Looking for reliable treble booster for tweed vibrolux

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fuzzjunkie
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Re: Looking for reliable treble booster for tweed vibrolux

Post by fuzzjunkie » Wed Feb 03, 2021 8:28 pm

If you decide to go Graphic EQ and want to be able to add some dirt there are options for that. I built an overdrive and 3 band parametric EQ in pedal years ago. It was a psuedo amp in a box before that was a thing.

J Rocket makes a couple: The Melody and the Rockaway Archer. I think the 2nd one must be their Klon clone with Graphic EQ added? It's more expensive than The Melody in any case. Both have 5 - band EQ.

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Re: Looking for reliable treble booster for tweed vibrolux

Post by ElephantDNA » Thu Feb 04, 2021 8:25 am

Veitchy wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 7:08 pm
ElephantDNA wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 5:55 pm
Then again, I'm probably a little bit too much of a purist, but I like to use treble boosters for British amps as was originally intended. I don't think I would personally want a treble booster into a fender amp. That seems like way too much treble.
In my experience, its not so much about adding back treble, so much as putting back upper mids (maybe around 1.8-2.5K?) into an already overdriving amp. Furthermore, it's not uncommon for the bottom end of amps to collapse a bit when driving. The extra emphasis on the upper mids helps balance it out. Considering the OP is using a tweed amp I'd say it'd be perfect in this application.

I've only really used germanium-based TBs, but I've never found one to make an amp too bright. The Rangemaster/AC30 combo is a classic, and I've never heard anybody complaining an AC30 is lacking treble.

Having said that, if you can get saturation to a satisfactory level you and you need the boost to be behind the time/modulation effects, you could use an EQ to carve out some of those rounder, voweley overdrive sounds once commonly associates with TBs. If I've learned anything over the last few years, it's that you can do just about anything with a Blues Driver and a graphic EQ
To be honest, I'm not a fender guy. I only play British amps, so I'll just take your word on it. But when I did play fenders my EQ pedal was like down on all the highs. I am obsessed with the AC-30 (only amp I play now), but I kind of go the opposite direction. I boost a lot of low-mids and get like this really raspy growl out of it. But I can respect the people who want that "chime" sounds (it's good at that too), so in that application I can see it for sure.

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Re: Looking for reliable treble booster for tweed vibrolux

Post by tdbajus » Thu Feb 04, 2021 9:01 am

Looking forward to trying out my EQ, once I can traverse the 1.5 miles of ice between me and my studio.

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Re: Looking for reliable treble booster for tweed vibrolux

Post by Veitchy » Thu Feb 04, 2021 1:38 pm

ElephantDNA wrote:
Thu Feb 04, 2021 8:25 am
Veitchy wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 7:08 pm
ElephantDNA wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 5:55 pm
Then again, I'm probably a little bit too much of a purist, but I like to use treble boosters for British amps as was originally intended. I don't think I would personally want a treble booster into a fender amp. That seems like way too much treble.
In my experience, its not so much about adding back treble, so much as putting back upper mids (maybe around 1.8-2.5K?) into an already overdriving amp. Furthermore, it's not uncommon for the bottom end of amps to collapse a bit when driving. The extra emphasis on the upper mids helps balance it out. Considering the OP is using a tweed amp I'd say it'd be perfect in this application.

I've only really used germanium-based TBs, but I've never found one to make an amp too bright. The Rangemaster/AC30 combo is a classic, and I've never heard anybody complaining an AC30 is lacking treble.

Having said that, if you can get saturation to a satisfactory level you and you need the boost to be behind the time/modulation effects, you could use an EQ to carve out some of those rounder, voweley overdrive sounds once commonly associates with TBs. If I've learned anything over the last few years, it's that you can do just about anything with a Blues Driver and a graphic EQ
To be honest, I'm not a fender guy. I only play British amps, so I'll just take your word on it. But when I did play fenders my EQ pedal was like down on all the highs. I am obsessed with the AC-30 (only amp I play now), but I kind of go the opposite direction. I boost a lot of low-mids and get like this really raspy growl out of it. But I can respect the people who want that "chime" sounds (it's good at that too), so in that application I can see it for sure.
What are you doing to boost the lower end on your AC? I'm borrowing a mates AC15 at the moment and its plenty middy, but once you turn it up I was surprised that there isn't a ton of low end.

