M90

[Tone Merchant]

im hoping to have a good video done by late next week

 

[Capulin Overdrive]

Is Elmwood's power amp as mean as Herbert's?

All the Elmwood clips I can hear are kind of low gain. Anywhere I can hear them recorded professionally cranked?

you can dial in lots of low end on the M90, but there's no way to get it to thump like a Herbert.


guessing the M90's low end would record pretty good? but in the room live, the Herbert will crush it for low end.

 

[steve_k]

What brand of tubes are you using in it (preamp and power)?

I picked up a used one with the Elmwood KT88s and ENGL 12AX7s and it has not really impressed me so far, but I'm planning to retube it and give it a chance.

Update: I went to rebias the amp and found that the stock KT88s were very mismatched (43ma vs 58ma). I bought some Gold Lions from Tube Depot and dropped them in, rebiased, and changed out all the preamp tubes and the amp sounds much better now. I didn't even really bother moving the tone controls after that, it sounded great where it was at and I just enjoyed playing for a bit. Rebiasing the M90 is a real pain by the way because there is a board with a capacitor directly above the bias pot. Unfortunately, I still can't answer the question of whether or not the Gold Lions are worth the extra $ over other KT88s because my stock KT88s were so mismatched that it was probably causing the underwhelming sounds I was getting before.

That's the second comment out the tubes being mismatched / biased from the factory. Jan needs to jack up his amp techs. Will pull the chassis in mine this week and check it out.

Steve

 

[steve_k]

Is Elmwood's power amp as mean as Herbert's?

All the Elmwood clips I can hear are kind of low gain. Anywhere I can hear them recorded professionally cranked?

you can dial in lots of low end on the M90, but there's no way to get it to thump like a Herbert.


guessing the M90's low end would record pretty good? but in the room live, the Herbert will crush it for low end.

See there, you done went and did it now. Just when I was through buying amps for a weekend, you just had to go and mention the enormous Herbert bottom-end!

Steve

 

[nbarts]

Is Elmwood's power amp as mean as Herbert's?

All the Elmwood clips I can hear are kind of low gain. Anywhere I can hear them recorded professionally cranked?

you can dial in lots of low end on the M90, but there's no way to get it to thump like a Herbert.


guessing the M90's low end would record pretty good? but in the room live, the Herbert will crush it for low end.

That's what I was afraid of. There is magic in Herbert's power that I haven't found in any other amp.

Thanks for your informative input.

 

[Tone Merchant]

well the herbert has twice the headroom. i would love to see elmwood do a monster 180 watt version like the herbert

 

[Capulin Overdrive]

well the herbert has twice the headroom. i would love to see elmwood do a monster 180 watt version like the herbert

yep, me too!

 

[nbarts]

Took my trustworthy horizon with me to the GC today to test the Triple Rectifier & I loved the thing, I can't believe there was a time I couldn't dial a great tone with this amp. IMO it smoked the dual rectifier. It literally took me like 20 seconds to make it sound awesome, I just pretty much dialed the same thing I do on my Herbert. It's official, I'm a sucker for powerful power amps That said the interesting thing is that you don't have to be that loud with these amps, but that 6 power tube power does its job even at normal volumes. I'll be getting one soon to see if it records as well as it sounded in the room.

 

[crabby]

I own herbert, and just recently played the m90 and m60, yes herbert has a lot of low end more than m90 but its twice the size,but dont you guys use a bass player or are you just bedroom players, Ive been dickin around between the m90 and engl se, but after playing m90, it has the lasting impression like herbert did the first time i played it, still have it 5yrs later. the 90 is gonna be a great companion with herb, now rackmount or head?

m90 is...
aggressive
powerful
sparkly clean
the eq goes a long way
the edge/fat knobs on back go a real long way to defining your tone
compare to herbert, hmmm tough to put in words, they are like yin and yang...

