Suitable Amps for The tones.

[neopardyguitars]

Hallo,

I am awaiting delivery of a Yamaha DG100 2 x 12. It is a stereo modelling amp that originally cost around the £1000.00 mark, but I bought it for significantly less.
It receives very good reviews on Harmony-Central, and other websites.
My first choice would have been a Heritage AC 30 or AC15 Custom, but the cost.... I did attempt to buy a Vox Cambridge
2 x 10 , with Alnico speakers, but got killed in the auction rush.
Normally I would not buy a modelling amp, but the DG100 sounds ideal - has anyone experience of it?
I would appreciate any comments , including negatives.
I have managed to buy a Zoom 508 with the Shads tones installed, but would value any knowledge of these amps. Kind regards, arthur, neopardyguitars.

[neopardyguitars]

I have now received and used the Yamaha DG100 2x12 amp for several days.
It is far and away the best 'modelling' amp, I have used. At a shade under £1000.00 new, you would expect a great amp - and it is.
Suitable for shads? Not yet... It showed up the weakness of the Flat poled SSL2 , and Toneriders sounded awful. However Van Zandt's and Fender SCN's work wonderfully well.
The amp has just 8 amp tones, all good. The 2 cleans are a bit high end, but this was more to do with the pickups. Of the 2 effects, Reverb is very powerful, and useful. It offers the depth without the boom, and with the right pickup, will negate the need for additional reverbs. It offers fairly extensive tweaking to Plate, Hall and Spring reverbs. Excellent.
The echo is okay, just a simple single echo with good tweaking facility. Will not replace my Zoom 508....
The amp certainly responds very well to the controls on the guitar, (not all amps do), and its own EQ, (Treble, Low Mid, High Mid, Prescence and Bass) also are sensitive and of high quality.
Its best feature is the Bass. 'Besame Mucho' and 'Diamonds' never sounded better. It literally is floor shaking. Its 2 Celestion Vintage 30's do the job very well. The bass can very tight and explosive, or growling and woolley, the controls are that good.
The highs are very well defined, but not mellow, and it is this I am working on, it may be the pickups on the guitar I am currently using. Tomorrow, I am using a Fender SCN equipped strat, and borrowing one with active EMG's . This should prove a better bet(s).
The overdrive, lead,and crunch, (2 of each) models are all excellent, and can be accessed at bedroom levels. The best I have heard from a modelling, trans amp, by far.
The controls are fairly intuative, but the manual is a must, the list of facilities is collossul on this amp. To name a few, Line out, with Volume knob, extension socket, Midi, effects loop with Blend, Cd jack, Headphone jack, ohm changer, looping, tuner, metronome, High/ Low Inputs, Store and recall, and a trim knob, which enables you to experiment with your own guitar to get a balanced sound.
You could certainly gig with this amp, easily, yet the volume knob works for home very well, with a range of 1 -7, and then 8-10 for 'for sale' signs going up next door.
Is it as good as Tony Ramsdens' Heritage Vox? Er no..... not for the Shads, not by a long way. Could it be ? Not sure yet, I need a little more experimentation, particularly with different pickups. The best sound I achieved was a really good rendering of the Ramrods 'Riders in the Sky', the bassy nature of the lead, and the great reverb was just right - with no boominess to spoil the ambience.
So far, stick with Vox - regards, arthur.

[Charlie Hall]

Hi Arthur,
I haven't heard one of these amps. However, I have heard Vintage 30 speakers with valve amps and I don't like the high mids or the lacking highs kind of tone they produce. With solid state amps, the output might be damped much higher than with a valve amp so it is possible that the speakers are being controlled more by the amp and might sound fine. Amps are usually designed to sound best with the speakers chosen for it, so it is possible that your amp will perform best with the speakers it comes with.
As you haven't mentioned speakers, I thought I would still let you know my experience with Vintage 30 speakers.
Regards,
Charlie

[Tone]

Hi Arthur

A very comprehensive review of your new amp and I see I got a mention, or at least my Heritage did! For the information of others, a few months ago I bought from Arthur a replica he had built of Hank's white Strat (the ones he and Bruce used for a short time before changing to Burns). I took my Heritage to try the guitar with. I was, and am, very pleased with the guitar and Arthur was impressed by the Heritage.

Your new amp seems to have all the bells and whistles but is it totally digital or is there a valve(s) in there somewhere? I'm just thinking of the perceived warmth of valve amps compared with solid state. Also, does the spec say which amps it models?

Cheers.

