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Stormtrooper12

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Everything posted by Stormtrooper12

  1. The master volume knobs on these are notorious for being flakey. Maybe swapping that out might help. Although your specific time thing does sound like a tube/heating type problem.
  2. Oh yeah, I guess I forgot to make the joke too. Take a chainsaw to your SpiderValve and turn it into a separate head and 2x12 cab. Voila! The best of both worlds ;)
  3. In this day and age I'd go with the light easy to carry stuff, especially if you plan on moving it around lots. If I lived in Cali where it's always warm and never rains and had a single story rancher house with an attached garage and big goons for bandmates with a huge ugly van well then I could easily wheel out my 100 watt Mesa 2x12 combo all the time with no worries or hassle. As it stands, it sits in my basement and I don't even think about moving it anymore. It weighs a ton! And I'm no noodle-neck poindexter :P I've lugged heavy tube amps for years and it sucks (especially trying to get them in the back seats of cars without damaging the car or the amp). Nowadays with P.A.'s everywhere and line-outs on little combos or heads one doesn't need the big huge stacks and all that jazz. Unless you want thunderous sound with you all the time I'd go for the DT25 I think for sure. I've run a line-out from a cheap Cube30 I had into my brothers' large Carvin P.A. with 3 ways and it sounded great. To me the big a$$ tube combo's are just a pain these days. Even just thinking about it haha. My old 71 Ampeg Gemini20 2x10 is about all my back would feel like fudging with now :D Cheers
  4. As far as phones go you kinda get what ya pay for in a way. I had a relatively expensive pair of AKG K240 mkii (Last of the Austrian batch) and they sounded superb using a TC Electronics Desktop Konnect 6 as a headphone amp/soundcard when connected to a laptop through firewire. They are somewhat funny looking and would make your head slightly warmish after long use and a bit uncomfortable but really sound good. I sold them and bought a much cheaper pair of brand new Sony MDR-7506 and they are fantastic. They're lightweight, comfortable, don't cause you too sweat or get hot really and reproduce sound very accurate and faithfully as far as I'm concerned. I guess that's why they're the most widely used headphones in recording studios around the world. Any of the Sennheiser HD's in the 200 dollar range and up are excellent as well. One last thing I find about the Sony's is they seem to do good all on their own without a separate headphone amp (maybe because of the ohm rating) and sound great just plugged straight into my laptop or my Zoom H4n handy recorder or cell phone or whatever.
  5. Yup, good point. I was going to mention it as well but didn't. If he happened to had turned on the 2x12 on purpose or inadvertantly he would have frazzled something for sure. What he needs to realize or imagine is that the juice from the amp head just needs to go directly to the speakers. Not through any other amp circuitry. And with properly rated cabling, connectors and ohm loads.
  6. Very nice tone and playing, and I listened through the crumby laptop speakers because I had a toque on and was too lazy to put on the good headphones :D Noticed a little Life In The Fast Lane, My Woman From Tokyo and Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) in there ;) Good stuff
  7. Fun fact I read somewhere a long time ago about Shenkers' tone. He said all he used were 50 watt JCM800's cranked and then he would put a little hose clamp on the gear rail of his wah pedal so that it would go right to the "sweet spot". As far as other great tones I'd have to say one my faves is Page's from their 1970 Royal Albert Hall concert using his 59LP. The sound on DTS from the redrocks double DVD as I call it sounds incredible on my home theatre system.
  8. Just pretend your amp head is going straight to the speakers. Forget all that other jazz. I do what you're saying and hoping for with my SpiderValve HD100 mkii. I run a proper speaker cable from the HD100 into a 1/4" brass coupler and then connect it to my Mesa Trem-o-Verb 2x12 combo. The Mesa amp has two 16 ohm Vintage 30's wired in parallel to make it an 8 ohm load. But where I'm lucky is, is the wires from the speaker are connected to a 1/4" angled jack that plugs into the back of the amp, so I just have to unplug "The Plug" and connect it to my brass coupler. So HD100 into two Vintage 30's ;) PS: The only reason for the brass coupler is to extend cord length by enabling me to add a long cord, because the Mesa one is short obviously .
  9. It's been a long time since I made patches for my HD but If I remember correctly the presets go up to bank 18 so maybe start around bank 20. Open up the patch editor on your computer and select Bank 20 , then select patch "A" I believe that will start you out with a clean slate. Just build something simple to start like a clean patch with some blue comp and chorus and reverb or whatever and experiment a bit. Then on patch "B" build an easy distorted patch usuing say a TS-9 (tubescreamer) and some delay. Once you make something that you really like you have to hit "save" or whatever it is to keep it. It's been awhile so I can't recall all the proper terminology for that but you'll figure it out.
