A Touch of Class...Class5 Owners Welcome!

[DSL100 Dude]

Thats a nice collection you have there. I'm curious about those vox amps, Ive never played one, but Ive played some other Vox's recently and I really like them. I want to starting collecting them all, Vox AC4, a Tiny Terror, a Mesa Boogie Transatlantic, Laney Cub, etc. I already have a silverface Champ in addition to my C5

I have played on the Mesa/Boogie Transatlantic and I will have to admit it is quite a nice little amp. The price tag is the killer. But I reckon that is the price you pay for glowing blue internals.

There really are so many cool choices.

 

[benjammin420]

I have played on the Mesa/Boogie Transatlantic and I will have to admit it is quite a nice little amp. The price tag is the killer. But I reckon that is the price you pay for glowing blue internals.

There really are so many cool choices.

I haven't played one yet, but I want to. I like Mesas on a casual basis, but they are generally money than I want to spend for something that I'm pretty sure won't end up being a "first call" peice of gear. The TA would be a perfect addition to my budding collection

 

[DSL100 Dude]

How to Use the Controls on a Les Paul
Because a couple of people asked about it, here is the stuff I wrote in another thread about using the controls on a Les Paul. The OP asked how to use the controls to get sounds like Page and other classic players. My reply includes some alternative suggestions on how you might EQ your amp to get a different range of noises, and get a little bit more out of the neck and middle positions.

Hope it's of some use. Here it is:


First, your volume controls do not just control your loudness, but also your level of distortion (‘gain’ or ‘overdrive’). If your guitar has modern wiring, lowering the volume will also reduce the available treble, as if you’d turned the tone down too. If you have 1950s wiring this effect is far less prominent.

Secondly, your tone control not only cuts your treble, it also reduces the amount of ‘space’ your guitar seems to take up in the mix. Turning your tone down can effectively pull you ‘back’ into the mix.

Enough basics. Here’s some pointers.

EQ Your Amp for the Neck
Most of the time you’ve probably set up your amp for a good tone from the bridge. Try this instead and see what happens.

1. Turn all your volumes and tones up to 10.
2. Select the neck pick up.
3. Adjust your amp so you get a good soloing tone for that pickup.
4. Switch to bridge. This will be too bright. Ice-pick through ear territory.
5. Tame bridge with tone control, until you’ve got a good soloing tone.

You now have your ‘boost’ sounds. Now turn the bridge vol down (about 75-80%), until you’ve got a good crunching rhythm sound. If you have modern wiring you may need to turn up the tone a little at this stage. You could now play the rhythm on the bridge, and switch to the neck for the solo.

Solo on Bridge, cleans on Neck
Turn up your bridge tone and vol. That’s your solo sound (ice pick and all). Turn your neck vol down to about 50%. If your amp is any good, that should be nearly clean. If you’ve got 1950s wiring, it won’t be muddy either. You may now play the intro to Since I’ve Been Lovin’ You on the neck pick up. Switch to bridge for the signature lick. Back to neck, or turn down bridge to 50-60%. For a more sensible bridge pick up sound, just turn the tone down a fraction to clip some of the hairs off it.

If your amp is good, it should be sensitive enough to clean up when you turn down, and also to clean up if you back off with your right hand an pick gently. Use both these effects to control your tone.

Middle positions

Leave your bridge in its rhythm setting, then switch to middle. Now turn down the neck to nearly nothing, then slowly turn it back up (to about 50%). Somewhere across this range you’ll hear three fairly distinct tones. It’ll start out sounding like the bridge on its own. Next, it will fill out (i.e. get some extra bass), and it might do this quite suddenly. This is a really useful sound for soloing, because it basically sounds like the bridge pickup, but it’s fuller and meatier without being in any way muddy. As you keep turning up the neck vol it will start to sound more like both pick ups. This can be sort of nasal, but quite good.

Once you get both pick ups to the same vol (~ 75%) you’ve got the classic middle sound. Many people find this a bit muddy, but if you EQd the amp for your neck pick up, you should be OK.

And:

Before I forget again, there's one thing about the middle setting that I forgot to mention. It’s a lot easier to use than it sounds to describe it!

If you set your neck so it’s basically clean (~ 50%), and then set the bridge to about 75%, that will give you the sounds-like-the-bridge-pickup-but-fuller tone. As I said before, that’s a good rhythm or lead sound.

