WRGKMC

I stand corrected. Power doubled creates a 3dB increase. I don't know why I forgot that. Anyway the point about upgrading the stock speaker can often make a really big difference. The cost of high quality speakers is dirt cheap and its a non invasive completely reversible mod that doesn't hut the amps value, in fact it can increase it in many cases.

The schematic shows the fuse as being a 1.5A fuse which is in series with a 5A fuse on the board. They also have a thermal breaker on the ground side. Who ever designed the circuit was either a paranoid who knew the circuit was risky or knew the components being used couldn't be trusted. Modifying fuse values can occur when the amps are moved from the drawing board to actual production and they find the low cost components they contracted wind up having quirks and flaws. In other words, a circuit designed on a computer can be perfect but that doesn't necessarily mean it will actually work well in the real world. The quality and tolerances of parts has to be part of the formula when designing a circuit and many times budget parts used in the build fail to meet minimum standards. My guess is the amp uses either a low grade Power Transformer or low quality power caps or both. It may not handle AC power fluctuations or the caps cant handle the surges , especially when pushing the amp hard. They may have increased the fuse because the originals blew prematurely due to higher then expected current draw. The repercussion of that is a fuse too high wont blow at all and you wind up blowing the transformer coil instead. If I were to guess the original fuses were the ones on the schematic. The 5A on the board is to protect the amp from jackasses who stock a 10 amp fuse in there when the 1.5A keeps blowing. As for which fuse might be best, Fuses aren't rated in watts, they are rated in amps. (watts signify power consumed over time, not the amount of current flowing at any given moment) . It doesn't seem to matter if the amp has a 2 or 3 amp Slow-Blo fuse. Both are below the 5A fuse on the board so both should blow before the amp is damaged. If you didn't know what fuse was being used you could start with the one in the schematic. Its always best to use the lowest value, which is slightly above the maximum current level. Its also possible these amps had their actual current levels measured with a multi meter and the best fuse for that particular amp was chosen. It can also be a production change. They may have increased the amperage to prevent the fuse from blowing when the amp is running normally, or they may have lowered it to prevent meltdowns. My advice, if its working right. Leave it along. The worst enemy of an amplifier is the end user who tinkers with stuff they have no business messing with. Even something as simple as a 50 cent fuse gets factored into a design and the reasons for its being changed can be much more complex as I've described here. You can research it but without actual measurements and knowing the specs on all the parts in the primary and secondary power circuits you're like a blind man with a white cane navigating a china shop. Best option for not busting something is stay out of the amp like the warning messages on every chassis is labeled. Let the professionals who are educated do mods and repairs. As far as tone goes, the tubes and speaker will have the biggest impact on the sound so long as thee weren't major changes to the rest of the circuits. As far as tubes go I'm noyt a huge fan of JJ 12AX7 preamp or 6L6 power tubes. I tried them in my Fender amp and lost allot of tone range and volume. They are pretty durable do well if your amp lacks midrange. Theey aren't very good on the top and bottom ends so big plush sounds aren't their specialty. They can used to make an amp break up early of tame an amp that has too much bass and treble, but the overall volume isn't so hot. My Fender took at least a 3dB cut in volume compared to the Groove tubes I had been using. I tried several other sets of power tubes and nearly all the popular 12AX7 tubes. The ones that I recommend are the Electro Harmonix Tubes. They blow the doors off all other budget tubes for clean headroom and brilliant tone. Low noise and low microphonics too. Tube amp tubes loose quality slowly over time and you wont notice how much of that quality is caused by the tubes because it happens so slowly. I've put new tubes in the Fender before and heard the normal amount of improvement. Its been 40 years since I had US made RCA tubes in it which were my favorites. Those EH tubes made me realize there can be a big difference between popular tubes vs ones that really perform well. There are some other like the Mullard reissues I'd like to try. Some of the others are priced on the ridiculous level. There arent any vintage tubes left worth buying. The supply of those dried up 30 years ago and anything you find will either be counterfeit or used tubes with too many hours on them to be of any good. Its real easy to silk screen a new label on ant tube too. All this talk about vintage tubes being the holy grail for tone is mostly BS. Most of it was driven by unscrupulous electronic techs cashing in on peoples ignorance. As a tech I cant blame them. Its can be difficult to impossible to convince some people who believe in all these voodoo electronic myths and they do have the choice of learning by getting burned when they find that medicine the snake oil salesman sells is bunk or they self educate well enough to avoid such scams. Anyway, If you don't know how many hours the tunes have, I'd put new ones in there. Power supply failure due to tube failure is the most logical reason they'd put 2 fuses and a thermal breaker in the AC circuit. Its like a car, keep fresh oil in it and you're less likely to have major engine problems. Beyond that a you can often improve the tone and loudness of an amp by getting a better speaker. You'd first need to know the specs of that stock speaker which can be difficult, especially when the manufacturer has the speakers made by someone else and branded with their name. On average, most stock speakers typically have a frequency range that matches the head so you can run the EQ controls in the center for a solid neutral sound with enough range to accommodate most popular guitar types. If the amp tone is lacking in some area you can find the frequency chart on most speaker manufacturers site and get a boost of cut in the ranges you need. The loudness of the speaker is another important spec. Wattage is only a power consumption number. Like a Fuse that number must match or be higher then what the head puts out to prevent it from blowing. Beyond that its a useless number. If you have a 50W RMS head a 50W RMS speaker is the absolute minimum wattage speaker you should use if you push that head to max which is full up on a SS amp or just below saturation on a tube amp (50 to 75% on the volume knob). The spec that tells you how loud a speaker is the SPL number. SPL is and efficiency number like Miles per gallon in a car except it tells you how efficiently it converts electricity to speaker cone movement. Since that movement creates sound the standard measurements is to measure the speaker using 1 watt of power at 1 meter with a 1KHz tone being fed into the amp. This will produce a dB level on a loudness meter. I mention all of this because most manufacturers post the SPL level in their web pages. If you own a speaker that's say, 94dB you can double the perceived loudness of that amp by getting a 97dB speaker. You can double it again with a 100dB and so on. There are some speakers as high as 110dB but I cant say how good they might sound, especially with allot of bass. You have to make the electromagnet stronger, speaker cone lighter and the surround more flexible to make it more efficient. You can wind up with a speaker too flabby for bass tones if poorly designed. On the other end, a speaker in the mid 80's range are typically used in Hi Fi cabs and given limited frequencies in the bass ranges. They read a low SPL because they don't produce frequencies up in the 1K range very well because they are designed as bass woofers. They need a heavy cone so they don't distort with strong bass frequencies. they aren't designed for guitars so you wouldn't want to use them for that. Guitar speakers typically produce frequencies between 100Hz and 5K Hz. Anything above or below will be rolled off.

