That old 50's combos sound...

[Blues_Boy_4096]

Hi!

I'm after thet old 50's combos sound, 5E3, single ended small combos, etc.
I've listened to the samples of the Lovepedal Vintage Valve (http://www.lovepedal.com/vintage_valve.htm) and really liked them...

Any suggestions of where to start to get similar sounds?

Thanks

[Arn C.]

Man, gotta like those sound bites!!!!!   I also would like to make one of these!

Peace!
Arn C.

[Boogdish]

Check out Professor Tweed, I haven't built it yet, but it's a basically a tweed Princeton in a stompbox.

http://www.runoffgroove.com/professor.html

You should check out some of the other runoffgroove projects as well and their article on using FETs to replace tubes.

[Dragonfly]

Well, the "Woodrow (5E3)" part is easy enough... it's a modified Electra circuit

build a Electra OD with .047 input cap, 3.3k collector to V+ resistor, 2.2meg resistor from base to collector, 330 ohm and 47uf from emitter to ground, 0.1uf output cap, 2 1N914 diodes to ground on the end. 2N5088 transistor and a 500k volume pot finish it up.

Depending on the amp you are using you might swap the 330 ohm / 47u pair for a 1k resistor and play with the input caps value.

Personally I don't think it sounds much like a "cranked tweed Fender", but it IS a nice simple OD that sounds decent.

The clips on the LP site sound nice.

[ppatchmods]

They also have the professor tweed kits on olcircuits.com It sounds pretty good.

[Ben N]

The Snarling Dogs Tweed-E-Dog was supposed to do this, and that was just Yet Another Tweaked Tube Sound Fuzz, so I imagine there is something you can do with a CMOS chip (smallish input cap, 2-inverter distortion with low-med gain) to get into this territory.

[DougH]

There's an interesting ratty quality to the distortion in those lovepedal clips. That's what gives it that "old time tube combo" sound IMO. For some reason I'm thinking there must be a way of doing that with diodes. Or it could be as simple as the way some transistor distortion is getting filtered. Maybe it's the way the bass is/is-not getting de-emphasized before clipping. Or maybe look at the STM speaker clipping simulator thing (SSS) for clues- maybe that's where I've heard this sound before (other than from amps).

I gotta hand it to that guy- he puts up some good sounding clips and that sells pedals.