Slaving amps is too much fun

Bad.Seed

Bad.Seed

Well-known member
I've been meaning to do some content around slaving amps for a while now. It's something that I've always really enjoyed doing for fun, or even in gig situations abck in the day when I only had the money for one good amp, so I slaved my 5150 preamp into a Windsor power amp with a 7 band eq pedal in between to control the level and tweak the sound to taste for the Windsor side. I actually got a lot of compliments on my live tone during that short era, with a couple people I knew even going out and buying cheap Windsors to do the same thing.

Anyways, I figured I'd just put together a video slaving the Peavey 5150 through a shitload of different preamps because I knew it would be fun, easy content and I know a lot of modern or younger players disregard the power section as a valuable tool for tone shaping. I found I really liked the 5150 preamp through Marshall style power amps, specifically the Splawn 6550 Pro Stock and, surprisingly, the 900 HGDR that has a JMP style transformer.

Check the video below if you like. Curious how many people actually still utilize amp slaving in their tones

 
That’s what I’m doing right now with my tremoverb and Windsor. Before I was using my ultra plus but the Windsor was instantly better. Not sure if it was because I was going from sixty watts to a hundred or because it has el34’s….but it sounds so much better now.
 
Did the slaving thing since early 90’s off and on. Running a preamp into another amps power section isn’t really slaving but I get the point of the video.
First ran 1959 modded Marshalls into a Rocktron Juice Extractor out too fx rack, out of the fx stereo to two Marshall JMP 2203/04 power sections into a couple 4-12’s. Awesome sound, but a ton of gear to haul.
Smaller setup was Wizard MC into hotplate on load into Wizard Metal power section out to two 4-12’s. Awesome sound too.
Too lazy for all that nowadays. Picked up a Fryette PS-2 that may bring the old plexi back out once in awhile.
 
Greazygeo said:
Did the slaving thing since early 90’s off and on. Running a preamp into another amps power section isn’t really slaving but I get the point of the video.
First ran 1959 modded Marshalls into a Rocktron Juice Extractor out too fx rack, out of the fx stereo to two Marshall JMP 2203/04 power sections into a couple 4-12’s. Awesome sound, but a ton of gear to haul.
Smaller setup was Wizard MC into hotplate on load into Wizard Metal power section out to two 4-12’s. Awesome sound too.
Too lazy for all that nowadays. Picked up a Fryette PS-2 that may bring the old plexi back out once in awhile.
Click to expand...
I took my mini rack, 3 cabs and a 2204 I had at the time, to one gig........it sounded killer but my suv was full with all that gear lol. Now I'm happy to run it at home, in a 'never take out' setup lol.
 
Racerxrated said:
I slave my amps to a mini rack, for the WDW experience. Only 1 has a line out, my 2210. I use a Bray line out box for my 2 other vintage Marshalls. Long ago I would slave a SRG C+ to a Strategy 400, through 4 cabs. I had a sound concussion after my first time doing that lol.
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You mean you do WDW the correct way instead of the new gimmick products using the loops
 
Racerxrated said:
I took my mini rack, 3 cabs and a 2204 I had at the time, to one gig........it sounded killer but my suv was full with all that gear lol. Now I'm happy to run it at home, in a 'never take out' setup lol.
Click to expand...
Yeah sold my van so it’s hard enough getting a head, 2-12 cab, pedalboard and guitars in the Honda.
And to think I had one of those half stack road cases at one point!
 
50WEST said:
5150 slaved through a VHT 2150. One of my favorites. I just had my 2150 retubed with golden lion KT88s…
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So many sick records have been done with this that I know of. My personal 2/90/2 back in the day was used on a ton of metal records slaved into a 5150, just a phenomenal sound. Imagine a hi fi sounding 5150, super linear from the low end to the highs, with no spikey resonances etc. it’s a great sound for sure.
 
My favorite slave/master combo has always been ENGL SE into VHT UL. That was also my favorite stereo setup. Also, I haven’t run a s/m stereo combo in years.
 
Greazygeo said:
Did the slaving thing since early 90’s off and on. Running a preamp into another amps power section isn’t really slaving but I get the point of the video.
First ran 1959 modded Marshalls into a Rocktron Juice Extractor out too fx rack, out of the fx stereo to two Marshall JMP 2203/04 power sections into a couple 4-12’s. Awesome sound, but a ton of gear to haul.
Smaller setup was Wizard MC into hotplate on load into Wizard Metal power section out to two 4-12’s. Awesome sound too.
Too lazy for all that nowadays. Picked up a Fryette PS-2 that may bring the old plexi back out once in awhile.
Click to expand...
Hahaha same, brutha!! I got the PS100 coming in tomorrow. Gonna be using it with one of my Marshall SL5 for the loopy goodness and to better control the out put. Had been using it with a captor x but 20db was too low.
 
Very cool! I think all the tube amps sounded pretty good. They are all a little different, but similar enough you could work with it. I think the Duncan PS was the worst.

The last week or so I have been messing with the preamp of my 5153 50W into an EQ, then into a 4xKT88 power amp. It is interesting how much clearer and faster this is compared to just using the amp.
 
W/D/W is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more fun.
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Man, I wish I had an el34 amp with an fx loop to slave my JP2C out to. I saw some people in this thread mentioning running an amp's output into the low input of a Marshall and obviously that's not going to have the same result. I have however slaved my 2204 to the JP2C with pretty good results using the Suhr RL:IR. Only issue is it really wants to squeal and feedback like crazy.
 
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