That splat of ages - Neil Young's Deluxe tone

[Mark Hammer]

I picked up Jim Jarmusch's Neil Young and Crazy Horse rockumentary "Year of the Horse" on delete bin DVD yesterday.  Neil Young is such a delight to watch and hear in concert.  He just throws himself at the music.  Watching it, there are times when you think "If I gave Jackson Pollock a guitar and a Fuzz Factory...".  There are also times when you think, "You know, it's not a bad deal to be grey, stiff, irritable, and stuck in a rut.  As long as it's a GREAT rut and you can stay passionate."

All art history and psychobabble aside, the tone he extracts from his precious Fender Deluxe is just such pure rock growl.  I am not, for one minute, going to suggest that a 45 year-old amp is somehow going to be easily mimicked by a couple of FETs, but there has to be something characteristic and central to his tone that is describable and reproducible in some manner.

So, ignoring all the mojo about running the two input channels at once, how 6V6's break up compared to other tubes, and all the other amp stuff, not to mention Old Black, P-90's and Neil's fingers, what is it that the 5E3 "does"?   Is there something peculiar that happens to the guitar signal that can be described in words and eventually in terms of a design?

[Jim Jones]

Hey Mark,

Tweed Deluxes fart out like crazy with P-90's and humbuckers because of those huge .1 coupling caps...maybe something to think about.

Jim

[EdJ]

Hey,i watched that DVD saturday night!
IMHO i think most of his tone comes from his right hand technique.
Ed

[The Tone God]

Undersized transformers and the tube rectifier. Squish and splat.

Andrew

[petemoore]

Undersized transformers and the tube rectifier. Squish and splat.

Andrew

There will never be a substitute for sleep.
 Overstaturated transormer sounds.
 Certain Fuzz boxes can get 'somewhat' like that, try a huge input cap on a boostered FF, or other combination like one of the Bazz Fuss encarnations.

[Mark Hammer]

Well now that you guys mention it, the oversized input cap on the Jordan Bosstone has/introduces some of that.

I wonder if there is something a person could do to impose dynamic limitations on available supply current in a battery operated circuit?  I bet RG's the man for that particular job, but I'm curious if any such devices/pedals already exist out there.  I'm not talking about "dying battery" simulators, but about a circuit that would deliver "normal" battery current initially but simply run out of breath if you slam the strings.

Hmm...what would happen if you stuck a biggish fixed resistor between battery and supply-smoothing cap and used a small cap value?  Would the supply give out on transients?

[RDV]

Ya gotta love that squish & splat.........uh,......what were we talking about?

RDV

[Peter Snowberg]

Oversized coupling caps, the right 12A_7s, larger than normal resistors in the PS RC stages feeding the preamp, and lots of soldering by Sal Trentino.

[brian wenz]

Hello Hello-
   I'm not sure what years, but Young was using a Vox Tonebender [MK I] quite a bit of the time.
Brian.

[stm]

Mark:

In my quest for the "solid-state tube sound" I've come up with the following ideas to improve current simulations of tube amps.  Most emblematic representatives I think are ROG designs and BSIAB II.

I am playing with the Saturated Speaker Simulator circuit to go after any of these circuits to emulate partially speaker saturation at high volumes. This assumes of course you are playing through a clean amp at a volume where the speaker is not yet at breakup.

Another phenomena which is not currently introduced in the aforementioned simulations is the power supply lag, which adds dynamics and many other adjectives (mushiness, touch response, compression, etc.)

The following has been developed up to computer simulation level so far.  When I have time I will actually build a circuit to hear how it does.

1) I calibrate all drain voltages using a 9V supply (usually JFET drains at 4.5V).

2) I use a voltage-controlled power supply that delivers 10V nominally.

3) I rectify the simulator's output and filter it with a low pass filter set for 5 Hz or so.

4) I subtract the rectified voltage from the 10V supply, so now my actual supply voltage drops (lags) down to 8V when there is a strong signal at the input (and also output).

5) At least in the simulations this shows some compression on the output waveform, and more important, it shows duty-cycle variation in a dynamic way, which according to some articles it is very important for good tube amp tone.

The above presents of course the need to use a higher voltage supply, let's say 12V at least for a practical implementation.  Still need to do more testing on this.

By the way, the circuit I simulated for this experiment is the Professor Tweed.

Regards,

Sebastian Tepper

[Arn C.]

Has anyone ever tried a variac on their old tube amps set at 110volts, the way voltage used to be coming out of the walls.   I think I will try this with my old wards airline and see what the differences are in sound from setting in a lower voltage, maybe even 108 volts ac and check from there on up to 120volts.   Maybe there is a sweet spot in there.

By the way, I thought Neil Young had a big red box that made all his noise?