 

[nbarts]

It's really not about low frequencies for me, it's the way the cabinet interacts with that energy. It shapes a great low mid compression with higher frequencies being more articulate. I could never get that form my Uberschall. The VH4 is pretty close, but not there.

 

[steve_k]

Update....still impressed with the drive and tone of the M90. It takes pedals well when run in front of the amp. But, tried an Eventide Eclipse in the FX loop today and must say the FX loop on the Elmo sucks hind tit. Its even worse than a Mesa's. Jan and the boys need to get to work on the FX loop circuitry.

Steve

 

[flyangus]

Steve,
I run an Eventide Eclipse in the loop of my M60 and it sounds excellent! I'm running it in parallel at the moment but I used to run it in series when I had it hooked up to a switchblade. Check the in and out levels (its PITA on the Eclipse), what cables are you using?

 

[steve_k]

Steve,
I run an Eventide Eclipse in the loop of my M60 and it sounds excellent! I'm running it in parallel at the moment but I used to run it in series when I had it hooked up to a switchblade. Check the in and out levels (its PITA on the Eclipse), what cables are you using?

Good to know its working for you. Maybe I jumped the gun a little and need to so some tweaking. I dropped the levels down so its not clipping. I am using Mogami/Neutrik cables that I normally use, so no problem there. Guess I am comparing everything to Diezel's FX loop. Will muck around with it some more.

Steve

 

[flyangus]

Good to know its working for you. Maybe I jumped the gun a little and need to so some tweaking. I dropped the levels down so its not clipping. I am using Mogami/Neutrik cables that I normally use, so no problem there. Guess I am comparing everything to Diezel's FX loop. Will muck around with it some more.

Steve

I'm pretty sure it's as good as the Diezel loops - it's while since I had one though. The Modenas loop is line level as well

 

[Seitz333]

Update....still impressed with the drive and tone of the M90. It takes pedals well when run in front of the amp. But, tried an Eventide Eclipse in the FX loop today and must say the FX loop on the Elmo sucks hind tit. Its even worse than a Mesa's. Jan and the boys need to get to work on the FX loop circuitry.

Steve

Steve, what did you not like about the effects loop? I'm running an Eventide H3000 D/SE (old school, lol). It sounds fine. I do have to drop the output of the Eventide about -12db to get the levels to match if I hit the bypass mode on the Eventide. I do wish the Elmwood footswitch was able to turn the FX loop on/off.

Chuck

 

[Tone Merchant]

I havent had any issues w the loop. Ill send jan an email, maybe he can chime in

 

[joshsage]

I've always had great experiences with the loop on this amp. I have used it with a couple different pedals, and processors, all of which worked just fine.
Josh

 

[steve_k]

After hearing everyone's experience here, I went back and messed around with it some more. I still couldn't get it right with adjusting the levels in the Eclipse to the point of being happy. Tried a couple stomp boxes and still some coloration and noise that I didn't like. Sooooooooooo, thought it may be the loop driver . Replaced V3 with a new Tung Sol 12AX7 and snap! Must have been a bad tube along .

Steve

 

[Seitz333]

After hearing everyone's experience here, I went back and messed around with it some more. I still couldn't get it right with adjusting the levels in the Eclipse to the point of being happy. Tried a couple stomp boxes and still some coloration and noise that I didn't like. Sooooooooooo, thought it may be the loop driver . Replaced V3 with a new Tung Sol 12AX7 and snap! Must have been a bad tube along .

Steve

Glad you found the problem!

 

[steve_k]

After hearing everyone's experience here, I went back and messed around with it some more. I still couldn't get it right with adjusting the levels in the Eclipse to the point of being happy. Tried a couple stomp boxes and still some coloration and noise that I didn't like. Sooooooooooo, thought it may be the loop driver . Replaced V3 with a new Tung Sol 12AX7 and snap! Must have been a bad tube along .

Steve

Glad you found the problem!

yea....me too.

steve