re-Amping an Amp. . .??

[jaguarundi]

Ok, off the bat, I'll let it be known my understanding of the electronics world is probably akin to a fish's comprehension of astronomy. That said, I've been trying to figure out how to get the amp sound and VOLUME I want with my guitar rig, been driving all over town, LA, trying TONS of guitar and BASS rigs (with my guitar) talking to all sorts of people and I had a new idea today, because a couple guys at shops suggested I might want to try running a preamp through a power amp into a cab for crystal clear loud clean tone. . . don't know if this has any footing in the real world but here goes:

can you re-amp an amp to make it louder? or, in other words, I have a '74 Fender Princeton Reverb, 12 watts, i LOVE the sound of that thing but it is nowhere near loud enough for live settings but. . . is it at all possible to take something like that with an ext speaker out, run that SIGNAL into a power amp, jack it up like crazy and run it through a cab?? I LOVE the clean tone on that amp but the volume can't go above 3 for it to stay clean and not break up, which is not loud, so I'd like to say have the volume on 2.5 run THAT through a power amp and into a cab. I have no idea if that's possible but I mean, that's what a sound guy essentially does he takes that signal and runs it through his system with a mic. any way to do what I'm getting at here, anyone??

[RodC]

can you re-amp an amp to make it louder? or, in other words, I have a '74 Fender Princeton Reverb, 12 watts, ..... I have no idea if that's possible but I mean, that's what a sound guy essentially does he takes that signal and runs it through his system with a mic. any way to do what I'm getting at here, anyone??

You could put a speaker tap on it, but its not going to sound like a mic in front of the speaker. You loose all the signal changes that are created by the speaker. Also, you quite often end up with a ton more highs. Guitar speakers cant produce signals that you normaly rely on a tweeter to do, however the signal is there and is part of the sound that is created by the speaker attempting to reproduce them.

[MisterMark]

You could mic up your princeton and run it into a small little mackie type mixer then take the output into a clean power amp and output that into another cabinet of some sort.

-Mark

[farview]

No, you can't take a speaker output and run it into a power amp. they will probably both catch fire.

You can take a preamp output or effects loop output and run that to a power amp.

[Professor T]

You're talking about a dummy load setup.

Here's how you can safely do it:

Your Princeton speaker is 8 ohms right? Get an 8 ohm thd hotplate and set it to "load". Disconnect your princeton's speaker and connect the hotplate. Then run the line out into your "power amp" (maybe a crate powerblock if you can find one)

You might check some other devices. Dr Z and Ted Weber make attenuators, but I don't know if they have line outs.

Eddie VanHalen famously did this in the early days:

"The second way Edward controlled his overall output volume was that he would use a dummy load box after the Marshall head, in effect making the Marshall a preamp for the entire system. The output of the load box would then run through his effects which would then be sent to the input stage of a power amplifier (most often an H & H V800 MOS-FET model according to the September 1986 issue of Guitar World). The speaker output of his Marshall was set at 8 ohms and the dummy load box resistance was set to 20 ohms to help ease the strain of the amplifier being run at full volume.

The benefit of the dummy load configuration was not simply to control the volume levels (Edward liked things loud!), but also to enable his time-based effects to work and sound well within the signal chain. Anyone who has tried to run a flanger or a delay in front of a fully cranked Marshall will realize that the effects just don?t work well. In the case of the flanger, this is because the power tube distortion will compress and distort the flanger?s sweep and dynamics will be eliminated. For a delay run in this fashion, the repeats of a delay will be amplified and compressed also and not sound like a true echo. When Edward ran the Echoplex in between the Marshall and the H & H power amp, it also made the Echoplex much less noisy in addition to simply producing a better tone."

[RodC]

With a speaker tap nothing would be destroyed, you are taking a small portion of the signal, dropped down with a resistor network and feeding that into a power amp.

If he does not disconnect the original speaker he does not need a "Power break" /Dummy load The original speaker will disapate the wattage and provide some volume.

[Gentleman Jim]

jaguarundi wrote:

Ok, off the bat, I'll let it be known my understanding of the electronics world is probably akin to a fish's comprehension of astronomy.