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Re: Looking for reliable treble booster for tweed vibrolux

Post by ElephantDNA » Thu Feb 04, 2021 3:36 pm

DOD-250 and King of Tone always on. Tone knobs just boosting as many lows as I can. Pretty aggressive setting of the High Cut knob as well.

I think you can do the same with pretty much any overdrives or eqs where you have the ability to cut highs. Combined with some manipulation of the tone cut on the amp you can get some of that kind of stuff out of it. I personally just like a very raspy sound - I guess it's not really the "classic" AC30 sound but I don't really care about that.

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Re: Looking for reliable treble booster for tweed vibrolux

Post by tdbajus » Sat Feb 06, 2021 4:53 am

Obvs YMMV, but I haven't been loving my KoT or PoT through my tweed nearly as much as I love it through my BF amps. I did find that Wampler's take on the Bluesbreaker pedal, the Sovereign, to work pretty well in its lowest gain setting.

My experiments with the Wampler Equator sounded pretty friggin rad last night, though. It's kind of surprisingly noisy, and I would trade it in for a proper parametric with a single midrange band with an adjustable Q, but it's a good start.

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Re: Looking for reliable treble booster for tweed vibrolux

Post by Zork » Sat Feb 06, 2021 2:41 pm

I came across these videos fom "living room gear demos" lately. He's using a SD-1 and an EQ as treble boosters to emulate a certain Josh Homme tone and followd the video up with a variety of differents amps. So maybe that's interesting for you:
https://youtu.be/NLCg89EqErE
https://youtu.be/HZbvWoJkwxs

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Re: Looking for reliable treble booster for tweed vibrolux

Post by ElephantDNA » Sat Feb 06, 2021 3:20 pm

Zork wrote:
Sat Feb 06, 2021 2:41 pm
I came across these videos fom "living room gear demos" lately. He's using a SD-1 and an EQ as treble boosters to emulate a certain Josh Homme tone and followd the video up with a variety of differents amps. So maybe that's interesting for you:
https://youtu.be/NLCg89EqErE
https://youtu.be/HZbvWoJkwxs
I'm not sure how accurate those videos are to that tone. I'm not doubting that josh at one point used something of that nature, but I think it was a result of accessibility in early days - not that the SD-1 was like the secret weapon or something. In more recent years I think he's using more parametric eqs and other stuff that's a bit easier to dial in rather than just kind of diming the SD-1. The PDF-1 would get much closer than this SD-1 experiment. Though to be quite honest the old ampeg amps have more to do with his sound than anything. I had actually seen that video before - I thought it sounded paper thin while the real records are a lot thicker.

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Re: Looking for reliable treble booster for tweed vibrolux

Post by Maggieo » Sat Feb 06, 2021 3:27 pm

The Keely Java Boost is a great pedal- it's not only a fine treble boost, but it has switching to make it a mid and low boost, too. And they're affordable to boot.
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Re: Looking for reliable treble booster for tweed vibrolux

Post by Nick and the Noise » Sun Feb 07, 2021 2:21 am

I am astounded at how my MXR graphic delays sound so killer on drum machines and so terrible on my guitar.
I too, found the MXR graphic EQs horrible sounding. I don't understand people use this as an end of chain pedal. Try the full-size TC Spark Booster, it's the perfect tone shaper at the end of your pedal chain. You can fine-tune the mids with the toggle (fat, clean, mids) and drive. And then you have active EQ for the highs and lows. It's so versatile, it can do EP-booster, micro amp, tube screamer... It's also very cheap.

If you want a classic sounding, but more stable and versatile treble booster, there is the Catalinbread Naga Viper. It uses silicon diodes instead of germanium, but I don't know if it works in your setup.

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Re: Looking for reliable treble booster for tweed vibrolux

Post by ElephantDNA » Sun Feb 07, 2021 12:25 pm

Nick and the Noise wrote:
Sun Feb 07, 2021 2:21 am
I am astounded at how my MXR graphic delays sound so killer on drum machines and so terrible on my guitar.
I too, found the MXR graphic EQs horrible sounding. I don't understand people use this as an end of chain pedal. Try the full-size TC Spark Booster, it's the perfect tone shaper at the end of your pedal chain. You can fine-tune the mids with the toggle (fat, clean, mids) and drive. And then you have active EQ for the highs and lows. It's so versatile, it can do EP-booster, micro amp, tube screamer... It's also very cheap.

If you want a classic sounding, but more stable and versatile treble booster, there is the Catalinbread Naga Viper. It uses silicon diodes instead of germanium, but I don't know if it works in your setup.
Naga Viper :?

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