From that basic position, if you want to get a boost, all you have to do is adjust ONE volume control up to 100%. Either will work. If the bridge, you get the biting sound, if the neck you get the fuller sound. When you’ve finished, simply turn that volume back to where it was.

Simple.

In other words, once you’ve worked out your pre-sets, using the Les Paul this way is as simple as playing a Telecaster.

The above courtesy of Splattle101 on MLP forum

Thanks for posting this up. This will be very helpful for all of us Les Paul players.

 

[DSL100 Dude]

I was impressed at how warm it was. Right now the Transatlantic and the Mark V are my favorites in the Mesa/Boogie line.

The Class 5 has more bawlz compared to the TA in the lower wattage setting but when you bump it up to 15 or 25 watts and you have some punch.

 

[rocker67]

Hello in the class five community! I have owned my Class 5 for like five weeks now and I think it a AWESOME little amp. I was thinking though for the last few days that maybe the speaker was may be acting up. I have played the the hell out of the amp and it seemed to always sound grainy like to me, but, after looking at this thread and saw about tube changes then it made me start wondering if its the tubes I installed may be the factor. I am using all mullards, 12ax7's and el84. Or it takes the speaker a good while to breakin. I will more than likely try new tubes to see if the gritty sound changes to something al little better.

 

[benjammin420]

Hello in the class five community! I have owned my Class 5 for like five weeks now and I think it a AWESOME little amp. I was thinking though for the last few days that maybe the speaker was may be acting up. I have played the the hell out of the amp and it seemed to always sound grainy like to me, but, after looking at this thread and saw about tube changes then it made me start wondering if its the tubes I installed may be the factor. I am using all mullards, 12ax7's and el84. Or it takes the speaker a good while to breakin. I will more than likely try new tubes to see if the gritty sound changes to something al little better.

Speaker break-in time and tube quality are both possible and likley factors. I really like the tone of the stock speaker in mine, I need to hook a way to use it with my attenuator.

 

[13eastie]

I really like the tone of the stock speaker in mine, I need to hook a way to use it with my attenuator.

I've aso been ruminating on this for a few days.

I had a look inside and there seems to be a very simple solution, requiring only a small amount of cannibalism, but I'd be very grateful if someone with some experience of this could give me some feedback.

1. The internal speaker is hard-wired to the amp's circuitry
2. Inserting a jack into the 16 ohm speaker out kills the internal speaker
3. The same is true for the "Headphones" output
4. The internal Celestion G10F-15 has two additional solder points for spade connectors.

The plan would be simply to mount an additional "Speaker In" socket on the rear panel of the cab and wire it to the additional solder points on the speaker. That's it!

This would enable you to:

1. Connect the speaker to the amp using a jumper cable without having to remove the original hard-wired connection (pointless per se, but read on).
2. Use the jumper cable to connect the speaker through the Headphone to allow this trick to work with the internal speaker rather than an external one
3. Connect your chosen power attenuator between the "Ext Speaker" and the new "Speaker In" input. In fact, it might actually be feasible (probably using a replacement rear-panel) to integrate an attenuator into the cabinet...
4. Connect (with caution) a different low-power amp to the internal speaker e.g. I'd quite like to try a Tiny Terror and it would be cool to do so without needing a new cab for its exclusive use (the Celestion is rated 15W - I've got no idea how it would handle such treatment).
5. Use the amp in the manner originaly intended simply by removing the jumper cable.

This sounds almost too simple - certainly less invasive (and more cosmetically sound) than trying to create a master volume solution, with less tonal compromise and no significant financial outlay if you go with the US$55 Reyes Audio Output Tamer, the praises of which benjammin420 has already been singing here.

Can anyone identify any drawbacks with such an approach?

EDIT: The price of the Reyes Audio Output Tamer is now US$70

 

[Micky]

Sounds like an awesome idea. Should work fine.
As long as you realize you need to plug something into the back of the amp in the normal outputs to interrupt the circuit you will be fine.

Personally I am not a big fan of the stock speaker. If you like it that is fine though.
This amp sounds awesome thru a 4X12...

 

[13eastie]

This amp sounds awesome thru a 4X12...

I'm certain you are correct, but I'm probably like many Class 5 owners who've purchased it for its cute compactness! The challenge for me is to get as much as possible out of this little combo without increasing its footprint one jot.