  10. Would be cool. Here I am on my 15 watt Spider iv. It is filmed usuing a BlackBerry Playbook tablet and that is all. The website and small condenser mic have added a few artifacts to what I consider a killer tone I have dialed in on the little amp. I also own its big brother the SpiderValve HD100 mkii but have yet to recreate such a good tone on it as I have on the practice amp. Albeit I haven't really tried and don't use the HD very much as I'm saving it to rock out on when I'm 90. Make sure to use some decent headphones like Sony MDR-7506 or similar AKG, Sennheiser cans so it sounds fairly decent. Remember the rudimentary recording process though so expectations aren't set too high. Rock on Line Sixers! http://killerstreets.com/videos/1459/die-trying-practice
  11. You could still run the GT-10 in stompbox mode and run it into the front of your SpiderValve. You might have to disengage the preamps in the GT-10 to get the best sound that way so you're not having dueling preamps. The best would be probably just use a nice clean sound on your amp and then use the BOSS for all the other dist effects and what not.
  12. I'm pretty sure you could have some basic function if you went midi to midi. BOSS to SpiderValve, but maybe your SV mki doesn't have midi (I can't recall as I have the HD100 mkii). It would only be a basic patch up or down and bank up or down anyways I'm guessing unless you really programmed some in-depth CC changes. EDIT: It would only work for mkii amps as the mki's don't have midi as I kinda thought. Maybe try and find a good used fbv shortboard.
  13. What's the future of the SpiderValve? A: A doorstop if the digital pre-amp chip fizzles out or anything else on the circuitry besides tubes.
  14. That's the problem with tube amps, they need to be serviced. I've had an awesome early 1970's Ampeg amp for a long time and it's always taken the abuse I've dished out but when I started plugging in a BOSS GT-10 into it it didn't like that. The BOSS throws out some weird high pitched oscillation thing that I'm sure blew the power tubes. One day whilst hammering out tunes quite loud there was a pop and the Ampeg started screaming to high heaven. I quickly shut it off and within a few days bought a matching pair of 6L6GC's for it and all was well. That's just the nature of the beast with tube amps. Take it into a pro and get it tuned up. The bias needs to be set properly on these SpiderValves as well. One last thing, no matter which tube amp I'm playing through (have many) I always let them warm up for a bit before playing/hammering on them and let them cool down for a few minutes as well after a raucous session.
  15. These aren't fixed bias amps like Mesa Boogies so they need to be set to a certain bias. Unless you're really adept at that stuff a tech needs to set the bias according to the Line 6 SpiderValve specs. I'm pretty sure it's +/- 35mV. You can probably run it the way you have it temporarily and it will work for a short period of time but you will most likely burnout those tubes really fast with the voltage being unequal on them or worse yet blow the power transformer. Just something to think about. Just thought I'd mention it.
  16. If you're not very amp savvy I'd take it to the best, most reliable tube amp technician you can find and get him to throw in a matched quad set of 6L6 tubes. Also he needs to know that the bias setting for those power tubes for this amp are +/- 35 mV You might want to look up that bias number again just to be 100% sure because I'm going off of memory from a few years ago but I think I got it right. Don't monkey around with stuff inside at all if you don't know what you're doing because you can get a serious zap or worse. PS: Be ready to shell out probably around 150 or more for all parts and service. Cheers
  17. Yeah It sounds like a major tube problem for sure. Unless you are fully aware of how to adjust the bias and the potential shock hazards I'd leave it to a pro. Unless you really want to study up and learn how to do it properly and safely yourself. Not trying to be a nervous nelly just being a realist. That's one thing I like about fixed bias amps(ie:Mesa), no muss no fuss.
  18. I wrote about this once before but I never implemented as I don't use my HD100 mkii very much anymore but it seems like a good idea for people using it lots. For about 15 dollars on amp part sites an original Marshall amp head vent grill can be had. Then one would just have to carefully cover the guts with an old sheet or cloth and cut the new slot in the Line6 head. I think it is 19 inches for the one I was looking at and measured the SpiderValve head and it would work perfectly. To me the location of the tubes in the HD100 and the plexiglass screen basically turn it into a super heated lizard terrarium, even with the grill in the back. Sure old tube amps have no vents but they are all rock solid construction of wires,tubes and a transformer, no silicon diodes, chips and digital apparatuses that are highly susceptable to extreme heat. Just an idea, or easier, point a fan at it as mentioned above lol. Cheers
  19. If I recall correctly I really don't think it is possible because of all the differing algorithms between different devices. The SpiderValve amp models were based on the Spider iv chip and sounds so they were fairly similar and could be ported over manually. ( to a degree anyways). But nothing was a straight across computer swap on a patch to patch basis between different devices. My apologies if all that sounds confusing but basically I'm saying no. It can't be done the way you are hoping.
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