Today I re-watched David Grissom's demo of the DG50 amp, and I thought it wasn't all that dissimilar to my former 50 watt HXDA. So I decided to experiment a bit, to see if I could get similar tones with my HXDA 30 Watt.
I'm still using the PRS Pine 1x12 cab with the amp, as it'll be a little while before I can add a second DG 2x12 cab. But I thought, why not isolate the 1x12 the way I do the DG cab, get it off the floor using an isoacoustics stand, and absorb some of the omnidirectional bass room modes and standing waves with one of my gobos? So I set it up on the stand, and put the gobo just behind it, so I could concentrate only on the sound that was coming from the speaker, and not additional sound bouncing off the floor and rear walls. The stand raises the speaker up about 7 or 8 inches, and tilts it back a little. Here's a shot of the setup for today:
One thing that is relatively new on the DG30 that I probably haven't spent enough time with is that I swapped the preamp tubes, putting in a NOS Mullard 12 AX7 in V1, and new JJ gold pins in the other spots, as the stock ones had gone a bit microphonic. While I did report earlier on a marked improvement, I hadn't had time to experiment much after installing these tubes. These had all been tested for microphonics, noise and balanced triodes as part of my order, and they were stellar examples with excellent measurements - and dead quiet with no audible microphonic problems.
The stock Winged C output tubes remain in the amp, as they're good sounding and aren't the least bit noisy. I do have a pair of NOS Siemens tubes for down the road.
I literally tried the amp exactly the way Grissom set up his DG50. I set the mids and bass on 4, and the bass on 6. I set the gain around 6 for the HXDA gain, and though the DG 50 doesn't have a separate bass gain control, I experimented until I got very close to his sound with it. I set the switches to HX, DA, and DA, and the presence at about 11 o'clock. The Master was up all the way.
I was playing my McCarty Singlecut today, and while it isn't a DGT obviously, I was able to dial in similar tones on the guitar, so I used Grissom's guitar settings, give or take here and there. Really, it was just a matter of experimenting, and tweaking back and forth. Took me about 15 minutes to dial in a basic tone, and then I tweaked my clean boost and OD pedals to sound a lot like what Grissom did in the video with his tone.
No, I'm not trying to cop Grissom's tone. What I wanted to do was experiment a bit with the capabilities of the amp, just to see how close I could come. And the answer is, I was able to come very close. No, it wasn't exact - heck, the gear is very different! But the basic qualities were there, and I was pretty excited to be able to explore those tones on my gear.
I did come away feeling that the HXDA 30 is perhaps more versatile than I'd previously thought, and that the PRS pine 1x12 sounded better than I'd heard it sound in the past, when the most I'd done with it was set it on an Auralex Gramma. The Auralex platform is cool, and does eliminate some of the audible vibrations in the room, but it isn't nearly as open sounding and clear on that as it was on the Isoacoustics stand.
In any event, it was a fun couple of hours. I won't keep the amp set up that way (as I said, I'm not about to chase someone else's tone) but it was a very worthwhile thing to explore the amp's potential once again.
I should add that it was also a lot of fun!
I'm still using the PRS Pine 1x12 cab with the amp, as it'll be a little while before I can add a second DG 2x12 cab. But I thought, why not isolate the 1x12 the way I do the DG cab, get it off the floor using an isoacoustics stand, and absorb some of the omnidirectional bass room modes and standing waves with one of my gobos? So I set it up on the stand, and put the gobo just behind it, so I could concentrate only on the sound that was coming from the speaker, and not additional sound bouncing off the floor and rear walls. The stand raises the speaker up about 7 or 8 inches, and tilts it back a little. Here's a shot of the setup for today:
One thing that is relatively new on the DG30 that I probably haven't spent enough time with is that I swapped the preamp tubes, putting in a NOS Mullard 12 AX7 in V1, and new JJ gold pins in the other spots, as the stock ones had gone a bit microphonic. While I did report earlier on a marked improvement, I hadn't had time to experiment much after installing these tubes. These had all been tested for microphonics, noise and balanced triodes as part of my order, and they were stellar examples with excellent measurements - and dead quiet with no audible microphonic problems.
The stock Winged C output tubes remain in the amp, as they're good sounding and aren't the least bit noisy. I do have a pair of NOS Siemens tubes for down the road.
I literally tried the amp exactly the way Grissom set up his DG50. I set the mids and bass on 4, and the bass on 6. I set the gain around 6 for the HXDA gain, and though the DG 50 doesn't have a separate bass gain control, I experimented until I got very close to his sound with it. I set the switches to HX, DA, and DA, and the presence at about 11 o'clock. The Master was up all the way.
I was playing my McCarty Singlecut today, and while it isn't a DGT obviously, I was able to dial in similar tones on the guitar, so I used Grissom's guitar settings, give or take here and there. Really, it was just a matter of experimenting, and tweaking back and forth. Took me about 15 minutes to dial in a basic tone, and then I tweaked my clean boost and OD pedals to sound a lot like what Grissom did in the video with his tone.
No, I'm not trying to cop Grissom's tone. What I wanted to do was experiment a bit with the capabilities of the amp, just to see how close I could come. And the answer is, I was able to come very close. No, it wasn't exact - heck, the gear is very different! But the basic qualities were there, and I was pretty excited to be able to explore those tones on my gear.
I did come away feeling that the HXDA 30 is perhaps more versatile than I'd previously thought, and that the PRS pine 1x12 sounded better than I'd heard it sound in the past, when the most I'd done with it was set it on an Auralex Gramma. The Auralex platform is cool, and does eliminate some of the audible vibrations in the room, but it isn't nearly as open sounding and clear on that as it was on the Isoacoustics stand.
In any event, it was a fun couple of hours. I won't keep the amp set up that way (as I said, I'm not about to chase someone else's tone) but it was a very worthwhile thing to explore the amp's potential once again.
I should add that it was also a lot of fun!
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