Just so you know, You're responding to a 2008 Post. I'll agree with you however. There's nothing wrong with the cab build quality that's going to stop it from sounding good. The actual speakers? Peavey's guitar speakers aren't bad. better then many budget speakers. Their PA speakers are actually quite good depending on the type. Guitar speakers are a matter of preference. Their early blackface cabs like this one I own is built to last. 3/4" plywood throughout. Even its finish does one better then plain old Tolex. They use an epoxy coating that looks like Tolex but its more like that Truck Bed liner stuff. I've had my cab for 25 years and not a scratch on it. The Black magnet speakers in these weren't so hot however. Many Manufactures, Ampeg, Sunn, Peavy and many others sold their cabs with 30W unbranded Eminence speakers. They didn't sound horrible but they didn't sound great either. The ones in my cab had cracked surrounds so I repaired them with speaker glue. They still work but like I said, the tone isn't exactly great. My Marshall slant 1960 cab with Cream-backs Forget it. It blows the doors off those old eminence junk. I bought a newer Peavey speaker recently. It was out of one of their Full Range modeling amp speakers which as a frequency response that extends up to 10K or more. I have two 8's like that as well. I have the 12" in a cab with a regular guitar speaker but I haven't had a chance to use it live yet. I been using multi effects pedals with amp modeling recently and the extended range on the speakers allows a closer facsimile to the original amps tones. Its much like when I record direct using high fidelity studio monitors. Having a guitar amp with a similar High Fidelity frequency response allows the pedals to so all the EQ shaping and the amp simply acts as a monitor.

Good summation Craig. The only thing I'd add is the importance of the Performance playing the instrument well, and the emotional content of the individual parts. Like any live performance where a well rehearsed band uses varying amounts of energy dynamically as individuals and as a team effort, it is critical to tap into that same same kind of emotional energy when tracking in a studio. In a solo project, this can be much more difficult because you may not have the other players there to follow the dynamic lead set down as a team. Control over this emotional expression as you perform tracking is just that much more critical. Being inspired to play any one part solo with the emotional content you'd use playing live on a stage in front of an audience is something you must master before you can capture it in a recording. A musician can't expect to get the same recording from a bunch of parts played flat and lifeless. You can only do so much using audio effects, many of which are designed to tame the emotional content. A performer must capture that emotion in every track he plays if you want it there to mix with. As you add additional parts, the emotional content and/or playing dynamics can complement the first and build into a collective. This makes tracking multiple parts even more difficult, but you find if you err on the side of the performance over sound quality, the performance will trump the sound quality nearly every time. Of course you have to play the notes in tune and in time as well, but who wouldn't prefer to ride the wave of emotion expressed in a recording containing a few sour notes or missed beats of a Hendrix or Clapton recording over a sterilized version where the emotional content is stripped away using studio overdubs and mixing techniques. Its is easy to fix every flub recording digitally, but first try and do it on the front end where the rubber meets the road performing your heart out. Then you have no regrets thinking you could have just played the parts better to begin with vs. spending mega hours mixing. You'll find the truly great recordings need practically no mixing at all. What mixing is done, tends to be an artistic enhancement that reveals the beauty of the parts. Throwing a lightening bolt into a composition stitched together like a Frankenstein from bits and pieces may give the appearance of life, but the scars and stitch marks must be invisible and natural looking if you expect the listener to enjoy it as a natural sound.