Then all this advice about dummy loads, speaker taps, and such should be avoided. You'll end up wrecking your '74 Princeton somehow. Don't ask me how, but eventually you'll be onstage and you'll smell something burning, and then your amp will die. I'm old, I've seen it happen a few times.

MisterMark wrote:

You could mic up your princeton and run it into a small little mackie type mixer then take the output into a clean power amp and output that into another cabinet of some sort.

Neil Young does this, or at least he did some years back. He had a bunch of vintage Fender Deluxes and the like, and he had a Yamaha mixer circa 1983, and 4 huge sidefills that he used as his stage sound. Do you have two dependable roadies to set this all up? How about the 25 minutes before your set that it's going to take, every show? No? Ok, this idea doesn't work for you either.

By the time you take that Princeton and mic it, put it through a mixer, amplify it, and play it back through other speakers it's going to sound different. Same goes for the speaker tap. The electronics of the speaker tap, the amplifier, and the other cabinet are all going to alter the sound you're hearing now. And that doesn't even address the role the room plays, or the psychoacoustics involved.

Go for the preamp/poweramp combo, or a good Fender Twin, and be done with it. There's no need at this point to reinvent the wheel. It seems to me like you're being a bit too precious about this quest; you're the only guitarist in Los Angeles who can't seem to find that one magic amp that's going to solve his/her particular dilemma. In the end, no matter how great your amp is, if your band is lame nobody will care.

(Trust me, I learned this first hand almost 20 years ago.)

[Harry]

You could mic up your princeton and run it into a small little mackie type mixer then take the output into a clean power amp and output that into another cabinet of some sort.

-Mark

I do this with my bass amp sometimes( small combo but with a good sound)

I mic the amp and run it to a powered carvin mixer. I use one speaker or two depending on what I need.

Takes 5 minutes to set up and it sounds like the amp through a PA


just a note: I could run out of the line out and do the same thing but without the mic, but I think the mic on the speaker gives me a better sound.

[jaguarundi]

thanks dudes, very enlightening. I've been researching all your suggestions this morning. So the two main ways to go about said rig are to either mic it and run it through a powered mixer and then into a high watt guitar cab (I'm assuming a cab would work best for the "sound" is that right?). or to go the dummy load route with the attenuator and power amp.

option A, micing it, is more affordable equipment wise and I'm guessing possibly a bit true-er to the sound because you're using the amp's speaker. the only con I can think of is maybe feedback issues?

Option B, attenuator and power amp is mainly exciting cause Eddie VH used to do it!

what do you guys think?

[jaguarundi]

as far as powered mixers go, if the goal is essentially 1 channel with around 400w or so of potential power... rather than having to get an 8 or 10 channel mixer to get this much power, is there anything else on the market anyone knows that would give you specifically 1 or 2 channels with a ton of power?

[jaguarundi]

(continuation of last post). maybe this would work? I own a non-powered mixer...

mic--->non powered mixer---->power amp---->guitar cab

[PT]

I have to agree with that Gentleman Jim dude. You're getting way to precious about a totally common amp/tone. If all you're doing is chasing the tone of a 74 Princeton Reverb, just get a bigger silverface Fender: Deluxe Reverb, Vibrolux Reverb, Pro Reverb, or Twin if you want to melt people's faces with volume.

Understand that the circuit designs of all those Fender amps are more similar than different. So it's totally possible you can find the tone you're looking for in a bigger, louder model. I would figure out exactly how much power you need then buy the appropriate larger amp. Then take your beloved Princeton Reverb (those are awesome sounding, BTW) and your new amp to a reputable amp tech and have him voice the bigger, louder amp to capture the vibe of your Princeton Reverb.

I know what you mean about a small amp sounding really great. I think the fact that a small amp isn't putting out huge SPLs, when it's just you and a small amp playing alone, you start to hear all kinds of nuances and complexities that you just can't with a louder amp. Loud amps hit your ears hard an cause them to fatigue, and the sweetness of the amp can seem to diminish.

