This point has intrigued me for some time. I have several patches from pro musician friends that use hefty twists on the Gain knob, and that's with the heavier drive sections. It mystified me why theirs would work and Fender's would take such heat on the web, till I figured out that getting clean dirt depends on where in the CT's circuit path it's coming from.

Specifically, there's three places you don't want saturation (or under-drive) and one that you do.

Trim is one. The red light does indeed allow for some headroom, but next time you run a heavy gain patch listen to the enunciation of the pick and the clarity of the note (particularly high ones) as you use greater and lesser headroom on the Trim knob. IMHO, too much red light means you may be getting more transients and A/D clipping than you think, esp with hot pups. As for how much red light you use, among my pro sound buds you can get about a 50/50 arguement on that opinion. I don't use a ton of red light.

"Gain" is the right home for saturation, and it's a very useable knob all the way to 10--under the right circumstances. Strikes me "Gain" is where those cool switchable analog amps are located in the circuit path. After some testing and reading of the schemo, near as I can make out the Gain knob is what we would call Volume on any other conventional amp. It controls the level and type of saturation in the "preamp" and virtual/patch "power amp." This is important because this sort of saturation appears to take place in the analog heart of the circuitry, and it's very amp-y and musical.

"Volume" might be more accurately described as a Patch Volume and, according to the manual, shouldn't affect the saturation of the patch, (the "virtual amp,") at all. Ideally it's used to normalize patches so you don't blow your mix out of the water, and it in no way is supposed to affect saturation or "virtual amp" response. But it sure seems to. An interesting question is whether the Volume knob actually controls a transparent and full-range gain stage--if the manual description is technically correct, that would be the case. It certainly behaves like one: if you turn the Volume (aka Patch Volume) way up, (for example to compensate for too low a Master Volume level.) you can get a sort of saturation that doesn't clip per se, but it bends the freq response in uneven places, it mutes or detunes the analog amp harmonics you got in the analog amp patch section, and it mushes the detailed parts of the note. And since the "Volume" gain stage appears to be SS on the schemo, it indeed sounds harsh and SS.

The third bad place for saturation is only sorta bad--the actual power amp that does the heavy lift. (Did I read someplace correctly that it's a DynaTouch power amp? Sure sounds and feels like one.) I haven't asked anyone to O-Scope a CT, but I'd be intrigued to see if the power amp can actually clip. At high settings it sure sounds and feels to me like SS distortion being layered over a distorting "guitar amp." Also, you begin to get what sounds like transformer saturation--a tailing off of the ends of the freq response, most notably the low end. (Which would accent the highs and perhaps sound "harsh," not to mention muddy.) If these suspicions are true, you might not have to dime the power amp to get ick. All it would take is transient spikes to cause instantaneous saturation to make the amp sound "spikey" and "peaky." (Which could also be said of the gain stage at the Volume knob.) However, there are tons of great SS amps on the market that are designed to do this, and it's my opinion that done correctly, pushing a CT's power amp can layer some very cool harmonics and dirt into the overall sound. Just something to be aware of when you're layering dirt and gain structuring the amp.

So what's the point when you're twisting knobs? Use enough Trim, Volume, and Master Volume to open up the amp and let it sing right. But look out for the kind of choking distortion you get from running too low, or the saturation kind you get from running too high. Three Bears rule...not too much, not too little, juuuust...

Once you got that done, tune your patch to bust up like you want with the Gain and Tone knobs, just like a regular amp. Chances are you'll get tons better definition on the notes, better pick enunciation, richer and deeper harmonics on power chords, more musical dirt, and much greater ear comfort. Works on any patch, but it's the key to getting good super-saturated patch performance.

One of my buds sent me a wicked Dual Rectifier (Selector on SS rectifier) that uses DynaTouch 4 and a Gain setting of about eight or nine. (8-6-9 on the TMB, Modern/Post. Presence all the way to 9. Low comp, Hi Noise Gate, Bass Booster. Only a dab of verb, mostly delay for clean ambience. Verb gets splashy.) It's a very touchy beast that doesn't tolerate the wrong guitar or bad gain structure on the "non-patch" knobs in the least...but boy does it sing. Just for fun try building the hottest DT4 patch you can get away with and see how finely you can split the balance. Eye-opening.

--Ray

PS...All IMHO, natch, dissenting opinions and facts (!) always welcome.

hi epluribus,

while developing the software for the CT, we tested thousands if not tens of thousands of combinations. i found an overall trend and that was too much gain usually caused the CT to loose its distinctive tone and sound not so good to my ears. We generally tested with volume from 3 to 5, trim always set not light red (a few flickers off green), and a strat.

Indeed you are correct, it depended a lot on the drive circuit. For example, DT1 could tolerate a lot more gain than DT3. finally, there are a lot of effect parameters that have an impact as well. the ones you have to be most careful about are the feedback parameters (like tape echo). if the feedback is to strong, it will cause the CT to go unstable - and the overload light will light.