Fane are good US made speakers. They are used in many popular amps. They were used in Music man combo amps and a main ingredient in making those amps sound good. I can see them sounding better then green back Celestion depending on the heads being used. I was never a fan of the original green backs. I had a pair in a 4X12 cab along side a set of Altecs and they sounded like crap in comparison to those. For other model Celestions it can be a completely different story however. I have 4 cream back 75W speakers in my Marshall Slant cab and the sound quality is absolutely phenomenal. I can plug any head into that can and get them to sound fantastic. Of course the cost might have something to do with that too. I got that cab used for $450 and the speakers list for $255 each. The best I've heard green backs sound were using a Marshall Plexi head. Those amps have an abundance of highs. The green backs severely limit those highs and cause the speakers to clip in the high mids instead of producing those highs. They act as clipping filters and give the Marshall its signature tone at higher gains. Of course you probably wouldn't know that sound by using the newer heads that have high gain channels that emulate that greenback sound. Its not bad but its definitely not the same either. Th sound you get pushing a speaker into saturation is truly unique and unless you're set up in front of that same kind of amp with the right tones dialed up you simply cant get a feel for it using anything else. I have an old Sound City 50W tube head which can make those green backs sound pretty good too. Its a loud SOB. 60W tube with a voicing similar to Marshall and Hi Watt. The Who used Marshall, then Sound City for a short time before moving to Hi Watt amps. In fact it was the Who which got Jim Marshall to come up with the full stack cabs. The first ones were 8X12 cabs. They found those cabs too difficult to tour with. took too much manpower to move them and they didn't fit upright in a tour bus. They eventually got Marshall to cut them in half which made them ideal for transporting. They didn't tune those cabs to natch the speakers either. Its just blind luck they wound up sounding as good as they did. Both Townsend and Entwhisle used the same cabs with the same speakers and heads at first. That's likely how they got the bass to overdrive on many of those old songs too. I wouldn't mind finding 4x10: fane speakers to go along with may Music man head. Johnny Winter used their 4X10 combo's to get his driven sound. The 60W head I have sounds too plush using 12: speakers, like a clean fender in tone. I'm pretty sure Leo voiced that amp line to sound best with the Fane speakers and its how Players like Clapton, Mark Knophler or dire Straits, and the guitarist for Blue Oyster Cult git his sound on that song Don't Fear the Reaper. I get close to it using my 4X10 cab with alnico Jensen's but they are a bit too bright. Again, matching the head with the correct speakers is and old story, as important as matching the right pickups to a guitar or the right mic to a voice. The speaker not only EQ's the amp head but it also makes certain notes and playing techniques stand out better then others. on the flip side you can have the best head ever made and its going to sound like garbage if its bottlenecked by crappy speakers. A guitar rig is a complete chain from the guitar strings right through to the speaker. Finding the right match can be a tough job if you haven't got a friendly music shop owner who can help out.

Guitars are like Girlfriends. Do you regret giving some up? Sure, but how would you have found the best match unless you trusted your instincts they weren't the best option and moved on to something else. I can honestly say the guitars I gave up weren't the best match for my playing just like separating from women when we weren't the best match for each other. You can spend the rest of your life playing the "what if" game but you'll have plenty of time for that when you're too old to play.

GFS just buys Chinese Artec pickups wholesale and resells them. You can find EBay loaded with the same pickups all over the place. The problem with the Artec pickups is many of the sets are overwound which kills their treble response. The owner of GFS is a boob who seems to relish the promotion of Hot wound as "More is Better" which simply isn't the case. When it comes to winding pickups it involved neither too little or too much. Its all about balancing the winds to the magnet strength to obtain just the right gain vs frequency response. The GFS guy doesn't wind his pickups he just resells what he buys so everything is promoted as being "great" in his ads and that simply isn't the case. Some of the Vintage winds come close to the originals but the hot wounds sound awful. If you are building a guitar and simply needed something that will work, certain sets of the Artec will pass for being mediocre, stock pickups. If you're looking for an upgrade, you're definitely looking in the wrong place. The price you pay should be a dead give away. The add that guy posted as being marked down from $150 is total garbage too. There isn't an Artec pickup made that sells for more then $50 retail. You can buy the same if you scan ebay. I found this alnico 65 set for $50 on my first search. You simply need to know what the specs are for a set of 63's and do a little digging to find similar results. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Strat-Pickup-Set-for-Stratocaster-Guitar-Hand-Wound-AlNiCo5-ustom-LR-65/323072824138?hash=item4b38a4134a:g:hw8AAOSwXoxaae2W

^^^ That is kind of handy because the first thing you'd do is tune up. I don't own too many boss pedals at the moment and to be honest, I don't remember them default powering to an on condition. Maybe that's because I had them set to bypass when I powered down? Most of my pedals are true bypass and stay however you leave them last. I always set effects to bypass when I end a song or powering down, at least on all gain boxes and compressor which might feed back or make noise. I plug in my guitar with the volumes off before powering up, my volume pedal is turned down and the amps volume before power up. These are necessary habits you adopt as you gain experience playing live. The last thing you want to do annoy your audience with your gear screeching or humming when you power up. Makes you look like the amateur you in fact are by doing that in front of an audience.

This thread is 10 years old but still relevant. Boss pedals do not have true bypass. They have buffers which are always active and the bypass switch activates a set of transistors which bypass the effect. Problem is they default to an on condition when powering up and there isn't anything you can do about it besides redesign the circuitry and I'm sure the effect on condition was already thought through by engineers and thought to be the best option for that design. Best thing you can do to circumvent the issues is yo either buy a loop pedals and use its true bypass to remove the pedal from the circuit or simply get in the habit of turning the amp on last, with the volume off on the guitar amp amp like you should be anyway. This would allow you to set the pedal for bypass before you power the amp up.