But keep in mind the reason why there are different sized amps. Your Princeton Reverb doesn't cut it on stage with a band. So the awesomeness of its tone is relative to the situation in which it's being played. A bigger, louder amp, while maybe not as rad as the Princeton Reverb side by side, will sound better while you are actually playing a gig.

[jaguarundi]

I have to agree with that Gentleman Jim dude. You're getting way to precious about a totally common amp/tone. If all you're doing is chasing the tone of a 74 Princeton Reverb, just get a bigger silverface Fender: Deluxe Reverb, Vibrolux Reverb, Pro Reverb, or Twin if you want to melt people's faces with volume.

Understand that the circuit designs of all those Fender amps are more similar than different. So it's totally possible you can find the tone you're looking for in a bigger, louder model. I would figure out exactly how much power you need then buy the appropriate larger amp. Then take your beloved Princeton Reverb (those are awesome sounding, BTW) and your new amp to a reputable amp tech and have him voice the bigger, louder amp to capture the vibe of your Princeton Reverb.

I know what you mean about a small amp sounding really great. I think the fact that a small amp isn't putting out huge SPLs, when it's just you and a small amp playing alone, you start to hear all kinds of nuances and complexities that you just can't with a louder amp. Loud amps hit your ears hard an cause them to fatigue, and the sweetness of the amp can seem to diminish.

But keep in mind the reason why there are different sized amps. Your Princeton Reverb doesn't cut it on stage with a band. So the awesomeness of its tone is relative to the situation in which it's being played. A bigger, louder amp, while maybe not as rad as the Princeton Reverb side by side, will sound better while you are actually playing a gig.

I hear ya my friend, but I've been down that road and those amps aren't loud enough for my sitch. Yes, I know a lot of people are more than enthusiastic to debate my sanity and hate my band based on that claim, and I've had a lot of those conversations already, but the reason I started this thread was to hopefully get some feedback on this alternative idea, thanks for your input.

[PT]

I have to agree with that Gentleman Jim dude. You're getting way to precious about a totally common amp/tone. If all you're doing is chasing the tone of a 74 Princeton Reverb, just get a bigger silverface Fender: Deluxe Reverb, Vibrolux Reverb, Pro Reverb, or Twin if you want to melt people's faces with volume.

Understand that the circuit designs of all those Fender amps are more similar than different. So it's totally possible you can find the tone you're looking for in a bigger, louder model. I would figure out exactly how much power you need then buy the appropriate larger amp. Then take your beloved Princeton Reverb (those are awesome sounding, BTW) and your new amp to a reputable amp tech and have him voice the bigger, louder amp to capture the vibe of your Princeton Reverb.

I know what you mean about a small amp sounding really great. I think the fact that a small amp isn't putting out huge SPLs, when it's just you and a small amp playing alone, you start to hear all kinds of nuances and complexities that you just can't with a louder amp. Loud amps hit your ears hard an cause them to fatigue, and the sweetness of the amp can seem to diminish.

But keep in mind the reason why there are different sized amps. Your Princeton Reverb doesn't cut it on stage with a band. So the awesomeness of its tone is relative to the situation in which it's being played. A bigger, louder amp, while maybe not as rad as the Princeton Reverb side by side, will sound better while you are actually playing a gig.

I hear ya my friend, but I've been down that road and those amps aren't loud enough for my sitch. Yes, I know a lot of people are more than enthusiastic to debate my sanity and hate my band based on that claim, and I've had a lot of those conversations already, but the reason I started this thread was to hopefully get some feedback on this alternative idea, thanks for your input.

Honestly, I can't begin to imagine that a Twin would not be loud enough for your (or anyone's) situation. But I will trust you.

At this point I would say...get two Twins. Seriously.

But if you do get into micing your own amp and using a power amp, I would use regular main or monitor speakers. The whole idea with micing is to try to capture the source accurately and not color the sound too much with the mic, mic pre, power amp, and speakers. Maybe part of what you like about your Princeton Reverb is its little 10" speaker. So you want to try and capture that exact sound and amplify it.

[farview]

What you are trying to do is set up a PA for your amp. What's wrong with the PA where you are playing? have the sound guy put some of the guitar in the monitors.