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raybarbeemusic
Member
Title says it all.
Friedman BE/BED vs. Morrison Perplex'd - anyone had both and can compare?
tallcoolone
Well-known member
The Morris is voiced more classic Marshall—the BE is more modern. Morris = kerrang, BE = thump
From what I can tell from clips b/c I’ve never played one, the JEL50/100 is more like the Morris
From what I can tell from clips b/c I’ve never played one, the JEL50/100 is more like the Morris
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raybarbeemusic
Member
JEL still has some of the Friedman high end reduction stuff in it; I removed that on mine. I remove the high end killers on all my Friedmans, makes them much more touch sensitive.
LPMojoGL
Well-known member
Didn't you have a SS100 that you modded a while back?
dead-pan
Well-known member
What do you change on them?
tallcoolone
Well-known member
I also am interested in what you are doing here
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raybarbeemusic
Member
Friedman uses a bunch of high end snubbers in his amps. He also uses a much larger cap between the sides of the PI output than Marshall. On some amps, he also uses a cap around the NF resistor to reduce high end. That's why his amps tend to be dark. It's also why they aren't as touch sensitive as they should be at low gain settings. Ditto a lot of other amp companies, Mesa leaps to mind. I can't stand the affect on feel of any of that stuff, so I remove it, and use the standard 47pf Marshall value on the PI output. Makes the amps much more responsive to touch. If I want to reduce high end, I do it elsewhere by adjusting treble peakers, etc.
I see that in a lot of amps, either plate bypass caps, caps to ground right off the audio circuit, etc etc. The net effect may be to reduce high end, but what these designers do not realize, because very few are actually advanced guitar players, is that the leading edge of the pick attack occurs at very high frequencies. When you toss those frequencies to ground, you kill the leading edge of the pick attack. This makes the amp "hard to play", or at least harder than it needs to be. You can add treble peakers and things in there to make the amp bright again after, but you can't bring back what you threw away. That's why Wizards, for instance, can come off bright AF but be "hard to play". If you look at the schematic, there are a number of high end snubbers. There are other parts that cause the amp to be bright, but you've already thrown away the leading edge of the pick attack, so you can't get it back.
Typical response from players is to crank the gain way up, because by squishing the shit out of the sine wave, you compress so much that you don't notice the lack of touch sensitivity and pick attack attack sensitivity as much. What you lose is dynamics. Try playing a Mesa Mark series amp at a low gain setting. Pure garbage, which is why no one does it. Everyone cranks the gain, because they don't do low gain well due to all the high end snubbers.
If you don't do a lot of fast picked stuff, you may not notice. You might like the dark "smooth" sound. If you do a lot of fast picked runs, you'll feel it for sure. An old Plexi is easy to shred on with an almost clean tone because it's a pure circuit without all the garbage. You can go from speed picking to clean just by touch. You can't do that on amps full of high end snubbers. They will "fight you".
In my opinion, and experience modding circuits, the way to do this is to remove all the snubbers, and adjust at other points in the circuit to keep the amp from being overly bright. An amp can be made easy to play, easy to pick fast on, have a good feel, without being overly bright, and without requiring a ton of gain to squish your dynamics into a singularity. The front edge of the pick attack occurs at such high frequencies that most adults would say they can't hear it, but if you're the one holding the guitar, you can FEEL it. If you dump that to ground anywhere in the circuit, it's gone.
I see that in a lot of amps, either plate bypass caps, caps to ground right off the audio circuit, etc etc. The net effect may be to reduce high end, but what these designers do not realize, because very few are actually advanced guitar players, is that the leading edge of the pick attack occurs at very high frequencies. When you toss those frequencies to ground, you kill the leading edge of the pick attack. This makes the amp "hard to play", or at least harder than it needs to be. You can add treble peakers and things in there to make the amp bright again after, but you can't bring back what you threw away. That's why Wizards, for instance, can come off bright AF but be "hard to play". If you look at the schematic, there are a number of high end snubbers. There are other parts that cause the amp to be bright, but you've already thrown away the leading edge of the pick attack, so you can't get it back.
Typical response from players is to crank the gain way up, because by squishing the shit out of the sine wave, you compress so much that you don't notice the lack of touch sensitivity and pick attack attack sensitivity as much. What you lose is dynamics. Try playing a Mesa Mark series amp at a low gain setting. Pure garbage, which is why no one does it. Everyone cranks the gain, because they don't do low gain well due to all the high end snubbers.
If you don't do a lot of fast picked stuff, you may not notice. You might like the dark "smooth" sound. If you do a lot of fast picked runs, you'll feel it for sure. An old Plexi is easy to shred on with an almost clean tone because it's a pure circuit without all the garbage. You can go from speed picking to clean just by touch. You can't do that on amps full of high end snubbers. They will "fight you".
In my opinion, and experience modding circuits, the way to do this is to remove all the snubbers, and adjust at other points in the circuit to keep the amp from being overly bright. An amp can be made easy to play, easy to pick fast on, have a good feel, without being overly bright, and without requiring a ton of gain to squish your dynamics into a singularity. The front edge of the pick attack occurs at such high frequencies that most adults would say they can't hear it, but if you're the one holding the guitar, you can FEEL it. If you dump that to ground anywhere in the circuit, it's gone.