Tanks are incredibly simple and easy to troubleshoot. They consist of no more then two electromagnets that surround the ends of the reverb spring. One acts as a speaker to make the spring vibrate and one acts like a microphone to pick the sound up at the other end. You can easily measure the input and output connectors with an ohm meter. (might be good to get those readings because they can help you select a new tank if its bad) You should read between 8 to several thousand ohms at either jack. If it reads open then you should check the inside wiring for breaks between the connector and elements. The small wires from the transmitter and receiver elements are soldered to the inside of the jack. This is where most tanks fail. (The spring tank is suspended by shock absorber springs and allowed to float so the wires going to the elements connectors get flexed when the amp gets transported and the wires eventually fray and break). All they need is to be re-soldered and the tank should work fine. If the tank took a serious blow and damaged an element or broke a spring, then it likely needs replacement Most reverb tanks cost less than $25 new. The issue buying one is they have widely varying impedances from 8 ohm all the way up to thousands of ohms. The lower impedances are used in Tube amps and the higher in solid state amps. (in most cases) You also have 2, 3, 4, 5 spring models and the spring length/tank sizes vary. You need to get the right tank so your reverb tone, length of decay depth match the circuit and physical size of the tank mounts in the amp. The number on the reverb tank is key to finding a crossover replacement out of maybe a hundred different types from a couple of different vendors. If you don't have that number finding the right tank cant be difficult. I bought a tank for a tank-less Peavey amp. To the best of my knowledge I thought I bought the right one but the reverb wound up sounding so deep I suspect the info I dug up wasn't accurate. It would have been much better If I had the right number. MOD and Accutronics are the two big sellers of tanks. Both sell in the same ranges and have similar quality. I think Accutronics sells more OEM tanks but MOD are Just as well made.

Yep, I get that same thing with the 15w marshal amp I use for practice at low volume. If I crank the amp up it gets brighter however and the settings sound completely different. When I use the box in the studio for recording direct the presets are ideal but a low volume amp doesn't sound the same till I crank it up. You can use the line level setting on an amp. Its surely not going to hurt anything. You'll just have to adjust the global volume as needed. I normally use that box for recording only. I can tweak levels and save presets that work well. The studio monitors are full frequency so the speaker emulations rill highs off the way its supposed to. Plugged into an amp you have speaker emulation and the amps speaker and both volume and gain can change dramatically. Rule of thumb is as you turn an amp up louder you need less and less gain because the speakers taking over doing that job. I have a full 20 presets I built. I plan on using my DB meter next time I record and set the levels all the same. I want the bypassed/clean levels to match the preset gain levels. The DB meter looks at only the loudness not the frequency or gain. My goal is to get all the patches the same volume no matter what the gain or frequency is. Then if the Perceived loudness is too high or low I'll tweak all the other factors like gain, EQ, compression etc to get them to sound more even when scrolling through the settings. After that I'll keep those settings when using an amp and either tweak the global volume only or tweak the amps settings for a best overall match.

You didn't mention the pedal order so I'll just assume you're using the Wah first and drive pedals afterwards. (unless you're trying to get the Motown Fuzz Wah sound which has the drive first) Many drive pedals scoop mids. Wah pedals do just the opposite, boost mids and have very little highs and lows to make the scooped mid drive pedals work well. There are a couple of things you can try. The first and most obvious is to get drive pedals with stronger mids like a Tube Screamer or Fuzz Face. The second which I use is to use a Compressor pedal after the wah and before the drive pedals. This evens up the wah pedal output so when you scroll the frequencies with the wah, the gain level hitting the drive pedal is more even. You'd adjust the comp so its gain is about 1:1 when bypassed or maybe a tad of boost. You'd also adjust it so its transparent and not overly squeezed or pumping. This will allow you to use the wah clean as well as driven. Dunlops tend to suffer from a big drop in gain and tone sucking when bypassed (unless its a newer or modified model) You want to make sure the clean wah sounds great before you kick on the drive and the comp helps immensely here maintaining your signal level. (makes playability much nicer too) I used to use a Dunlop before switching to a Morley. The Morley Wah/Volume pedal I have has a wah gain knob which can actually boost the wah volume up quite a bit so my gain boxes are even more gained up when I step on the wah switch. Between that, the comp, and the gain pedals I use I have none of the tone sucking issues you have. I'd definitely try a Compressor after the wah. I've used it with the same Boss pedal and it works fine.

