What makes some amps sound polished/polite?

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ClintN667

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I would love to have a 2 channel marshall type amp with a crunch channel 1 and a high gain channel 2. I was thinking of getting a Ceriatone Leviathan again but it still retains some of that polished Friedman DNA that I'm not a big fan of and it got me thinking what makes certain amps polished and polite sounding vs raw aggressive sounds of others? I think I remember someone saying at one point that it's the filtering used.

So I'm curious what makes certain amps aggressive or what makes them sound smooth? Dark or Bright? Like is there any cheat sheets that tell what to look for in an amps circuit that makes them sound certain ways?
 
It’s just a disease that plagues almost all recent made amps to some degree. Some worse than others. Hopefully they’ll get better as they age. IME the farther back you go, the more raw you tend to get. You think ‘80’s JCM800’s sound raw then hear a ‘50’s champ sound a level or 2 more raw, just not voiced for hard rock or metal. The most raw recent made amps I’ve tried have been Komet’s & Alessandro’s (still not quite like real vintage amps though) and for high gain Wizard & Naylor. Maybe a more tech savvy guy here can explain why
 
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ClintN667 said:
I would love to have a 2 channel marshall type amp with a crunch channel 1 and a high gain channel 2. I was thinking of getting a Ceriatone Leviathan again but it still retains some of that polished Friedman DNA that I'm not a big fan of and it got me thinking what makes certain amps polished and polite sounding vs raw aggressive sounds of others? I think I remember someone saying at one point that it's the filtering used.

So I'm curious what makes certain amps aggressive or what makes them sound smooth? Dark or Bright? Like is there any cheat sheets that tell what to look for in an amps circuit that makes them sound certain ways?
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It's mostly from the use of snubbers. Basically caps that run high frequency content to ground, or B+
The caps will be strategically placed throughout the circuit to hit the spots that are most nasty.
Now if you like the nasty, or raw if you will not like these amps.

It's really doing what a sound engineer would do with the EQ on a mixing board.
 
ClintN667 said:
I would love to have a 2 channel marshall type amp with a crunch channel 1 and a high gain channel 2. I was thinking of getting a Ceriatone Leviathan again but it still retains some of that polished Friedman DNA that I'm not a big fan of and it got me thinking what makes certain amps polished and polite sounding vs raw aggressive sounds of others? I think I remember someone saying at one point that it's the filtering used.

So I'm curious what makes certain amps aggressive or what makes them sound smooth? Dark or Bright? Like is there any cheat sheets that tell what to look for in an amps circuit that makes them sound certain ways?
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Honestly, your answer for this is a 2203/4; set it for a nice crunch then grab any number of boost pedals for your high gain channel. Have someone throw a metro loop in if you need one.
The Naylor SuperDrive will also work for this; a little bit darker voiced though.
 
Whatever causes more compression ? Compression is the culprit to me. I don’t know how to build shit . But I just hear over compression .
 
Techdeth said:
Whatever causes more compression ? Compression is the culprit to me. I don’t know how to build shit . But I just hear over compression .
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Well with Engl's or JVM's definitely, but IME there are amps that are quite compressed that I still consider raw. Most notably a iic+/++ or most Cameron modded older Marshall's. Possibly the 2 best examples right there of great amps that are compressed yet raw at the same time. Raw is imo more about being rough around the edges to me and having extraneous details to the notes that maybe don't belong, but add to the character. The extra compression just makes it imo harder to discern these details. You don't find this true raw sound in newer gear (at least I have not yet) and the few times ime when I have it came off superimposed, like it's not naturally raw if that makes sense. The good modern gear imo excels more in things like being tight, precise, hi-fi or a unique flavor rather than being raw, warm or organic. Vintage imo always will win in the latter areas, even bad vintage gear lol. Just part of that sound
 
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It’s a mix bag of a few different things.

One being the types of caps used, and the other is over-snubbing too much high end as mentioned earlier. Want more raw? Snub less or snub higher frequencies.

Other tricks are targeting certain parts of the amp - negative feedback loops for example.

It’s possible to get raw and bark. I just finished designing this guy, still have to put in my new MM PT to bump up the B+:

 
CrazyNutz said:
It's mostly from the use of snubbers. Basically caps that run high frequency content to ground, or B+
The caps will be strategically placed throughout the circuit to hit the spots that are most nasty.
Now if you like the nasty, or raw if you will not like these amps.

It's really doing what a sound engineer would do with the EQ on a mixing board.
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Mikeyboyeee said:
Friedman has stated recently that he has heard the complaints about the smoothness and is now voicing them more raw due to the feedback.
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Those 500pf snubbers are horrible. To my ears it makes the amps top end artificial and weird. You know who uses them ??
 
Ask Bruce Egnater or Jeff Hilligan. Not a dig in any way. The Egnater mod stuff I had were very smooth and polite on the top end. Matter of preference. I think it had something to do with 1k cap or 500 like others are saying. I know Jack squat about amp innards
 
marvcus said:
Ask Bruce Egnater or Jeff Hilligan. Not a dig in any way. The Egnater mod stuff I had were very smooth and polite on the top end. Matter of preference. I think it had something to do with 1k cap or 500 like others are saying. I know Jack squat about amp innards
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I still chuckled lol
 
Snubbers definitely, also the lack of bright caps and/or treble peaker caps. Tone stack values too. NFB setup is also an overall contributor. There is a fine line between kerrang and ice pick!
 
burger said:
Snubbers definitely, also the lack of bright caps and/or treble peaker caps. Tone stack values too. NFB setup is also an overall contributor. There is a fine line between kerrang and ice pick!
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And stability. Lord I know. Get too greedy and you’ll know it ?
 
I like Friedman amps for what they are, but being primarily a power/speed/thrash metal guy I’m a lot happier with the JCM 800 I have now. You can’t dial back in the rawness and bite when it’s just not there to begin with.

I found myself trying all the time to get something closer to a late 90’s-2000’s Iced Earth/Demons & Wizards kinda tone and it is not in there. But a Les Paul into an MXR Custom Badass OD into the 2204? Easy peasy.

If I was just doing “rock” or whatever I’d probably have stuck with the JJ-100 because everything it did, it did amazingly well.
 
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