AMP B1 Legend demo

[motterpaul]

I just uploaded this - it is too dark to see the pedal but it is boxed anyway.

The circuit has Gain / Volume / Bass / Mid / Treble

I am playing at a fairly low volume. Your playback speakers will affect the sound a lot. It came out much more trebly than I expected but the camera is also in the "ice pick" spot in front of the amp. I set the Equalizer on my sound card to "rock" just because I get more bass/treble that way.

Anyway - at least you get an idea of what this pedal can do. It's a very beefy, high gain circuit.



<nabble_embed>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw9aoBKeRPY&list=UUZ4vV1hHNib_yiNieqTghlA</nabble_embed>

[motterpaul]

FYI - this is what happened when I tried to embed it. But I have done this before and the YouTube eventually does show up.

If not - just click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw9aoBKeRPY&list=UUZ4vV1hHNib_yiNieqTghlA

[Frank_NH]

Great demo Paul!  

Dang it - now you've given me another pedal to build.  

BTW, I could hear the EQ changes as you were going through the demo.  The B1 sounds fabulous, but a little on the high gain side for what I play live (but you never know when you need that fuzz-tortion sound).

[Chris60601]

I wanna hear Paul say; Dr. Z Antidote and the white coily cable of oh soooo much love, lets do it!

[Frank_NH]

Then he'd need to invest in some cowboy boots along with the Dr. Z Maz...

(I love gearmandude...he's a riot and actually does great demos).

[rocket88]

I've got cowboy boots, but no Dr Z, just a mesa and bugera. But, I love his demos, and he's funny as all hell.

[motterpaul]

But I know what you mean. My wife will tell me a pedal sounds "really good" when it maintains that clear guitar tone, but adds some drive and sustain. She doesn't like heavy overdrive, either. She likes the Xotic AC and the JCM800 emulator.

The Legend is higher gain than most pedals but you can trim that back and it still works surprisingly well.  I like pedals that add nice overtones to the tone of the guitar, and give me a smooth touch of squeal on sustained notes. Most overdrives don't do that (good tube amps do it).  There are a lot of pedals that give you a high gain sound, but not with the sustain and cut-through I like to find. It needs to be high gain, but also clean - not hairy or fuzzy, it needs attack and clarity of pitch. You wouldn't have a hard time hearing this guitar/pedal in a mix, which is the problem I find with a lot of fuzz tones and some IC-based overdrives.

I remember seeing a Slash concert where he used a fuzz and the guitar just got lost in the mix - you couldn't hear individual notes. I guess the bottom line for me is while I might think an effect is cool when I hear it naked, it is a different story when it's in a band situation.

And yeah, the GearMannDude cadence - its kind of hard not to do that when you are talking to yourself. Plus that midwest accent.  I do find it hard to get a great video representation of a circuit's real sound. The cameras tend to compress the sound a lot - but I still think you get the idea which makes it worthwhile. I use studio monitors to play back sounds on my computer (Just Rolands, but at least they are decent fidelity). I hope most people use decent speakers - especially if they listen to music on their computer as much as I do.

I think I made to make more demos. My Thor came out really good, a plexi pedal, and a Deep Blue Delay that turned out great and really enhances the tone of a lot of these pedals. I still don't completely know what I am doing, but I can build some decent pedals now.

[Frank_NH]

You could experiment with 2N5457s in this circuit if you wanted to tame it a bit.  Those typically give about half the gain of J201s for the same source resistance and biased to 4.5 - 5V.  But I'd leave this one as is - it really does sound good.

BTW - you can upload sound files to sites like Soundcloud if you want to share the best audio quality.  While it's nice to see video of the pedal knobs being turned and the effect responding, you can get a good idea of the pedal's response from an mp3 file with some notes about the effect settings at different points in the audio file.

[motterpaul]

My Q1 is a 5457 - I didn't have an 5458. Good idea on Soundcloud, but first I have to change up my recording method (I have decent recording gear, It is just a bit of a hassle to fire it up).

[Travis]

Sounds great, Paul! I dig that it doesn't seem to be very hissy like many pedals with such high gain

Seems to have a great EQ. The mids pot really changes the sound

To comment on the compression; in addition to the camera mic compression, I've noticed that YouTube seems to really compress audio. Especially if you don't play it on HD! The sound quality on YouTube can be atrocious, but I think your demo sounded great. The sound and some of your licks remind me of the leads from "Dirty Woman" by Pink Floyd

[motterpaul]

True about YouTube. That demo has HD. What I notice is that the demo seems very trebly to the point where you can't hear how much treble the pedal can add itself. I think there is a lot more tonal range to the pedal than what the video shows - just for reference for those thinking about building it.