I have the 1G and 1B versions. They are the same thing without the pedal. The amp settings do color the sound and it is often needed for larger amps that would be too harsh and bright otherwise. When you're in that global mode you can dial up the global volume level, a small, medium and large amp sound or line level. Line level is normally too hot for driving most amps. If you bypass the pedal you may wind up having a big drop in volume if you have it set for line level. The pedal is stereo too. If you run a stereo cord you cane get the echoes and chorus to sound different on each channel. I switch modes between amp and line level quite often because I record direct with it allot and then connect it to my amp. If I'm plugged into a true line level recording input, then leave it set for line level, the signals too hot and two bright for my amps. The thing is many audio interfaces have Instrument level inputs so its really not a line level impedance. Think that's where the differences come in. If you use it recording direct on an interface instrument level inputs then build presets over it, you'll wind up darkening the line level settings. Then when you plug into the amp, and switch to amp modes they will be way too dark. What you might want to try is use an amp mode when plugged in fro recording then tweak your presets to sound good. Then when you go to use it with an amp, you can stay in that mode because both your interface and amp take instrument levels. If you had an interface with strictly line level or plug into a PA then you might need to switch to line level modes.

I remember that repair, you did a good job. I bought my Dot maybe 20 years ago. The top near the neck joint started buckling within 8 years. I had been using heavier strings in the beginning. Its been over 10 years since I've fixed it. In my case the neck was still well glued to the back of the body but the neck block wasn't properly glued to the top and was pulling forward causing the top of the body to separate from the block and buckle. I wish I had noticed it sooner I could have prevented the top from becoming disfigured. I'm not overly concerned with the instruments looks at this point. Its stable now and I get the right tones from it. Its simply not constructed with the same quality and materials as the 60's Riviera or ES335 I used to own. Its simply a $350 and you get what you pay for. I still get allot of use out of mine and it fills a niche in my collection. After a half dozen pickup changes I ended up using mini humbuckers with full sized adaptor rings and it nails the tones I wanted. I'm am going to need to re-fret it fairly soon, I just been putting it off. I've built a couple of semi hollow bodies but they've all been flat tops. My #1 is a semi hollow Tele build with Mini's and Tom bridge. Its a simple durable design that's held up well. My builds are targeted for my own use. I don't have the desire to build them for profit. My day job in the service industry has burned me out dealing with the public in that way. I don't have the tools or shop to build the kind of instruments you do either. The builds I do is done with simple hand tools which limits what you can do. Still, I do encourage guitarists to give repairs a shot when its both economically and educational to do so. I learned because its was a good way for me to get quality instruments at low costs. My father taught me carpentry and finishing. My trade is electronics so most of this is simple stuff so long as it doesn't require bench tools. You can gain allot of satisfaction from your own repair or build. You just have to choose your victims with cost and skill required in mind. This DOT would probably be an easy fix for you and others who have the skill. A couple of hours work and it can be a good player. The crack may simply be cosmetic, but I'm able to repair it properly if it isn't and the time involved which is the biggest expense would be my own loss. Someone without the experience to repair it is taking a risk. Again, it may be simply cosmetic and a little touching up on the finish isn't that hard to do well. If it isn't, and the neck block is separated from the back of the body, it would require the neck joint being steamed loose, then re-glued properly. You'd need a steamer hypodermic hose and kettle to do that and the experience to know where to drill. Those tools are often something a Luthier scraps together. I used to use an old hand air pump hose basket ball inflation needed for that. you can buy the hose and needle here but you'd have to rig up your own kettle to deliver the steam. http://www.stewmac.com/Luthier_Tools/Tools_by_Job/Tools_for_Necks_and_Fingerboards/Neck_Joint_Steamer.html Again, if you roll the dice and spend $50 on it then rig the tools together to do the job right then go for it. others can help guide you. If your goal is to just buy something you can play without having to repair it, then this may not be an easy fix and better left to a pro.

Pass - That baby took a shot and its not worth the trouble of finding out weather the neck joint is any good. I can say the neck joint in mine isn't that great to begin with. I actually had issues with the neck separating from inside the body which could be seen with the neck pickup removed. I packed the separation with liquid epoxy then clamped it. It seems to have arrested the body separation at the neck joint. If the guy wants to sell it for $50 its worth the chance. You can probably re-glue it and fix the cracked finish, but like others said, Dots aren't holy Relics. They play OK but your shouldn't expect too much from a plywood guitar with questionable quality issues. You can buy them cheap all day long so again, I'd say pass on this one unless you're getting it super cheap as a fixer upper.

