VHT 2150 vs Strategy 400

braintheory said:
Yes to both his modded Marshalls and DCP-1 Preamp with hyper mod. The 2 rack pre-amps I currently own are a '90's Demeter TGA-3 (DeLeo Spec) and an early '90's/maybe late '80's Aguilar 1911 (it was way ahead of its time (before they made bass amps). Sounds like a liquid modern high gain amp with huge bottom end thump). I also slaved my '64 Vibroverb into them, used the pre's only (via send fx loop send) of my '89 SLO, Megalith Beta, modded Marshall and a few other amps. Will try more later

I'm keeping both power amps, but the Brutus one is more special to me. It's sweet spot imo tends to be around 9 o' clock on the volume. It's already louder than a lot of power amps at that point. It gets that amp about to blow kinda sound higher than that and the presence up high gives this awesome sizzle that's unique to it. The Brutus even sounds pretty cool to me with just my guitar directly into it (no pre used). I didn't know that was a thing, but my tech showed me
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Sam, pick up a line out box…Bray makes one for 50 bucks unless he raised the price, and Suhr has one for 200. The Suhr has an iso transformer. I have the Bray and it works great. You can use it vs the FX return on your SLO for slaving. That way you get the whole amp tone which is far better imo than just the preamp. Plus you can use it to slave all your vintage amps or any without loops. I remember trying the preamp out vs the line out in my SRG C+ to the S400 and it wasn’t even a comparison. The line out box will make those non line out amps sound perfect.
 
Racerxrated said:
Sam, pick up a line out box…Bray makes one for 50 bucks unless he raised the price, and Suhr has one for 200. The Suhr has an iso transformer. I have the Bray and it works great. You can use it vs the FX return on your SLO for slaving. That way you get the whole amp tone which is far better imo than just the preamp. Plus you can use it to slave all your vintage amps or any without loops. I remember trying the preamp out vs the line out in my SRG C+ to the S400 and it wasn’t even a comparison. The line out box will make those non line out amps sound perfect.
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We’ve already talked about this many times lol. I’ve had my Bray line out box for almost 5 years now for that purpose and that’s how I had to use my ‘64 Vibroverb (no other way) since it has no loop. And yes believe me many times now I’ve slaved my c+ hrg into my coli’s with the double scoop for the AJFA on steroids tone. I’ve been using lately more just the preamp vs slaving because I wanted to compare just the preamp of some of my heads with my 2 rack pre-amps. Slaving would’ve made the comparison unfair. I’ve found though in general slaving the whole amp obviously sounds way bigger and has more wow factor, but sometimes I prefer just the pre-amp into it. More clarity, balance, but depends on the situation
 
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psychodave said:
To be fair, I ONLY use the S400 as a power amp for my wet dry wet rig. I don’t use is to power a specific preamp.

Here’s is the old pic of when I did use it for preamps. 🤣. The tone was insane…and I don’t play much Metallica.
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such a nice rig!
did the mesa switcher allow you to switch between amps and preamps? i thought that was the case…

oh and did you have the deep mod to an adjustable pot done at the factory? thst would a VERY cool feature!
 
mentoneman said:
such a nice rig!
did the mesa switcher allow you to switch between amps and preamps? i thought that was the case…

oh and did you have the deep mod to an adjustable pot done at the factory? thst would a VERY cool feature!
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The switcher allowed me to switch between the two triaxis preamps. There were times that if I used different preamp setting I would go out of phase. It was easier to just program the midi to shut off one of the preamps…of course this would only produce sound from one side.

Mike B told me the depth mod… which was a .005uf cap on a simple on/off switch. It was way too much. I ended up using a 1meg push pull pot and threw two different caps on the switch. This way I could go between .001 and .003uf. I really think the .001 sounds best (Mike B added a .001 to a friends S400 previously). Cameron wanted me to try adding another pot and blend in a .002 cap, but I have been lazy tinkering.
 
I love my 400 ................
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