What is Gain?

[Reginald]

ok,thanx ,I understood...
hey,look....about sustain....someone could explain also the difference about sustain and gain....
there are many people who think about if u increase the gain,u will obtain even more sustain...or better ...the notes doesn't die under your fingers( I don't know how in English,sorry).actually those guys ,I tthink, need and search only more sustain not more gain...but they think is matter of gain....actually,is matter about sustain,I think
...considering JCM800 for example...it owns much gain,but little sustain...it too 'dry' sustain,'dry' sound.

 

[rockback]

Most gear down the line from the mixer will feature input and output controls. Most of these controls have a 0 or U setting. Set these at 0 or U and that same signal coming from the mixer will flow through each piece of gear from input to output while maintaining the same signal level it had coming from the Gain or Trim stage in the mixer.

 

[diesect20022000]

Superleadfixer,
You have in a few posts made what all my college professors(yes in Audio Engineering) took semesters to teach. BRAVO!!

thats because they're paid for one and because they're approach is for a generalized/average learning curve. I agree though.

 

[diesect20022000]

hey just a quick add guys

try turning your gain down and your master up in a in-band mix this helps get into power tube overdrive which gives a much more musical type overdrive/distortion. to my ears preamp overdrive/distortion is not as rich or full and contains less harmonics and has less head room.

I use a JMP 2203 with Master volume. (2 power tubes pulled out most of the time)
high input with the gain set to just barley overdriving/distorting then use the master volume to take me into judas priest/iron maiden rythem overdrive territory. then for lead boost i use a ts808 with a JRC 4558 opamp (old a-- ibenez overdrive pedal) set for more of a clean boost which pushes the preamp of the 2203 a tad bit harder causeing the power stage to go into full on overdrive/distortion. if i want cleans, there is a volume knob and tone knob on my guitar for a reason. works real well!

when you drive the power tubes you're eliminating headroom so that confused me. I may be missinterpreting that. Also, it's not a good idea to pull (presumably the outside pair) of power tubes to drop your output. You can seriously damage your amp. Specificaly the trannies. It works but, at a penalizing cost. I'd hate for you to blow up an amp like that and ALOT of people do. You'd be better off getting a quality attenuator though you would want to get speakers that drive at lower volumes but, with the same characteristics as your current ones to get closer to the same sound.

 

[diesect20022000]

peavey 5150/6505,Windsor and more .......preamp gain and post amp gain. interestingly enough the pre and post are preamp volume and power amp volume effectively "distortion and volume".Someone needs to let Hartley know that he's mislabeling his amplifiers.

 

[Adrian R]

peavey 5150/6505,Windsor and more .......preamp gain and post amp gain. interestingly enough the pre and post are preamp volume and power amp volume effectively "distortion and volume".Someone needs to let Hartley know that he's mislabeling his amplifiers.

Dude..that Avatar???????

 

[frethand101]

Wow, damn good thread, I even broke out a notebook & was scratchin' down sum notes here & there..

Now this is what I'm talkin' about!!..

 

[fastdave]

Very interesting Jon, I was noticing quite a lot of typo's and wondering if he hadn't proof read it, thinking that 95% of amp enthusiasts wouldn't understand anyway - I come on to the rest of the posts and discover to my delight that there are people who got it, and to my dismay, this chap hadn't even given you an acknowledgement.
How dissappointing people are sometimes.
Not you sir, I fully appreciated your advice on biasing the other day - I even had some close tolerance 1 ohm resistors at hand.
Many thanks - death to all plagiarists.
Dave.

 

[Lane Sparber]

What is Plagiarism? Some asked me so here we go.!!

-Lane

 

[jazzy cian]

Wow...superb job! Too bad they're not his posts (copy/paste works wonders). These are copy/paste jobs from MetroAmp where I was the original author of these threads 4 years ago.