There is some of that but there is also the way the volume pot tapers down on a Marshall in conjunction with the amps tone stack. Its somewhat like a Bleeder cap on a Fender Tele vs the taper on a Gibson guitar. When you crank the volume down on many Gibsons the treble drops off. A Tele when turned down looses its bass and retains treble because of the bleeder cap. A Fender amp tends to be more like a Gibson when turned way down. Its tone stack and especially the bright switch does work very well till you reach about #3 on the volume pot. Below that they have very little effect. The tone stack is after the first amplification stage and the volume is after the tone stack. In a Marshall, the volume comes after the first gain stage, then there's two more gain stages before the tone stack. In other words the tone stack is essentially between the preamp and power amp on a Marshall. The additional gain stages before the tone stack tends to make the tone thin out at low volumes. Some of this is the way the circuits use a combination of Log and Linear pots, but you could say the Fender is a more passive tone stack closer to the guitar and the Marshall is a more active tone stack that's not only buffered from the effects of the volume but the signal is much stronger and therefore the caps in the tone stack don't muffle out when a weak signal is being passed. Marshalls just tend to get Jangly and loose bass at lower volumes whereas a Fender tends to get muddy. This is probably why Fender added bleeder caps to their Tele's to compensate for the muddiness when turned down. Gibsons have always been a great match with Marshall amps because the amps do thin out and compensate for a Gibson guitars muffeling when turned down making the volume ranges from low to high very linear to the ears. Without digging into some charts and providing some frequency response example with actual guitars its hard to explain it any better then this. I'm not going to go any deeper then to say anyone whose owned a Marshall tube amp knows the amp thins when attenuated. That's why they like the amps, they don't sound fat and produce jazz tones like a fender amp at low volumes they give a guitar a bright disco string tone turned down. I can say I find it odd the OP doesn't recognize the amp for being what it is. He must not use it with clean settings very much. I suppose he's using his Digitec pedal with gain settings too much. He may have forgotten to switch the pedal from line mode to amp mode too. Given the fact he's had so many imaginary issues with things like guitar pickups being dead and other amp repairs that he said made no difference I question the mans judgment in many of his posts and I think he takes advantage of peoples good will when he posts imaginary issues like this one. If the amp was a Solid State Marshall and he was having the issue I might have a different opinion. The Valvestates tend to very linear to the ears at all volumes. Most tube amps have differences in tone at different volumes. Guitarists use this to the advantage. Ever heard the term Sweet Spot? That's what tube amps are all about. You want something with no sweet spot get a solid state amp and it will produce the same tone at all volume settings (at least with most SS amps)

I only heard one once back in the early 70's when I was just getting into electric guitars. I knew some older pro musicians who were always trading their gear out and they did a garage jam and the one brother used an old Silvertone twin, the other a Twin and my buddy the bass player used a West amp. They were extremely knowledgeable of gear and they'd loan me amps and guitars all the time to try out. I didn't get to try out the West amp but they did tell me about them. They saw Santana who was using Modified West amps back around the Woodstock days (where they aslso saw him using a Gallien Krueger SS amp at Woodstock which Santana said he hated but it was loud and projected and he needed something loud for that gig. The west amps he used for awhile had the gain stages modified and wired in series so he could crank any one of them up. It may have even been a modified PA head that had the channels wired in series but I may be mixing up my stories. (I've heard so many tech stories over the years working in that business, you can only remember so much and it becomes a blur) The amp designs are simple so I don't doubt it was easily modified the way Carlos liked them. I think my buddies got that story from the guy who started Dynaco who they knew well. The west amps used Huge Dynaco Transformers and if you knew anything about Dynaco Hi Fi gear they had superb Hi Fi tone, but they had issues with their power supplies blowing up. They had a strange setup where they wrapped a coil around the cap cans. it must have provided some kind of transformer inductance compression or did something to the phasing but great sounding heads when they worked. The West amps used the same Tube transformers which were massive in size but they didn't use the ultra linear taps Dynaco used for their Hi Fi gear. The bigger amps had 4 x 6550 Tubes so they must have been pretty loud. I hear Grand funk used them for their first 4 albums and being a three piece band the guitar had to be pretty loud. I did hear Humble Pie blew them away using Marshall Half Stacks however so maybe they just couldn't compete with other amp makers and musicians simply didn't buy them. One tech that used to repair years ago says..... I've also seen 3 pos "tele" style switches used as spkr impedance switches (see above pix). Again, this is a no-no as its a signal level switch. If you can find one for cheap, consider it a "project" amp and plan on some reworking. I do know they are as rare as can be these days. I think they only made 300 of the Fillmore's Grand Funk used and some of the others are just as rare. They'd be a good score as a collector but the amp is super basic so Its probably not going to produce some super unique tones. Its likely to be very generic sounding. The schematics used to be available from the West labs site but since the owner has died even the website is being sold. I don't think the amps will have anything in them any competent tech couldn't identify and repair easily. Don't know if any of this helps you but its what I know of them.

That's why the building code laws changed and why most gear manufacturers include grounded cords today.

Why stop with the neighborhood, why not the entire grid system. The resistance/conductivity of one body is a matter of scale like a single grain of sand compared to all the sands of earth. Yes a person can add to the load which is an important perspective when dealing with electronics. You deal with those opposites all the time in physics, its just we're used to seeing things from a "Me" perspective and looking at it from an equal and opposite perspective can seem a bit ridiculous at times but it is very good you can see things that way. Another example in science is gravity. We've always been told gravity pulls us down to earth and weight is a matter of attraction. If you believe Einstein's theory we are actually pushed down to earth. I think its both myself but it does make for some interesting thought when you examine pre conceived ideas you're taught from birth and carry around with you for an entire lifetime. Being able to examine fixed laws from an unbiased understanding is the doorway to higher knowledge which can lead to enlightenment. you just have to be sure you can handle giving both views equal weight while straddling that fence between the two. Its a balancing act that can easily land you on your backside.