The story: we were testing settings/combinations and paused the tests. With no guitar plugged in, the CT went into overload. We spent a lot of time dissecting the software thinking we were at fault. couldn't figure it out, so we repeated the last test setup manually (after a clean power up of the CT), waited a bit, and bingo, CT was in overload. the cause was the settings. The lesson here is that you can drive the CT into sounding like crap by picking the wrong settings. Yes indeed it has the tones, and yes indeed, the settings are everything.

Ciao,
John.

Hey John.

Boy, there's always a guy who's late to the party...so I'll ask. Were you a software developer for the CT's internals or for Cyber Commander? Fosse-natin' in any case. Cool.



Isn't that the trouble with powerful tone-shaping gear? The more settings you can tweak, the more likely it is you'll tweak some wrong. I hear more fussin' from Deluxe Reverb II owners, and it's usually down to the huge amount of cool stuff you can do to the gain structure with the knobs. I really dig my DRII, but it's another critter you just gotta understand.

Anyhoo, when building patches I don't add any FX, like verb, delay, etc., until I get a basic amp that really interacts well with the guitar I want to use and they sing well together. Even doing it this way, I had much better luck once I learned to respect the Cyber Twin's native tone and tendencies, so the patch didn't fight the physical amp.

Only after getting an amp built do I add FX sparingly, just enough to create a sense of the tone so I don't bury the amp. Interestingly, it's very easy to bury a Cyber Twin, and they don't tolerate a radical change of guitars for most any given patch--which is what you'd expect from a good "real" amp. Much touchier than modelling gear--I guess that's why they have such phenomenal feel.

--Ray

Hey Epluribus,

it's never too late to party, bring your friends!

yep, me and my bud are the developers of Cyber Commander.

the Cyber Twin sure gives you the freedom to do things right and not so right. on the whole, the cyber twin can't be thought of a "traditional amp" with a simple knob twist here and a knob twist there. It has so very, very much more to offer. It's a complete tone lab and it is setup to be used and controlled in "real-time", no other amp comes close to what the Cyber Twin can do. I have found a lot of settings that i enjoy, more than any other amp i have or had (i used to have the latest pro-tube twin, i have a TRRI, etc...), i now use the Cyber Twin exclusively.

Cyber Commander puts all of the CT's capabilities at your finger tips, so you have nothing holding back your creativity. You are right - the secret is not to pile up effects - get the basic amp configuration right (use the left side of Cyber Commander and the master Control knobs to dial in the basic tone, easy on the Gain control). Noise, hum redux, are "extras" but you should pay attention to the compressor, it has an impact. Then add the effects as needed. The real fun is using at least two Cyber Twins with ever so slight different effects and controlling them - but position the Cyber Twins across the stage, not in one spot. 3-d sound is what I'm talking about.

Ciao,
John.

I also like to stay out of the red. When I adjust my trim, my strat's volume is on 10 & I lower the trim so that it only hits the red when I slam down on a bar chord using all 6 strings. Then I take the guitar's vol down to 7, & it stay there unless I want to boost a solo. The trim LED is always then in the low greens. I find it less harsh that way, but everyone's ears & tastes are a bit different.
At home I play my amp at bedroom levels, master volume at 2 to 2.5 & that's where it is usually when I create a preset. If I crank it, depending on the preset, I may need to lower the treble or bass a bit, for obvious reasons.
Another thing I've found fairly consistently is that I don't like the CT volume control (beside the gain control) to be much less than 6. I find that the higher it is, there is a little more punch to the sound.
I did an experiment once where I backed up all my presets to my computer, & as much as I could, I used the volume control to try to have my presets all at the same volume. This meant lowering the vol on most of my presets. Some of my favorite presets then sounded like crap, & increasing the master volume would not make them sound the way they did before lowering the other volume control.
I restored the original settings & left them that way. I suspect my solution would be to purchase the Fender foot controller & set all presets with one of the pedals always controlling the master volume. Since I don't have the foot controller, this is only an educated guess, but pretty reasonable I think.
I'm curious if anyone else finds the volume control doing more to the sound than just setting levels.

Hey LesK, good observations here, I get the same impression on the Trim thing. Wonder if the CT doesn't like to be hit hard on the front end? Hm...



My living room practice patches are likewise around 2-3 on the MV, and I'd agree, the performance of the amp is very different. I have to write patches just to suit the output levels I want--one set for the house, another for garage rehearsals, another for projecting through a club.

