Carvin MTS 3200

[jerrydyer]

what a dog lead channel. how can anyone use this for anything? I see it has four gain stages available and I have a Legacy schem. the first one. Im going to turn the lead channel into a Legacy 1. I thought the mid was interesting on the orig legacy. It was a smoother amp al around than the later ones.

 

[jiveturkey]

You are not joking. Bought one when I was in my "there must some good Carvin amps besides the Legacy" phase. I was for the most part, dead wrong. Sounded atrocious on a multitude of levels. Good luck in the modding process as it's not like they can sound any worse lol

 

[jerrydyer]

I cant sell it like this. I would be doing someone a diservice. I will mod it and get it to rock, then sell it.

 

[baron55]

The MTS uses 1N4745 clipping diodes between the 2nd and 3rd gain stage. It is only uses 3 gain stages. The 4th stage is part of the active active EQ between the 3rd and 4th gain stage.

Also the MTS starves the preamp tubes V1 and V2 of heater voltage. The heater supply is rated at 5.9 amps. With a quad of 6L6 and preamp tubes your pulling 5.1 amps. With a quad of EL34's your pulling 7.5 amps. So with EL34's the V1 and V2 filaments average 4.5v DC under load since the heater supply is not robust enough. also dumpling the 56 ohm fuseable links also helps kick the heater voltage up a tad.

 

[jerrydyer]

i saw those. ive dumped them before. With great results on a bel air. almost same circuit, one less stage.

 

[jerrydyer]

passive EQ.
the stage your lookiong at is a recovery stage from loop and reverb etc before PI. I can make this like 99% legacy spec.

 

[jiveturkey]

^@baron almost pulled the trigger on what I am thinking is one your amps listed on HC before it's timely demise a while back. The clips of it sounded ferocious! Good work!

 

[jerrydyer]

^almost pulled the trigger on what I am thinking is one your amps listed on HC before it's timely demise a while back. The clips of it sounded ferocious! Good work!

lol they hate me. so i logged onto the new one to say hi.

 

[Shiny_Surface]

Had an MTS 3212 (2x12 combo version).

By contrast the clean channel was excellent for pristine clean jazz/country type stuff...but that was it imo.

 

[jiveturkey]

^almost pulled the trigger on what I am thinking is one your amps listed on HC before it's timely demise a while back. The clips of it sounded ferocious! Good work!

lol they hate me. so i logged onto the new one to say hi.

I realized I responded to late and was talking to Baron. I am sure your amps are ferocious as well After reading your screen name, I think I recognize you lol I try not to hate people I have never met. Either way, let me know if you get the MTS sounding good.

 

[jerrydyer]

I think i heard one of his kt66 amps. it was killer.

 

[DGW]

how well does the anp take pedals in the clean ch..thanks

 

[jerrydyer]

prob really well. the ADA sounds great in front of it

 

[polaris20]

I thought the clean channel was great, but the gain/lead? Ick.

 

[AmpliFIRE]

What a POS

 

[glassjaw7]

Jerry, post up clips of the mod. I have an MTS head laying around. Right now I'm just using it for some gigs for the power section (podHD into fx return) but if it sounds drastically improved I might send it over.

 

[jerrydyer]

okay. i havent done it yet but maybe this weekend .. right now Im using it as a slave for the modded ada... sounds good .

 

[BeZo]

I got one with a blown OT for free and decided to fix it up. I figured I wouldn't put more than $300 into it, so I can sell it at it's usual going rate if modding it didn't work out. We (My amp tech) put a choke and an OT from Triode Electronics in it and replaced all the caps with SoZos and JJs. The clean channel is almost a Fender. That's why the clean is so great. It's only a tweak away from being a Fender clean, so we made that tweak. We pulled all of the diodes out of the gain stage and made it all tube. It has a little less gain (too much stock gain anyways), but it sounds worlds better than they do stock. We also tweaked the EQ a little to level it out. It feels weird saying this, but I actually like it now.

They are crap when they are stock. It seems like everyone I knew had one at some point and it failed on them. The gain channels suck, and all the tweaks we did made this amp worth something (at least). I'm trying to flip mine now though. It was a fun project, but I want another 5150 now.

 

[jerrydyer]

i you can do that then go get yourself the legacy schem and change the tone network to it as close as you can. you will be very happy. The way carvin uses that diode trick is so so so old school. the only reason people ever did that was way back in the day, no one was even doing three gain stages. mostly one and tow so they added a little dirt off the colume pot of the old fenders etc. some guys understood you could customize it with the right voltage diode but most just slapped a couple 1n4007 's on their and hoped for the best. cant beleive thay used it in this day and age. well, 10 years ago or whenever the bel air and MTS were made.

 

[Devin]

As someone who owned an original Legacy halfstack for 4+ years, I think the lead channel on it is kinda shitty too

It really is damn near ONLY good for leads, unless you enjoy bloated, flubby rhythm tones with no real string-to-string clarity to speak of.

Switching to 6L6's helped a bit but overall the voicing of the lead channel is all wrong

That said, the clean channel on the Legacy was incredible and the amp took a lot of abuse without so much as a hiccup.