The initial "this idiot ...." remark echoes recent posts where I am distracted from your posts by the tone. Is it possible that you might take a different tack in the interest of readability? I'll stick by my statement because the guy begins his premise on a faulty assumption. If he had said, what's known as a death cap is actually a safety device, then I'd know he knew what he was talking about and approve of his premise. Instead he goes along making you think the circuit design is faulty which is not the case. It was what they had to work with back then. The part is not there to cause death, its there to prevent it. My concern is the video could be misinterpreted by some young amateur who may want to remove it thinking the amp would be safe without it. It should only be removed if you add the third prong plug which prevents polarity reversal. Without the third leg the amp would actually be a 50/50 death trap and it may not be you that gets killed it could be some other musician or family member. I know how to wire my amps. I'm not worried about my gear hurting me, I'm worried about the other jackass whose using gear that isn't properly wired up because you get in a band situation and this guys got a floating ground cord because he's to cheap to buy a decent cord. Or he has a busted ground jack stuffed into a cheap 2 wire extension cord. This is why I say its a bad presentation. Its like starting a presentation saying seat belts or air bags are there to kill you. Some kid may actually believe that, and some where in the back of his mind thinks its OK not wear his seat belts because they could kill you anyway. There are circumstances where those items can cause fatalities, but they actually save way more lives then they ever cause. Therefore the premise of them being called death caps is stupid at best and only used that way by people who don't understand their function. They provide a soft ground less likely to kill. Yes I think its important enough to speak in raw language when it comes to peoples safety. Its well worth the trade off being misunderstood by a few in order to stress its actual purpose and make a few understand that people who call them that don't know what they are talking about and should be avoided. I can be soft on harmless things, but when there is "No" grey area involved between safety and great harm I'll side of safety and let the chips land where they are supposed to. If someone wants to be an stupid I cant stop them but if only one to listens its is better then none.

Definitely a stupid idea. Believe me I used to work on some old table top radios that didn't have that cap and they are as dangerous as can be. We used to put the caps into gear that didn't have them just for safety purposes. Of course if the caps goes bad and shorts its no different then having it wired hot. If the cap gets weak then hum increases because the grounding it does provide isn't very good. Changing it out is the best way to go if you're keeping it vintage or replacing it with a grounded cord is very inexpensive. The idea of touching a mic can be fixed in two ways. Add the cap in series with the ground wire in the amp or putting it in the guitar so its between you touching the strings and the ground wire. You may get a little zapping but much less then a dead ground. The only other option is to break out a meter and test things when setting up. Since the voltage is between the AC leads its not going to be directed through the rest of the amp so its unlikely you'd damage the amp. If things are reversed it will work but you are now the conductor between the hot chassis and anything you touch that's at ground potential. It can be the floor, the mic, and amp and the only things that's going to blow is you when your heart stops. If you touch the guitar cable of a reversed polarity chassis to another amp that's grounded properly, you'll likely see big sparks and or or blow the circuit breaker. I've seen this too and my only advice is learn your basics and don't get into those situations. I lit up my bedspread as a kid messing with those old amp cords once and nearly started a fire. Old beat up amp cords is a dangerous game. If an outlet looks bad replace it. If a cord is flakey, throw it away and buy another. Its not worth messing with just to keep something vintage. You can buy a 3 way cord that will handle an amps current in most dollar store for a buck. Any computer cord can have the one end removed and wired into an amp and make it safe.

Actually the reason for them is a historical event based on electrical wiring back in the day and yes it was there for safety and proper functionality. It was not put there to be something to hurt you, it was there to do the opposite and protect you from direct contact to live AC voltage carrying 15 amps. Today that we have grounded outlets but allot of people didn't grow up in the 40's ~ 60's when most buildings still had 2 prong outlets so they don't understand why those amps had those caps. Before they had two prong they even had screw in outlets like light bulb sockets. Over time, laws changed for the better making things safer, but you want to understand the reason why older amps had these features you have to understand the only options for safety back then. The manufacturers assumed people would run the amps back then safely too, make sure the polarity wasn't reversed, and make sure you didn't do something stupid like reverse the leads. That was taught to you as a kid growing up in a home. When I grew up then, my parents taught me the difference and I either did it the right way or I got kicked on my ass. When those tube amps were built back in the 50's and 60's most homes had two prong outlets. This didn't mean they were ungrounded outlets, its just one of the AC wires acted as AC and DC ground to the chassis. As new gear came out and much of it higher ampage stuff it would be sold with a grounded plug. The way you'd connect them to a 2 prong outlet was to use one of those ground adaptors and screw the third prong to the screw of the outlet box itself. The box of the outlet is hard wired to ground so you essentially had a 3 way ground available if you took the time to connect it right. This third prong on the plug is grounded the same as AC neutral is at the circuit breaker box. Building codes changed and people were first made to install outlets to except one large and one small prong plug. Its changed again and the third backup ground was added. Any new construction had to have it and any home being sold had to have the upgraded wiring. The home I grew up in was built in the 30's I think. My father eventually rewired the place during the 60's and 70's to meet building codes. (an important item if you have an electrical fire in a home and want to collect) This change over coincided with gear manufacturers selling gear with the proper wiring. 3 way plugs can only plug in one way with your neutral and hot always be on the right sides. This doesn't make it fail safe however. You can cheat a 3 way outlet in many different ways, its just less likely to happen if people do things right. Hopefully the electrician wired both the outlet and breaker box properly. The thing is without the cap, the amp is actually many times more dangerous if you do connect it up with the ground lifted and the polarity reversed. Having those caps go away wasn't the best thing to happen when you look at it from that perspective. During the change over from two prong to three prong you'd always find guys ripping the ground prong off of amp and extension cords or using ground lift adaptors. That's when things get dangerous because you now have an ungrounded chassis and if you get the polarity reversed, you don't have that ground cap in there to save you. The ground caps were there for 2 reasons. To ground AC hum and to prevent a full AC on the chassis. In other words it prevented direct contact of AC to the chassis. The hum is due to the circuit type. Most guitar amps are unbalanced high impedance circuit and you have to encapsulate all the amplifying components, beginning at the pickups, Guitar cord, and shielded chassis to act as a "Faraday cage" This cage is then grounded to prevent EMF from penetrating that barrier to get into the circuits and being amplified. The cap connects the entire faraday cage from the pickups to the chassis to earth ground and prevents stray EMF from getting inside the shielded barrier and being amplified by the components and producing a loud AC hum. Again this works fine so long as the neutral side of the amp is plugged in properly. The thing is what if you touch another amp, mic etc, that's reversed? If that cap isn't there you fry yourself with the full 15 amps right there between the two amplifiers. With the cap in place, the current that gets through the cap is fairly low. It will still bite you real good but unless you have a weak heart and a number of other factors are there you probably wont die. I've been zapped by mics on the lips hundreds of times but I didn't die. The voltage is still 120 but the current is very low. Of course a grounded plug is the best option, but, its still not going to protect you from other amps that have bad wiring. If your amp is dead ground and the other amp is seeking ground because its leads are reversed you can die. With the cap removed from the circuit, there is no safety device to separate you from the full amount of AC current and killing you. This is why you should buy one of those three prong AC testers to tell you is the outlet juice is good. (a absolute necessity for a gigging musician whose always dealing with beat up stage outlets.) You can still have ground loops but its still less lethal. Putting a ground cap in your guitar in series with the ground wire to the strings is essentially the best safety measure you can have fore preventing direct contact to AC. Its the exact same thing as having it mounted in the head except you put it in a different place. Always remember, Its not necessarily "your" amp that might be the problem, its the "other guys" gear that you have to watch out for.