For a really revealing experiment, try building exactly the same patch at different Master Volume settings. Do one of 'em with the tone knobs, presence, gain, and patch volume at 5. Then build an identical patch with the Patch Volume at around eight or nine and everything else to compensate accordingly. You'll end up with just as "loud" a patch, but to get one to sound "just like" the other, I bet you'll find your tone, presence, and gain controls have moved a fair bit, besides the obvious MV. By keeping the overall output volume the same, you'll eliminate Fletcher-Munson as a variable, and discover just how much the Volume and Master Volume knobs affect your tone. I was surprised at all the different things I had to tweak just because I traded Patch Volume for Master Volume.



IMHO the Volume control works best if you think of it as a level fader on a mixer channel strip. Agreed, somewhere around 5 or 6 sounds a heck of a lot like Unity to me, and there seems to be pretty transparent headroom till you get to about 8. At that point the little preamp in there, if there is one, starts to sound like a mixer channel that's getting "peaky." For that reason, I try to keep my patches normalized with patch volumes in the range of 5 to 8, (IOW centered around Unity gain) as if I was running a mixing board "hot." Seems that's where the CT is most transparent to the "amp" circuit coloration, as opposed to "mixer" coloration. Amp color I like, mixer color I don't.



Great experiment, I'll have to try it this way with a bud as my auditioner. I've no doubt you're right, but I'd love to hear it for myself and get a better feel for what it's doing. Cool.



+1 here for sure. Between the variances in guitars and user volume settings, I bet this is a pretty good summary of why everybody says they have to re-tune the factory patches.

Btw, I use a Behringer FCB1010 foot controller--it's massively programmable and a snap to use with one of the aftermarket GUIs. A real Swiss Army Knife compared to the Fender controller. (Sorry FMIC. Wicked little amp you made here, but these things scream for programmable MIDI controllers.) Then ya get two expression pedals, plus whatever generic volume pedal you plug into your exp pedal jack. Now ya got three pedals!

Good stuff here, now I gotta go out and try your methodology. Good ear training for building patches and all.

Happy playing!

--Ray

Been playing with Cybie again. using the Cyber Commander I changed one of my more Bluesy patches to this one.

I didn't listen to Gilmours original for a while when I saw this backingtrack.
(from gilmourish.com)

In this version I'm just trying to get the feel for and the flow from the song.
I'm trying to decide between playing a 1 to 1 cover or just go ahead and do my thing

Any advise and comment is appreciated

I'm somewhat lazy, so I tend to do my thing with it. That way I can skip learning the song as it should be played.
http://soundclick.com/share?songid=6995684

I used only my CT SE and my Tokai strat. The Kampo Tube pedal was in the chain but switched neutral.

Here are my Cybertwins settings
[/url]

First things first...wow, nice track. Nothing fancy or flashy, but clearly a very thoughtful track both rig-wise and musically. Cool!

On covering Gilmour. I vote doing the riff that comes out of your hands rather than trying to nail Gilmour. I've never heard a tribute band that sounded remotely like the original even though the gear was spot-on and they played note-for-note. As a sometime stage designer from way back, it's my opinion that you should never duplicate a place or a setting brick-for-brick. Rather, you have to interpret it and create a dramatic sense of it that responds to the space you have onstage the way the original responds to its environment. The end result may look tons different, but the feel and the impact are spot-on and your audience is riveted in the intended time and place anyway. So too with music. What you did here was a great interpretation, and I think it says Gilmour far more than religiously copying Gilmour. Best, it also says you. Nice work.

(Useful notion when you're trying to "nail" some other amp, BTW. I gave up nailing and discovered tons of great Cyber Twins instead.)

On the patch...sweet! Really interesting construction. IMHO Gilmour amp tone is all about the Hiwatt. Yeah he used tons of other amps as time went on, but the defining one that they all nod to is the Hiwatt. But how you got there is kinda cool...a Hot Rod 3 drive section. Never woulda thought of that.

Based on my drive circuit comparison experiment, I'm of the opinion that the flavor of the HR3 drive, the native tonal tendencies, (which tend to be pretty British, arguably similar to late Tweed) and particularly the compression that falls somewhere between crisp Blackface and the softer but hotter Tweed makes the HR3 a great circuit for 60's-early-70's rock. It has an EQ personality that runs the risk of being thin (I like your dialed-back treble) but cuts smoothly through a mix.

When Fender juiced up their underlying Blackface-ish circuits to make the actual Hot Rod series, the beefed-up demand on the amp re-introduced some of that soft-attack Tweed compression that sang so nicely in the body of the note--but not necessarily smoothly. However, when you dialed your CT's gain back to 2.8 and used medium comp to create soft attack and solid sustain, the dirt smoothed right out and became very pleasant, with teeth that moderately show themselves when you double-stop. Very Hiwatt-ish. Apart from that, IMHO the HR3 isn't a crisp circuit, (also true of the real HR series,) but it can be a very clear-voiced circuit suited to smooth picking and legato phrasing like Gilmour's, which again make it a nice choice. BTW, the HR drive sections are wicked for voicing a Strat with their cool little harmonics--reminiscent of EL84's in a way.

