I have had the good fotune to own many nice guitars and amps. I was also lucky enough to have owned an incredible sounding Dumble for about a year. I chased the Dumble Robben Ford/lLrry Carlton type of tone for many years, although its not a tone I really use. It was more or less just for fun because it was such an elusive tone. I was also lucky enough to have own and or played most of the better Dumble styled amps out there. One thing is for sure. PRS guitars and Dumble style amps are a match made in heaven. They are PERFECT together. From my old Custom 22s and Artist 2s through my Artist 3s, ME 1s,2s and 4s, to the DGT and my PSs, all have totally excelled ino this style of amp. More so than any other guitars I have used with them, and there have been some great matches! My Guild Starfires and Gibson 335s sounded great with them, as did my LPs and almost any tele made, but the PRSs stood out. the pups do not seem to matter either. The Artist pups, the 53/10s, 57/08s, Dragon 2s, and even those in the ME 1s which I did not really care for all sounded KILLER into these amps. If have the opportunity to give the combination a try, make sure you take it! Woody, singing, straining, note flippping wooden cello tones await! Everything from Sabbath to Robben Ford to Joe Walsh classic rock tones can be had with ease. Life is good tonally speaking!
PRSs and Dumble amps.
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Tag, I completely agree with you. They are definitely a fantastic match. And as you were the guy who turned me on to Two-Rock amps ten years ago, and I really enjoyed them, I'm going to return the favor:
Try one of the CAD amps PRS makes. They may or may not be your style, but I think you'd respect them regardless. Might be a good "alternative" amp for you.
They are not what you'd expect based on the type of tubes, etc. They are the real deal. I love mine. And you know I am not a fan of modern Marshall sounds. They're warm, buttery, and very sweet. They clean up to beautiful tones with the volume control. Different, of course, from what you have, but still very good!
As I said, maybe not your cuppa tea, as they don't "strain" like the Dumble style, but I think you'd be pleasantly surprised at how well they do what they do, and they're very well priced.
Try one of the CAD amps PRS makes. They may or may not be your style, but I think you'd respect them regardless. Might be a good "alternative" amp for you.
They are not what you'd expect based on the type of tubes, etc. They are the real deal. I love mine. And you know I am not a fan of modern Marshall sounds. They're warm, buttery, and very sweet. They clean up to beautiful tones with the volume control. Different, of course, from what you have, but still very good!
As I said, maybe not your cuppa tea, as they don't "strain" like the Dumble style, but I think you'd be pleasantly surprised at how well they do what they do, and they're very well priced.
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C&M Music - Lafayette
Charlie
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Les,
OK, you got my attention, If you are saying a particular (or any) PRS CAD Amp is Dumble style tonally, Do Tell! I want so bad to try out a PRS Amp, but there is not one within 600 miles from my home. From reading, I thing the Pauls Amp may get me there. Please elaborate Les!
OK, you got my attention, If you are saying a particular (or any) PRS CAD Amp is Dumble style tonally, Do Tell! I want so bad to try out a PRS Amp, but there is not one within 600 miles from my home. From reading, I thing the Pauls Amp may get me there. Please elaborate Les!
No, I'm saying they are not Dumble style (I said, "different, of course") but that Tag might like them anyway.
Repeat, not Dumble style. They are different.
I don't hear Dumble in Paul's amp, from the clips, but I haven't played one in person. I spent ten years playing Dumble style amps, though, and Paul's amp sounds different, to me, both clean and dirty. But I do hear "excellent" in Paul's amp, and it's on the "must have" list for my studio.
Truth be told, I like great sounding amps, regardless of style; I can usually make them fit into my work.
The characteristics I most associate with Dumble style amps are very detailed, almost hi-fi cleans, and a nasal sounding overdrive that has what Tag calls "strain," but that's just a way of saying that it's a uniquely compressed, very tight sound with a pronounced midrange emphasis. The tight compression that the amp seems to achieve is almost like a brick wall limiter around a midrange center filter frequency. It's interesting, because while that mid compression happens, there is a naturalness in the lows and highs, so it really doesn't feel all that compressed.
But it does remind me of what happens when you put your finger on the end of a garden hose, and the pressure causes the water to squirt out harder.
I have some multi-band dynamic EQs with compression I use in the studio, and you can achieve that kind of thing with them. In any case, it's a cool sound.
But after spending ten years with variations on that sound, I found that I bond more closely with the PRS CAD amp sound.
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C&M Music - Lafayette
Charlie
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Check, Thank you
Les, that may be one of the best discriptions of what I like and hear in a great Dumble, or, what *I* consider a great Dumble. (Some of them do NOT do that!) I disagree about the nasal tone, although it is mid heavy for sure. I would call mesa Mk series overdrive nasally, but we both LOVED the Tremoverb. (One of the best all around amps ever IMO) Leon C from TGP (Hope he is doing well, great guy!) also described it really well when he said "It sounds like the amp (TRock E.Pro) feeds the note back into itself before letting it go". Thats perfect! Talking about Pauls amps, there are some videos, or were some, that showed him playing a Dumble that I believe he owns or owned, and another video showing him playing a twoRock Sig at an amp show and looking VERY, VERY impressed. I always wondered if he incorperated some of that type of tone into any of his amps. The only PRS amp I have had the chance to play was a low line model, and to be honest, I hated it. It was obsviously built for the VERY high gain player, which I am not. I have also hated some twoRock models, and also hated some Dumbles I have played, so that means nothing more than I disliked that model of course! I would love to try one of the upper end amps, but I never see any. When I do, I will plug in for sure. Any PRS players should try and seek out an older twoRock like an E.Pro, K&M custom, Artist, or Sig V1. (I still have never had a chance to play the model you love) The Fuchs SLX are also quite nice, but dont strain as much, and the Quinn TKT 183 is right on the money, (Thats the clone of my Dumble I hired Shad of Quinn amps to make for me) but good luck trying to find one. Its STILL a compromise on the clean side though, and I have a fender SR I use for straight up cleans. (Sold my last Bruno as this SR is so close, and I got it for a grand.) With my PRSs, 2 Jazz guitars and my Strat, I am really comfortable guitar wise, although I AM going to order one more PS now that I sold my other one. It will probably be a while though.
Tag, as you know I'm not a high gain player either (unless a client needs me to record something high gain on a track).
The CAD amps are interesting. In a way, they're old-school, single channel amps with a gorgeous tone. But in another way, they are modern amps with an absolutely killer master volume.
When I said, "nasal" in regard to the dumble tone, I meant simply that there is a midrange emphasis on the tone curve, and there is a bit of enhancement to that resulting from the "strain" (that I call the frequency-dependent compression). In any case, given our shared taste in a lot of things, I think you'd be pleasantly surprised with the CAD amps.
They would be an alternative sound, wouldn't replace the sounds you love, just a nice addition to the arsenal. If you ever dug the "Live at the Fillmore" thing, for example, the HX/DA absolutely nails it, but it does a LOT of other things well, too.