Another idiot looking at it from the wrong perspective. Its not a death capacitor, its in fact it was put there for just the opposite reason. Its a ground capacitor which is where that video goes wrong from the start. Its a safety feature added so you don't feel the whole force of the AC voltage yet it grounds hum in the process. A chassis has to be grounded to prevent audible hum. The cap provides a path for that hum to get to ground while providing safety to the musician. There were many radio chassis back in the day that had the ground side of the AC lead connected directly to the chassis. When those were plugged in backwards the chassis was seeing 100% AC. The user was protected by not having access to the chassis. Knobs were plastic as was the front of the casing. They put lethal warnings on the back as well as a ground lug in many cases and people were supposed to ground them. Engineers knew the problem and they didn't have many options because the wiring was all 2 way in buildings. Industry switched to 3 prong before homes and most of your industrial stuff was designed to protect workers with grounded chassis. Building code changes eventually outlawed 2 way wiring in home so everything today is pretty much 3 pronged in order to pass UL inspection. The biggest issue with musical gear is, you may have several of these amps connected together. What if one chassis was hot wired without the cap to the ground side and plugged in backwards? You'd have the full 15 amps between to amp chassis or an amp and a PA instead of through the cap. Guitar in one hand, mic stand in the other is truly lethal. The Caps were the best solution to adding safety while having proper operation at the time. Each piece of gear had a cap so touching two chassis with one reversed meant you were protected by two caps. One on each piece of gear. There weren't put there to kill people, it was the complete opposite. The cap value is the key. Its passes hum to ground while preventing the full 15 amps from the socket from charging the chassis. A shock is still possible if the cord is plugged in backwards but its much less likely to kill you. The fix is simple. Remove the obsolete AC wiring and ground the chassis to the third prong on an AC cord.

~~and some kind of Gibson ES-175 thinline. That was a Gretch I believe. If you ignore the Hollywood hype you'll likely come closer to the truth. Studios were very rigid back then and unless you can dig up then actual facts, its probably not wise to guess who may have recorded the parts. Studios had all kinds of regular studio musicians who would record tracks. Holly was one of the exceptions who was allowed to do many of his own tracks. That too changed later when he found out how much better his songs could sound with added orchestration backup. I've never seen any actual live footage of Valens so I'm not sure what gear he used live. I know when he did his last tour, the guys in that show were all working for the same recording company and were all sharing the same amps. (You can only fit so much gear on a single tour bus) This was common when bands toured back then. The recording company was in charge of your tours and your recording sessions. They may have given you cash for guitars and such, but they sure got it back out of you making you work like a slave. He did get a 6120 Gretch, same kind Cochran owned when he did Ooh! My Head. They rode the same tour bus so I'm sure they were always trading instruments. But you got to remember, Valens really wasn't around very long. He went from High School in 57 to appear on Dick Clark's American Bandstand television show on October 6 of 57, then he died touring in February 1959. That gave him about one year of recording and performing on a professional level. That's like a wink of an eye. Not much time to accumulate gear. The record company was grooming him for big things but it just didn't happen. Holly was at it longer so he had more to show for his short career. The few songs Valens did record were good enough to stay on the radio. Few musicians get hits like he did and fail to get a hit spending a lifetime performing so I'd guess he was given a contract because he was, one of the better players of his time.