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Hi! I’d love to get advice from those of you who play electric guitar at home and thus have to play at low volume, maybe on headphones.
I’ve tried several things. I owned a Boss GT-001 effects unit which was quite good but a bit complicated to tweak. Recently I changed to a set of analog pedals called Pink Flow (which is a board of 6 effects: compressor, tube screamer, fuzz, chorus, phaser and delay) which is much simpler to use and offers a much better sound, but I still find that I don’t have a decent base, clean tone.
For that I’ve tried a Boss Katana Mini, and also a Mooer preamp that is said to emulate a Fender amp, but both sound a little crappy to me. I’m considering either getting a Fender Blues Junior IV, or a pair of decent speaker monitors.
I’m kind lost frankly, how do you set up to play at home?
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Roland Blues Cube Hot – 30 watt solid state – built on Roland’s Tube Logic circuitry reproduces every stage of a tweed-era amplifier from preamp to power amp to speaker output.
It has power control switches between 0.5, 5, 15, and 30 watts and it isn’t attenuating the power amp section, Roland has different circuitry for each power level designed to keep the tone the same
Tweed tone is great for blues
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Thanks! The Roland Blues Cube Hot looks great, very similar in tones and size as the Fender Blues Junior from what I hear in the video, a similar price (a bit cheaper), but I like that it has a power selector so it can run at 0.5W for playing at home, and also the line, headphones output are great, and the USB output for computer recording as well.
Will add it to my watch list. I have to investigate about this Tube Logic thing, not sure it can really sound like real tubes. I read that tube amps work better with pedals than solid state amps, but I suppose this tube logic emulation is also good at handling pedals…
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Jaime
Roland has been perfecting their Tube Logic technology for around 25 years and this latest release is getting great reviews.
Roland’s Tube Logic, Peavey’s TranTube technology and Blackstar’s True Valve Power amps are all inching closer to capturing the tone of the real thing. I’ve been using a Blackstar ID260 for quite a while and even though it doesn’t have the power reduction that the Roland does, it sound really good at low volume. The ID Series was just replaced by the 2nd generation of TVP in their Silverline Series. You can choose from 6 output tube emulations and 6 different preamp voices that gives a wide range of tones
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Thanks! The Blackstar also looks fantastic but it offers too many choices for me – I’m trying to simplify things up, that’s why I moved from an effects unit like the Boss GT001 to a simple set of analog pedals.
I also like Boss Katana (50 or 100) but again, it has too many options, I prefer to have a simple app like the Fender Blues Junior or the Roland Blues Cube, with just some basic knobs to get a nice base tone, if not I easily get lost!
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Hi I use a peavey bandit trans tube it’s a very basic easy to use amp with great tones it has three power settings on it for home use also effects loop that I run boss pedals through , previous to this I had a Blackstar but it had to many presets on it (125 to be precise ) and for me to fiddly to mess about with so I sold it , the easier the better for me I like to switch on and play not spend hours messing with different settings ,I think amp manufacturers try to pack to much in and in my opinion it’s not needed . Hope this helps
Martin
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Hi Jaime and welcome to Am,
Gnlguy speaks the truth! I have owned the blues cube hot since it came out and can honestly say I am very impressed. It is as good as a tube without the weight and no tubes to replace. It take pedals exactly the same in my opinion,but the main reason I purchased it was because of the ability to sound just as good at lower volumes which for me is 99% of the time.
I have owned a small tube amp and was really disappointed because by the time it sounds right it was way too loud. If you can try one in a store I think you will be impressed.
By the way I really enjoyed your Comfortably Numb solo, I am also a Pink Floyd Fan!
If you need to ask anything about the cube then fire away. -
Hi I use a peavey bandit trans tube it’s a very basic easy to use amp with great tones it has three power settings on it for home use also effects loop that I run boss pedals through , previous to this I had a Blackstar but it had to many presets on it (125 to be precise ) and for me to fiddly to mess about with so I sold it , the easier the better for me I like to switch on and play not spend hours messing with different settings ,I think amp manufacturers try to pack to much in and in my opinion it’s not needed . Hope this helps
Martin
Peavey makes great amps and the Bandit is probably their best seller of all time. All of the various versions of the Bandit over the years sound great and each new release has improved slightly. Very reasonable on the used market and very dependable.
