your amp rig "game changer"

[tallcoolone]

My flame suit is on, so here goes. The total game changer for me has to be the Fractal FM3. Since I got it, I play more guitar than ever. I have 4 Marshalls, a Laney Lionheart & a box of pedals that are gathering dust. My chain is FM3 > Fryette Power Station > Blackstar Artisan 2 x 12 w/V30 & Creamback 75. It is the best $2200 I ever spent on gear.

I’ve said it a million times but yeah, I got the Fractal when I was stuck in an apartment with severe noise restrictions and it was night and day enjoyment wise. I don’t think I ever played more than my first year with the Fractal. Tube amps through guitar cabs choked way down suck

 

[dro]

I graduated in 78 as well. A good time was had by all!

That's an understatement. At my Highschool, even the Valedictorian partied.

 

[SkyMonkey]

My game changer was going stereo.

I had my DSL40CR hooked up to a Boss GT-100 in 4CM and MIDI.
A cheap Valvestate VS65R came up for sale at my LGS.
So I snagged it to setup the DSL in 5CM, running the 5th GT-100 output cable to the FX Return of the VS65R.
Amazing difference.

A year or so later and the VS65R has it's own pedalboard now, with a TC Electronic Mimiq Doubler feeding into a stereo Zoom Multi Stomp TBE pedal.
I can now use the VS65R in 5CM too, to slave the DSL power amp.
A stereo Mimiq pedal is an amazing piece of kit.

 

[tmingle]

That's an understatement. At my Highschool, even the Valedictorian partied.

It was a different time for sure.

 

[Dozer]

I don’t recall having an Aha moment regarding amplifiers, but I’m happy to hear you’ve found a tone you love.

I did have one. Especially with amps that have a master volume. Run the master volume at least 3/4th's of the way and use the pre-gain knob for overall volume. The difference in touch sensitivity, fullness and just overall tone is striking. I used to chuckle at people that said "you gotta get those power tubes breathing heavy" because I was almost strictly a high gain guy for many years. Don't get me wrong I still use high gain for some stuff but getting those power tubes to the point where they just start to break up is an experience I am addicted to. It can turn a mediocre amp into a fantastic tone machine. Of course that means the volume approaches crazy if not using a an attenuator or low wattage amp but it's so worth it.

 

[Rich_S]

For me it was switching from a big amp with the master volume way down to a small amp cranked. Back in the '80s I played a 2203 head through a 2-12" cab with EVM-12Ls. For the places we played, I usually ran the master below 2, and I thought I had pretty good tone.

Fast forward 20 years, 4 kids, and 3 house moves and I found myself wanting to play but lacking an amp. Shocked at the prices for quality tube amps, I decided to build one. Remembering that Robbie McIntosh played something called a Marshall 18 Watter on the Pretenders Learning To Crawl, I found a Bogen PA donor amp with the right iron and tube complement and converted it to roughly 18 Watter specs. Despite my noob builder status, it sounded glorious. At about the same time, I found some demo cassettes of the old band and was shocked to hear the thin, wimpy sound of my castrated 2203.

The amp only has two knobs: Volume and Tone. I use the volume knob as a gain control and generally run it about 3/4 of the way up. Then I fine-tune the volume with a Weber Mini MASS hidden in the back. This amp with the MASS at 1/2 sounds way better than a 100-watter with an attenuator dialed down near minus infinity. Bonus: 25-watt attenuators are a LOT cheaper than 100-watt ones.

The 18 Watter remains my #1 amp to this day and I always get complements on my tone when I play out.

 

[80sTone]

I guess my moment is probably not earth-shattering but it was rediscovering the basic stock amp tone again. Spent so much time with pedals, loops, MFX units got lost - then a few years back removed it all - and got re-inspired

 

[FrostyTheSnake]

Yep, crazy those 90’s days without internet and knowledge. Everyone that buys a Marshall should have had a note to say “crank it up, slap a pedal in front and boost it”. Done.

I had pretty much the same experience but with a JCM 900 Dual Reverb fresh out of High School. Why does this thing sound like complete ice-pick garbage? It sounds like a transistor radio, but with even less bass. Sold it 2 years later for an '84 JCM 800 2204 b/c I read in Guitar World that Billy Corgan used one and it blew my balls off with an OD pushing the front. Gear in general was a big mystery to me b/c there was no internet to learn anything from back then, and I didn't live in a big progressive town where there was access to this kind of information. I'm sure if someone had told to just crank the clean channel on the JCM 900 I wouldn't have hated it so much

 

[Deftone]

The BBE Stinger was a game changer for me as well. It just clarifies everything. Not always needed but some amps it's a must have. I absolutely love it.

 

[FRED]

My biggest A-Ha moment was buying a Marshall JMP-1 preamp (when they first came out) . Used it exclusively for more than 20 years. Took almost no work to get an outstanding tone….. but after 20+ years I just got the itch for something a little different. ;-)
It was also SOoooooo easy to record with.

 

[Karl Brake]

The Univibe. Beautiful dimensional effect, not so aggressive as a phaser or chorus, and at slow speeds, makes guitar lines really sweet and fluid, not really sounding like an effect, boosting without being in yer face.. And just discovering that it's so much part of so many great players' tones.

 

[Karl Brake]

This also kind of confused me and I think gets kind of complicated. For instance I have a DSL 40 CR and a JVM that’s running through a 1960B…. Both have their own pedal boards and if I’m playing with delay I want it to come through both amps and speakers not just one. So you have to have multiple stereo pedals from what I understand if you want to achieve this…. Then going from O.D to clean quickly now I’m dancing quickly on two butttons to switch channels. Seems like a lot of work, or I’m dumb and there’s an easier way to do it?

Two things...you might get by with an ABY switcher specifically for effects loops...Radial makes one. Or maybe you need to build a midi control rig.

 

[Edgar Frog]

Mine was when I finally put together a proper pedalboard with all the basic effects I love and need.

 

[Mentalo]

Mine was a 79€ Boss SD-1 to boost a Marshall. Took me over 15 years but just 1 Euge Valovirta video to realize that's all it needs to get the high gain sound of my dreams...