MetroAmp.com Forum • View topic - Gain Explained

MetroAmp.com Forum • View topic - Setting Proper Gain Structure

Ha ha ha, Love it!!!! Bad form for not crediting the original source!!!

 

[Sir Crunch A Lot]

Wow...superb job! Too bad they're not his posts (copy/paste works wonders). These are copy/paste jobs from MetroAmp where I was the original author of these threads 4 years ago.

MetroAmp.com Forum • View topic - Gain Explained

MetroAmp.com Forum • View topic - Setting Proper Gain Structure

Ha ha. This is great.

 

[Maçon]

How do you create a new group? not a relevant but also quick and can't usually get customer service... So can you tell me how possibly to create a group anyone? I appreciate it -I can't seem to find this link/button!

 

[dirtyhippie08]

!!

Great thread! Answered a ton of questions i've had. Thanx!

 

[Heritage Softail]

Cool thread. Seems the cut and paste guy cut and ran. No prob with posting some wisdom from another source, the lack of acknowledgement is unethical.

But on gain.

Whatever sounds best to the song. Some like more and some less. I like power tube distortion in new country and bluesy stuff. In modern metal or rock it is the curse of of tight riffs.

Dialing up enough gain to sound right, and proper tubes in the power section to have dynamic punch in the riffs works for my ears. Over compressed over the top gain just isn't it for me.

Enough gain, less bass, punchy power section = The Shit!

 

[---]

ok,thanx ,I understood...
hey,look....about sustain....someone could explain also the difference about sustain and gain....
there are many people who think about if u increase the gain,u will obtain even more sustain...or better ...the notes doesn't die under your fingers( I don't know how in English,sorry).actually those guys ,I tthink, need and search only more sustain not more gain...but they think is matter of gain....actually,is matter about sustain,I think
...considering JCM800 for example...it owns much gain,but little sustain...it too 'dry' sustain,'dry' sound.

You need to look into compression for sustain. Find yourself a nice compressor pedal. it'll do the job. Cheers - Trev

 

[sepulchre]

You need to look into compression for sustain. Find yourself a nice compressor pedal. it'll do the job. Cheers - Trev

Good point, Trev. Nailed it.

I personally don't see any problem with the sustain of the JCM800 2203 design. Maybe it's the guitar being used? Anyway, if sustain is the problem, the right compressor is the answer.

 

[Wycked Lester]

 

[Marshall_Watts87]

I love Gain and is why the JMP-1 is such a beautiful sounding versatile device. First off you get 2 OD's voiced differently. and the with the power amp you can select a voice switch to make it less or more aggressive. I got hard rock sounds on OD 1 with the gain at 8, that's how badass it is. then put it on 10, still sounds cool and the sweet spot is 12-16 on both OD's in my opinion. But definitely sounds amazing from 16-20, especially if you don't scoop the mids, that doesn't mean put a lot of mids, just a touch! this unit is amazing, I've got like 20 different patches of gain structures, from Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads, JAKE E LEE, to James Hetfield, and Stephen Carpenter. unbelievable.

 

[Ed Hunter]

I always understood "GAIN" as the volume of something and "distortion" and 'break up" as what you hear when the pre amp is pushed or the signal itself overdriving ?

 

[jbale]

I received an Ashdown 100 watt as a present years ago before they stopped building guitar amps, I was not really interested in playing with distortion at all, yea I'm an older rocker I still call crunch distortion at times, I played a lot of clean tunes; I've been a drummer for ever but also played guitar some, I kept getting too much crunch and not enough clean tones, so I played with the tone controls and found I had to turn the master to a 1/4 then the volume to 4, 5, or 6 for real clean and crunch was master on half or more and volume about the same, the crunch was about the best I'd heard besides a Marshalls. Sorry I don't remember what the amp was other than Ashdown, it was stolen, the head was at an out side gig, another guitarist was using it and I was packing my drums up, never got it back and I stopped trusting many but that was 30 years ago. Great info on this thread but often way too wordy for me, specifics would be nicer.