Tony

[neopardyguitars]

As a further comment on the Yamaha amp - I found , a few days ago, that the 'blend' knob on the rear of the amp, pertaining to the effects loop, was turned fully on to 'DRY' - correcting this to to fully 'WET' , or slightly more moderate levels, has transformed the amp. My 508 with the shads echoes gave me far more realistic tones.
I agree with Charlies assessment of the vintage 30. In this amp the speakers offer too much low and high mids, but one of the 'Crunch' amp models is a very good representation of the Tweed tones, so I have got a little nearer where I want to be. I intend to change the speakers for a pair of Vox 'Alnico Blues', as and when I can afford them. The amp is otherwise a bit special, it is the quietest 2x12 trans amp, I have yet used, utterly silent in both clean channels, and the motorised control knobs are smooth and very sensitive. It is a quality amp. I am warming to it, every day. I am in process of changing my pickups to Fender SCN in the neck, SD Alnico Pro II at bridge and the Van Zandt will stay in the mid. This should allow me the sound I am looking for. I would still prefer Tony's Vox, but my total outlay will be less than £600, and the Heritage Voxs are considerably more. Best wishes, arthur.

[Charlie Hall]

Hi Arthur,
The name of the amp indicates 100 watts output, and if that is RMS watts, a pair of Blues might not hold up. You could look for a pair of alnico Golds as they are rated at 50 watts each, I think. There is a similar Fane speaker too that is rated at 100 watts each, but I forget the model name. These other two options get good comments for use with higher powered amps.
Regards,
Charlie

[brightcaster]

Although this is a rather old thread, I'll revive it again, because I can provide some additional information.

The Yamaha DG Series amplifiers are at least conditionally suitable for shadows music. However, you should not choose the clean tones but CRUNCH1 what comes much closer to a VOX AC30. Of course the GAIN should not be turned up too far then! GAIN 3, MASTER 10, TREBLE 5, HIGH MID 8, LOW MID 2, BASS 0, PRESENCE 10 are a good starting position for the sound of the top boost era. The inbuilt echo also isn't that bad at all, at least for small live gigs. TIME 3, FEEDBACK 8, LEVEL 8 for tunes like Atlantis or Theme for Young Lovers and TIME 5, FEEDBACK 6, LEVEL 8 for Apache.

This is of course nothing for the real purists or for recording purposes but I lived with it for many years (before I purchased a Quadraverb-GT) playing my little shadows-medley in a small band at weddings and office parties.

Here's an example how the Yamaha DG-100-212 sounds with a stratocaster (1964 specs with curved-fretboard, Elixir 10-46 and Kinmann Woodstock Pickups). There are no additional effects or processors involved, except the MFC10 midi-floorboard for the volume-swell at the start of the second verse.

davidkrause.de/downloads/Argentina.mp3

As for the celestion vintage 30 speakers I want to add that the inbuilt speaker sim (DSP based) seems to reproduce exactly this type of speaker on the XLR output also. So the DI sound to the pa mixer is exactly the same as whats coming from the amp itself. That's the main difference between the firmware of the different amps of the DG series I guess, as a DG-80 is exactly the same amp but has a slightly difference in sound because it has a single celestion G12H100 in its housing. This small difference is also audible if you use the speaker-sim. With the speaker-sim turned off the different DG-amps all sound the same to the direct-out (at least in my ears).

Regards, David

[peterbower]

I think the Celestion Vintage 30's were originally brought out to satisfy the overdrive players, a sound that was becoming very popular. I tried one in my AceTone and the clean headroom was much less than my favourite speaker the G12T100.

Peter

[Charlie Hall]

Vintage 30 speakers were apparently designed for closed back cabinets.
I hated the sound of the Vintage 30 I heard in an Ashdown Peacemaker 40 combo (open backed). All upper mids and very little of anything else. It was a completely different sounding amp when that speaker was replaced with a Jensen.
Regards,
Charlie

[racoon51]

Hi All

I use a very old FAL Merlin 50 Watt amplifier as my main amp and can get a reasonable shadows sound out of by adjusting the dials to suit which guitar I am using. I have a Tanglewood FST Strat (used for slower numbers & early Shads songs), a Squier Strat (late 70's to present Shads songs)and also an AXL Strat Player Deluxe which can do a bit of both eras. On the amp I have the following control knobs: Volume, Bass, Treble, Reverb, Tremelo (which I never use) and also a Presence knob. With a bit of tweaking I can get near enough the sound I am looking for but have never really been too sure what the presence knob does but turn it until things sound right. Any advice on any settings (and the presence setting) would be gratefully received.

Thanks in advance

Mike B

[brightcaster]

The presence knob is for increasing or decreasing the amount of the negative feedback of the amp (coupled with a high-pass filter). As the early VOX amps didn't had any negative feedback at all they had no presence knob also. Details available at wikipedia (second part about guitar amplification):

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presence_%28amplification%29

So imho there should be full presence to get as less as possible negative feedback. That will give more amp made harmonics which is an essential part of the VOX sound...

Regards, David

[racoon51]

Hi David

Thanks for the advice on the amp and the link. I will give it a go later. The amp is very good in terms of tone which is helped by a big 15" speaker and it does pretty well in recreating the tone of the Shadows sound so happy days as they say. Thanks again for the advice.

Regards

Mike B