amp wattage

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fetusrobot
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Post by fetusrobot »

so that's why hotter pickups overdrive the amplifier more easily, like jazzmaster pickups or P-90s. because the source signal is already very loud
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laterallateral
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Post by laterallateral »

You can overdrive a preamp in two ways. The first is the exact same method used to overdrive a power amp, (by playing it loudly.)
The second way means pre-PRE amplifying your signal and feeding it to your pre-amp. (this is what clean boosters do.)
Last edited by laterallateral on Wed Apr 16, 2014 8:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Last edited by laterallateral on Fri Sep 19, 2014 3:05 pm; edited 115,726 times in total
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laterallateral
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Post by laterallateral »

...Or you know... what torchindy said. ;)
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Post by torchindy »

fetusrobot wrote:so that's why hotter pickups overdrive the amplifier more easily, like jazzmaster pickups or P-90s. because the source signal is already very loud
Yep

I had an LP classic with those horrible 500T pickups wound at like 14k or something obnoxious. They drove the crap out of my bassman to the point where it would overdrive on around 3. And they sounded horrible, so they got the axe in favour of some Sheptones.

It's worth noting that volume will increase with the boost (or hot pickups) put into the preamp stage until the preamp tubes hit saturation and overdrive. You can't just turn up boost to get drive with no volume increase. Essentially in any tube amp, you have only so much clean volume that the tubes can handle, and after that you aren't really adding volume, just distortion. Distortion happens when the tube hits it's volume ceiling and can't increase volume anymore, and so as you turn your volume up, the main note is basically "at max" and all the sympathetic frequencies and harmonics (that would normally be much quieter) are being brought up to that same level. So the distortion is actually just the harmonics and sympathetic frequencies being sort of 'levelled out' with the main note (along with a little bit of noise from the power supply, RF interference, etc). That's why if you play harmonics ala EVH with your amp distortion way high they are so much louder than if you play them on a clean setting.

if you put a boost between your guitar and amp input, you are just pushing the tubes closer to that saturation point.
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