Peace!
Arn C.

[B Tremblay]

Has anyone ever tried a variac on their old tube amps set at 110volts, the way voltage used to be coming out of the walls.

RG has a Vintage Voltage Adapter article that does what you're describing.  I haven't tried it, though.

http://geofex.com/Article_Folders/vintvolt/vintvolt.htm

[Arn C.]

Yeah, I saw that one quite a while back.   I think I will use my variac and see where it sounds and works the best for me and my guitars.  Once I find the proper voltage I want, I will make the voltage for my amp permanent.

Peace!
Arn C.

[SeanCostello]

If an overdriven output transformer is part of the sound, how about putting a little transformer at the output of your stompbox? The Tychobrahe Octavia (or at least my Fulltone Octafuzz clone) uses a small transformer, and gets some very strange behavior - somewhere between compression and moving overtones. If you want to get more precise, have a high gain circuit, followed by a phase splitter, that feeds the windings of the transformer. Just make sure to slam the transformer with far too much signal.

Neil's guitar tone has so much natural compression it is sick. The most distorted of his solos sound like they are backwards. I am not sure whether that is due to transformer saturation, power supply sag, changing DC bias caused by the large coupling caps, or all of the above. Try them all.

Sean Costello

[Mark Hammer]

How can you tell, a priori, what is going to saturate the transformer?  That's not a challenge, just a question born of curiosity.  Can magnets help in this regard?  Seriously.

[EdJ]

Please correct me if i am wrong but the compression thing is what i meant with his right hand technique;when you play in the *normal*way you just pick a note with a part of the pick or  finger.
when you play Neil`s way you hit the strings with the lower part of your right hand just enough to give the note an oomph and sounds like there is a lot of compression going on.It is difficult to explain but not that hard to do.The effect can be heard clearly in a lot of Neil`s accoustic work too.
Ed

[puretube]

How can you tell, a priori, what is going to saturate the transformer?  That's not a challenge, just a question born of curiosity.  Can magnets help in this regard?  Seriously.

maybe an interesting field to experiment/play with an extra/additional
DC-winding for "artificial", or even modulated saturation...
(it ain`t me, babe - too busy...)  :?:

[eaze]

Sorry for OT.

I read the interview of Neil and his amp/guitar technician.
about ten years ago....live album "Arc""Weld" era.
http://www.towerrecords.com/product.aspx?pfid=1203111
http://www.towerrecords.com/product.aspx?pfid=1203121

In their interview,
Amp tech. was explaining that Deluxe's power-tube were 6L6.(replace,modified).

Oh, I found that.
http://www.thrasherswheat.org/sound.htm

2-VOL&1-TONE knobs of Deluxe are fully motor-controled !  
They use custom-made remote control machine named WHIZZER since 1978.
and, Neil's footpedal can tweak & 'play' them always!

http://www.thrasherswheat.org/friends/amps.htm
So big wall of amps is build on his stage, that makes deadly loud feedback.
old Deluxe is core. ...His system is totally incredible!!

Reverb-pan is set up near right under he stands, but it's isorated from vibration.
http://www.thrasherswheat.org/ptma/equip.htm
Check out his answer...Neil is real crazy...  :wink:

You'll think it is a lie until you actually see...
http://members.tripod.com/~dangerbird/Albumlist/neilguitar.htm
(scroll down to the bottom)

Neil Young is godfather of Grunge. It's true.

[aaronkessman]

in addition to using 6L6's, i think his deluxe is modded in other ways. there are several well known mods to make the amp fart less on loud bassy notes and generally be more even across the guitar's frequency spectrum.

part of the splattiness is probably also the reverb he has going into the deluxe which is then overdriven, as well as the bigsby trem. both of these inject a certain amount of chaos into what goes into the amp. noise is what you get out when that stuff is overdriven.

another thing, besides the semi-palm muting that he uses (which EdJ pointed out) is just nicking the strings with the other fingers/nails while picking. it's more noticable on the deluxe than other amps, and makes a sort of pinch harmonic sound (not exactly, but it's the best way i can describe it). it's part sloppy playing and part his signature sound.

the important thing is that his palm muting and "string nicking" are made to sound incredible on an overdriven deluxe. they would not be as pronounced on say, a clean blackface twin set on 3 or an overdriven jcm800. in my opinion anyway - not to say that he wouldnt sound like neil young on another amp, but this amp has such a unique sound that it's very much an instrument in its own right. speaking from experience, you *do* learn how to play this amp.

http://www.firebottle.com/fireforum/fireBB.cgi?cfg=dlx&enter=go

lots to learn about what makes it tick here.

Aaron

[EdJ]

Hmm,a wizzer would be a cool thing to have.
R.G. do you have some spare time?