Stratovari wrote:Carol-Ann_Amps wrote:The CA JB-100s that Joe use are set up as a mid-range amp in his rig. They are a two-channel amp and can be set however you want. Joe overdrives the clean channel and has the mid boost at 850Hz on all the time. Massive mid range !! It is being used as mid range amp to be blended with the Jubilee, which is set on the lead channel and fills the high and low end. With the settings he uses, it's not supposed to be run on it's own....THAT WAS THE POINT HE WAS MAKING !!!
Oh well, misunderstood...
Alan, on nothing else I was referring. I understand Joes setup well and what frequencies each amp is sublining.
The CA is setted on a totally midrange. And on this settings it probably too middy to play it alone..
With the blending of the Jubilee its phenomenal of course.
And yes - for somebody who hasn't seen the guitar center video this point get lost in my reply. Mea culpa!
Let me say that I love the CA amps. I never heard such complex and sweet mids on any other amp.
So let me close that in no way there was any offense meant.
Justin, thanks for backing me up here.
/Alex
Thanks guys, appreciate the clarification. I tend to get a little over-sensitive as I get a lot of people trying to pull me down or prove me wrong for some reason.
I actually listened to that clip again today and whats quite funny to me is that the red JB-100 was heavily designed with a lot of input from Eric Johnson as well as Joe. I spent two days with Eric tweaking an amp to a certain specification and the same preamp was used in that amp. I love that whenever Joe demos that particular amp, I always hear some of Erics influence to. Joe is an amazing player that has his own distinctive tone and feel, but he can capture the style and feel of other players really when he wants to for the purposes of demoing things.
The other point I took from the video was where he talks about the Jubilee. Most folk think the LED/Diode clipping is the key to the Jubilees tone. Yes it certainly is an easy and effective way of creating assymetrical clipping without using several tube gain stages and works reallywell, but the key to that amp is in it's power amp section. The 100W Jubilee has the least amount of negative feedback and power amp damping of virtually any 100W Marshall. What that means is it has very emphasised highs and lows. The low end is not very tight at all at mostvolume settings and wouldn't work in a lot of situations, but with Joe driving it into power tube OD, it tends to tighten it up a little more. Most people would never play a Jub at the level he does and would be possibly dissapointed with the low volume results if they were trying to capture Joes tone, they sound somewhat thin and fizzy and the low end is woofy. Grind those babies up and they take on a whole different persona. This is also probably why Joe doesn't think the 50W Jub sounds the same. At bedroom volumes they actually do, but once they are wound up they are like two totally different amps with very different frequency responses.
The CA JB-100 has 3 times the amount of power amp feedback, with a lot more damping than the Jub, which smooths out and flattens the entire amp and it tends to have a less extended low end, but it's much tighter at any volume. To sit between the Jub, it can't afford to have much of an extended low end. It would bcome very muddy.
The last thing that should be noted is the use of barriers in front of the speaker cabinets. This REALLY helps tighten the low end up a lot, frequencies in the bass ranges can take several feet to fully form. These really low frequencies are reflected a lot by the plexiglass shields before they are fully formed, in a way creating a negative feedback loop with the sound waves themselves. This has a huge effect on the perceived low end and really tightens it right up. If Joe removed these (apart from it being bloody loud) the low end would take on a totally different feel and his rig would sound completely different. The distance that the shields are from the cabinets would also change the frequency response of the rig. The closer it is, the more the low end will be tightened.
So for anyone who is trying to replicate Joes rig, all the pieces have to be there and being run at the same levels or else your result will be very very different.