What's intriguing is that the CT's Drive Circuits don't always correspond one-for-one to any real-world circuits. This is particularly true of drive section numbers within a given type. The Tweeds f'rinstance don't literally swap from 12AX7s to 6SC7s or from single-ended to push-pull. You'll discover this if you tabulate Fender's patches to see how they used different drive sections to re-create the same real-world circuits used at different points in their product line.

Proceeding from that, Fender doesn't use the HR drive sections for smooth Hiwatt-ish sound--their HR-based patches are primarily more agressive Vox patches, a Tweed IIRC and a HR DeVille. Agressive and edgy, in other words. To me a Hiwatt is much more akin to the old Univox stacks rather than the elaborate and hot Vox circuits--smoother, compressed, cleaner; stout-voiced mids with soft attack and muted high end. So the fact that you used the HR3 to dig into Hiwatt/Univox territory is remarkable indeed...never occurred to me. Frankly, I'm not a huge Vox fan so I've never had much use for my HR drive sections till now. Now I gotta re-think that. (Great for early Who though.) Dang ya, see what ya did?

Incidentally, interesting to note that the two factory patches that are explicitly Pink Floyd patches, Pink Brick and Think Floyd, are both Tweed circuits with Tweed and British tone stacks respectively. Both are clearly aimed at the Gilmour sound but I find yours just feels, plays, and sounds more like that creamy singing tone on Coming Back to Life. Nicer yet, twisting the gain knob one way or the other covers factory presets better than the factory presets, IMHO. A really nice Hiwatt-y patch ya got here. (Btw, I added a digital tape echo in the FX loop with your patch. Way cool.)

I suspect you weren't calculatin' all this stuff when you were dialin' knobs, (I hope you're not thusly afflicted like I am) but your ear got you to a place that makes tons of sense when you break it down. Very useful insight into the process of writing patches.

Nice stuff, nice clip, 'preciate your posting it all.

--Ray

ps...is that an Epi Dot in the pic? I use a Sheraton II for my arch-topping. Really nice guitars, those Epi hollowbodies.

Thanks Ray !

Wow, your post made my jaw hit my laptops keyboard
As with musical theory and scale I'm not analyzing my patches/sounds that way. But it is great fun and interesting to read your explenation.
You are the 2nd guy that tells me what I'm doing, without me knowing what I actually did
The first one was Jim Signorile Who had the technical name for a lick I played in a short song I called searching. As it seems Eric Clapton is using the same thing. I just played what I liked and felt at the time.

The fun part of this is, I was tweaking a patch I use for quite a while now. "Hans'........" is one of the first patches I made and still use to build others upon. ( normally it is in tweed mode) By ear that is, I don't even think about what amp I'm trying to do. I go for the sound by ear.
In this case (I haven't listened to "coming back to live" for a while), I created the sound from memory. It felt good, sounded right, so I played

One point of interest might be that I have my Kampo Tube pedal 901 between my guitar(s) and the Cybertwin (se). It isn't true bypass, if I switch off the power to the pedal..... no sound comes trough. The pedal has a Fender 12Ax7 tube inside. I simply adore this pedal. I actually use it as an extra tube input stage most of the time. If I want to it can push Cybie over the top..... wayyyyy high.

If you can get your hands on a Kampo just give it a good try !!!!


Yes the Epi is a Dot and oohhh such a sweet thing. My first recording with it, done with a awkward from the shop setup is "Blues to be (SE)" I still think of that song as my best one.
I was totally amazed when I started playing the Epi..... so light (0.10) compared with my Tokai strat I can bend it from way up without any problem. I love her sound characteristics.


Enjoyed reading your post a lot.


Take care.
/Hans

A little prayer.......

May the next person to post one of their presets live a long, happy, healthy & fruitful life.
If two are posted, may they also remain un-touched by the current financial crisis.

Now if that prayer is granted for me - it will surely be in the "miracle" category.

Anyway, here's one to try. I made it for my Arch Top acoustic.



And here's my 'base' - the Twin Reverb '65 that a lot of mine are built from.

Ok, Les

I do have this patch that I used for my own cover "a softer take" to my recent song "they should have all come back alive"
The guitar used for, mhh, both songs is my Strat. Kampo was in the chain, but switched inactive.

It comes quite to more of my patches, since I derive a lot of patches from those.
See if you like it.

I'm not to sure about linking to the song involved in this topic every time. Maybe one of the moderators can clarify that for me.
Currently it is the 3nd song on my soundclick page (hit the WWW button)


/Hans

rholloman & HalfBlindLefty

way to go guys, & thanks for all the good stuff you've posted

Your welcome.

I hope you can use something there.

You're welcome.

If I'll have more, you'll find them here