The speaker is the final link in the audio chain. Marshall went with a 10". So many people have now said how good this amp sounds through an external cabinet that I'm suspecting the speaker choice was based principally on cost. Having had a look inside I don't think it would be possible to replace the speaker in the combo, but I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise - please post pics of your butchered 5's!

To have an attenuator-compatible unit with a Vintage 30 (replace with your choice of speaker) on board would be the goal for me with this, but I don't think the 10" sounds bad at all.

 

[benjammin420]

Marshall went with a 10". So many people have now said how good this amp sounds through an external cabinet that I'm suspecting the speaker choice was based principally on cost.

I disagree. Every amp is going to sound great thru a 4x12 cab, period. Sure many dont like the sound of the stock set up, and sure many people like to use ext cabs, but IMO it does sound great as is. You can't make one unit that will satisfy everyones ideal design. If you went with a bigger speaker, you would need a bigger cab, the C5 was designed to be a 10" combo, I dont think cost had anything to do with that. The C5 is bigger than the Tiny Terror combo (w/ 12" speaker) and the Valve Jr (not sure what speaker that one has) but the C5 sounds better than both, I would suspect most other amps in this style are designed cheaped. Besides the rattle problem, and being manufactured in Asia, these ams are very solid for the money

 

[DSL100 Dude]

The Class 5 is UK built.

I know, crazy, but true.

 

[DSL100 Dude]

Excellent stuff fellas.

I will have to go with a big ole +1 on the speaker break in. That is just one of those things we all live with. I have already ordered a Greenback 10" "just in case". I LOVE the Class 5 through my 1960A but that was to be expected. That was part of the design of the amp. Marshall was hoping that we would buy 4x12 cabs for that bad boy. I of course will be using mine most of the time as the combo that it is so I too will be looking at how to get the most "out of the box".

Great idea 13eastie. I would think that so long as you follow everything so that your load is correct you should be good.

 

[benjammin420]

The Class 5 is UK built.

I know, crazy, but true.

I stand corrected then, I took the "made in england" sticker with a grain of salt (though I guess i've just been reading bad info online)

I still don't think the design is all that cheap, compared to other amps of the same size/style. A 10" speaker is a decent match for a 5W amp (my 6 watt Champ has a 8" speaker is it sounds fantastic, and even better through my 4x10" cab)

 

[DSL100 Dude]

LOL! I reckon that I am trusting that the pictures of assembly that I have seen are actually in England. I am sure the argument can be made that the components are all made in Asia.

 

[rocker67]

I know eventually I will be running mine through a 4x12 cab. Just gotta save up for it! Oh, And the mullard 12ax7 were the culprits of that "grainy" tone I was getting. Switched them for a sovtek 12ax7 and on one of the ecc83 that came with the amp. Sounds a hell of alot better!

 

[poeman33]

I know eventually I will be running mine through a 4x12 cab. Just gotta save up for it! Oh, And the mullard 12ax7 were the culprits of that "grainy" tone I was getting. Switched them for a sovtek 12ax7 and on one of the ecc83 that came with the amp. Sounds a hell of alot better!

When you say "better", how did it change the sound?

 

[13eastie]

Routing Headphone Output to Internal Speaker

I carried out my modification this afternoon, as described above.

I'll post an evaluation later on.

 

[DSL100 Dude]

That is outstanding!

Let us know how it works. I am guessing like a charm.

 

[benjammin420]

Sounds like a cool idea. I've been thinking of doing something similar, where by I can run the attenuator through the internal speaker.

Does it seem possible to mod the amp so you could run an external cabinet AND the internal speaker? I don't know much about electronics, but if that were possible, that would be great, the C5 thru a 1x10 and a 1x12 simultaneously

 

[13eastie]

Does it seem possible to mod the amp so you could run an external cabinet AND the internal speaker?

I'm no expert but, my answer would be 'not simply'. The internal circuitry is designed to kill the 10" when a jack is inserted into the Ext Out.

You could circumvent this at the speaker connectors, but you would still be messing with the impedance.

If you were to connect two speakers simultaneously, they would need to match the 16 ohms the output is expecting e.g. two 32 ohm speakers in parallel or two 8 ohm speakers in series.

The internal speaker is already 16 ohm, so you'd need to replace it and once done, you'd need to make your twin speaker solution permanent.

EDIT: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91iEAsqPlHY"]Class 5 'Stack'[/ame]This chap has come up with a nice looking 'stack' by sticking a Vintage 30 in a Haze cab.