Members Drew-jweVZ Posted May 22, 2015 Members Share Posted May 22, 2015 Greetings and salutations fellow music humans, longtime lurker... first need to post about a problem here. I love this page and y'all have great advice that has helped me a lot in the past! So my current dilemma is confusing me a lot as I don't know whether it's a problem with my amp, cab or pedal board, maybe you can help me narrow it down! So I play guitar through a bass amp....why? because I enjoy messing with a variety of octave/sub effects and have kind of gotten to be a makeshift bassist in my band. I have an Aguilar tone hammer 500 running into an ancient peavey 1x15 with no info whatsoever other than the Ohm rating. Right now In my pedalboard I'm running a Cioks dc10 powering from in to out: korg tuner, Crybaby 535q, Xotic sp compressor, Boss OC-3, Sans amp Paradriver, Fulltone secret freq, Hartman crystal valve silicon fuzz, boss DD-3 then out to the amp. I find that with the compressor and sansamp on I get a cracking, popping, clipping horrible sound that comes when I palmmute the low e especially, and only really at higher volumes. The light on the tone hammer for clipping comes on even though I have the gain set close to none and the master at half way up. I tried playing through my amp dry and it hasn't done it yet.... Are my pedals driving the amp too much? Should I try like turning down the output a ton on my pedals? or is there another solution/problem at hand? Or is my speaker maybe incapable of handling the tone hammer's wattage? Help me identify the culprit! it's driving me nuts! Also sorry I know this is the amp forum and I have stuff about pedals but....I figured one of you would know! THANX! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted May 23, 2015 Members Share Posted May 23, 2015 If the amp doesn't make disagreeable sounds when the pedals are removed from the signal chain (dry), then clearly it's something in the effects. One or more pedals may be adding excessive gain. Try disabling the pedals one at a time and see when the problem clears up. That pedal will be the culprit. The solution may be as simple as turning down the gain on the offending pedal or pedals. But it takes a lot of power to reproduce the low end and I suspect the OC-3 is overdoing it. Depending on how you have it set up, you could be producing signals as low as 20.6 Hz (two octaves below the open E string), which few speakers--and not even some amps--can reproduce at any volume. That your Tone Hammer 500 is clipping means it's being driven very hard whether it seems "loud" to you or not. Is there a "thump" when you palm mute? If so, you're creating a low frequency spike that's made worse by the CO-3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Drew-jweVZ Posted May 23, 2015 Author Members Share Posted May 23, 2015 Thanks for the replies! I went through my chain and I think the input is getting overdriven . I haven't had time to go through each pedal one by one bringing the gain up but I will do so asap! what i did do and find is that running the Sansamp para driver close to the end right before the DD-3 kind of like a post/final EQ or amp sim instead of up front like the manual and everyone else seems to do. Anyway I got much better results! for some reason my distortions and fuzzes had been almost stifled by the sansamp runnning before them...I don't know why but now they actually can breathe and sound transparent and full like normal....also the noise floor was lessened and I haven't run into the dreaded popping/clipping sound yet.. I think youre right and the OC3/low sounds are what's doing it. What i don't understand is why the master volume seems to clip and act just like the input volume....on a solid state amp shouldn't the master volume just be clean usable power that youre supposed to be able to push pretty hard before distorting??? or is this cuz my input is so overdriven....just seems strange that my master volume knob pretty much acts the same as input gain....but I guess it could be amplifying {censored}ty things/noises/pops/clipping too.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted May 24, 2015 Members Share Posted May 24, 2015 Typically, when a SS guitar amp has both volume and gain volume controls, it's to allow the preamp to be overdriven and produce distortion. My Fender Frontman has that, as did my old Roland. Personally, I wouldn't want that in a bass amp but that's me. The manual for the Tone Hammer 500 (http://aguilaramp.com/pdf/TH500_Owners_Manual_version_1.0.pdf) says: With the Master volume and Drive down, turn on your amplifier. Adjust as follows: Preamp: 1. Turn the Gain up while playing. . . . . . . 3. Turn up the Master control until you reach the volume you need. To me, that's not very clear but again that's me. I mean, if the Master is turned all the way down it won't matter how much you turn up the Gain, there still won't be any sound. I'm guessing the Gain is supposed to control the input level while the Master controls the output level? Anyway, turn the Master down and the Gain up and you should come out all right. If necessary, you can use the -10dB button to reduce the amount of gain but I'd leave that for a last resort. Keep us posted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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