BTW, if you want solid information about gear, Shane on In The Blues You Tube channel is one of the best that you will find.Shane will respond to any question that you send him, usually takes a few days but he will answer
https://www.youtube.com/user/intheblues/search?query=Peavey+Bandit -
Thanks folks for your tips on amps! If I get one it will probably be one of these.
Now, I don’t have much room to place the amp. It’s quite small but right now it doesn’t fit in the space I have, so first I’d like to see if I can improve my current set up. I’ll show a photo, I think it’s pretty simple:
I’ve numbered the photo in the order of the signal flow:
1.- Guitar input is at the Pink Flow pedal. This is a set of analog pedals, I mainly use compressor, tube screamer and delay.
2.- From the pedals output it goes to a Mooer Micro PreAMP 006 which is supposed to emulate the preamp on a Fender Blues amp (and also has mic and speaker simulation).
3.- From the preamp it goes to the Ditto Looper on the floor. It’s a stereo looper so I also use it to loop the bass guitar sometimes, or as a place to hook another guitar player.
4.- From the looper both signals go to the mixing console (Behringer Eurorack MX802), where it also joins the headphones output from the computer (or tablet, or phone) with the backing tracks.
5.- And finally, from the headphones output of the mixing console it goes to the AUX input on a Boss Katana Mini. Notice that I don’t use the Katana Mini as a guitar amp, only as an speaker for the final mix.
5b.- Alternatively I could use the headphones instead of the Katana Mini speaker.
Now, this solution works quite well for me but I’m not satisfied with the quality of the sound. Yesterday I was rehearsing with some friends at the local using a similar setup, but at much higher volume as the speakers were much more powerful (I mean, proper speakers for voice and keyboards) and the sound was nice, I liked it.
So I guess the weakest point I have in my home setup is using the Katana Mini for amplifying it from the AUX output. I think I might try using proper monitor studios like the Yamaha HS7 – this should improve significantly the general audio quality, at least for the backing tracks, but I’m not so sure about the guitar tone quality.
Also, maybe I’m missing something about the Mooer Micro Preamp, but I don’t feel it adds much. Maybe I also need a power amp? I’m quite lost when it comes to decomposing things into separate preamp, power section and cabinet etc.
What do you think? How would you fit a decent guitar tone in this small space? Replacing the Boss Katana with a pair of Yamaha HS7 monitors sounds like a good idea to you? Anything else to add or remove?
Thank you!
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Alright so I think I found the missing ingredient:
It looks like the Mooer C006 is not enough, it will only give you a preamp emulation but you also need an emulation of a power amp. Makes sense, I guess. I’ll investigate this option as something like a Nux Solid Studio is small enough to fit in my little practice space.
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OK so I’m happy with my tones now! To sum it up, I’m still using the setup described above, but with the following improvements:
1.- I’m using a proper power supply on my pedalboard, a T-Rex Fuel Tank Chameleon. It turns out that the Pink Flow pedalboard needed a more powerful one – I was using a small 9v, 100 mA power but it neeeds 300 mA. This was causing some background noise and a weak signal output. Now with the new power source I get a much clearer output, and significantly less background noise. Just this change alone has made a great difference!
2.- I’ve added a Mooer Radar at the end, after the preamp. That’s an awesome little pedal that emulates power amps, cabinets and mics. It’s highly configurable and you can get lost in the details but I’ve just tried some of the presets and it sounds fantastic, and it’s as easy as it gets. This has made a huge difference in the final tone.
3.- I’ve added also a Mooer Skyverb – I didn’t have a reverb and this one is simple enough. It goes between the preamp and the radar.
So with that I’m super happy to have a great tone for playing at low volume, headphones and recording!
Now let’s play! Enough gear! 🙂
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