of playing Mike said, "Wes, you have a tube amp there. Quit playing it like a solid state amp." He had him turn off the pedals and gave him a few quick instructions on setting the gain and soon we had a really nice smooth roar coming out of the speakers. Needless to say I was very pleased.
Mike confirmed that we do indeed need to tame the bright channel a little bit. I am hoping that the parts will arrive today so that we can get that done before I have to leave.
Wes promised to make some audio clips and send them to me when they have a chance. He is even talking of making a video clip. Will post audio whenever I get some. Hopefully he can get some clips of him with the amp alone and also of the whole band. They do not yet have clips on their web site http://upperdeckmusic.com/ since they don't really have adequate recordings yet.
We had a good time teasing Wes calling him Wesley Van Nuggent.
We even have him working on learning "Johnny B. Goode". If he is going to have a classic amp he needs to know some classic songs right?mike