Grabbing the tiger by the tail, HarmonIcly speaking
Dec 18th, 2010, 07:36
Two recent demos of a new model, Mojave Sidewinder HG. HG standing for high gain. The trick is to create a rich enough sound to make a single coil bridge position pickup on a Fender Srtat sound rich with 3rd order harmonics and not allow the 2nd order to get dominant. Distortion or square wave distortion raise the bass side of the waveform to equal out what would otherwise be a heavily slanted waveform where the leading edge (treble) becomes stronger. Using a Pentode with a very high gain characteristic will naturally create this result without using EQ.
This particular guitar amp has two volume controls, each having a gain stage voiced with different emphasis. The Bass channel reaches way down and creates a very strong low frequency gain by passing lots of low end. The treble volume starts at the low mid point and continues up. To help clear things up we put a mid cut in the bright channel which gives more room for the bass side and prevents the two from overlapping in the low mid area allowing for a better energy distribution.
Result, a normally very thin and bright guitar sound is enhanced without creating front end distortion, rather creating high gain in the 3rd order harmonic area which in turn feeds the pentode power tube and output transformer yielding remarkably rich, smooth and sweat tones.
A single coil guitar players dream. No more false pedal dependent solid state distortion which favors 2nd ordered harmonics on a whole but does not give a super clean un distorted gain without distortion to creat the 3rd order harmonics.
This is a lesson in device driven sound. Vacuum Tubes can create this unique result on a whole due to the construction and thermonic driven electron flow.
Recorded at 96K 24 Bit, bounced down to 44.1 16 bit mp3. More space in the sound in my book.
[url]http://mojaveampworks.com/audio/Sleepdemo.mp3[/url]
[url]http://mojaveampworks.com/audio/IATW.mp3[/url]
[url]http://mojaveampworks.com/audio/swhg1.mp3[/url]
One last detail worth mentioning. None of these guitar tones had a channel EQ pulled up. What you hear is what the microphones yielded.
Victor Mason
Mojave Ampworks LLC.