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Post subject: Somebody tell me I made the right purchase...please...
Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 5:44 am
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Aspiring Musician
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Location: Australia
Lately I've been craving a valve-based overdrive pedal of some sort. I have an old MosValve amp with the B.K. Butler tube driver built in, and I always liked the overdriven tones it produced. It's a 100W half-stack type of affair, though, so it doesn't get used around the home much. I bought a 5W amp for that, but I still can't really crank it...it's a grunty little beast. Clean sounds are lovely, though, I must admit.

So anyway, I began thinking along the lines of getting a newly-minted tube driver from BK himself, but something always stopped me from pulling the trigger. Price, mostly, although they're pretty reasonable for that sort of thing (about $300). I thought I'd better check the competition, and considered the Hermida Zendrive 2 (sounds fantastic, but the waiting list sounds like it's months, possibly years long), the Fuchs Valve Job (nice, and I have another Fuchs pedal I'm very happy with -- but no user access to the 12AX7, it just sits in its glass panel looking pretty) and the Matchless Hot Box (ooh, I'd love one of these, but nobody selling in the US would post to Australia). With most of these there's also the added issue of voltage (we're 240V over here), so I couldn't be sure if a second-hand pedal from overseas would work for me.

And what did I do? I was just browsing ebay, and I saw a Mesa/Boogie V-Twin that was nearly up. The price had got up to about US $380, and bidding seemed fairly intense as it was down to the final minute or so. I decided to put in a bid for the thrill of it with 20 seconds to go...and...well, it's obvious from the title of this post that I won the damn thing and now have no idea as to whether I've purchased the overlord of all valve preamp/distortion pedals, or a non-slip metal-clad aggressively squat tone-turd stompbox.

Typical of me... can't make up my mind because of concerns over price, then go ahead and drop twice what I was willing to spend in a heartbeat.

Guess I'll just wait and see... I could always sell it to another insomniac thrillseeker, I suppose. heh.

It does have a headphone/mixer output, though, so at the very least I'll finally be able to turn something up around here...


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Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 6:16 am
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As far as i can remember the Vtwin has a very mesa signature to it. Very good for scooped metal and no doubt great for other tones too, but may require some fiddling. It sounds to me like your after power valve distortion or you could of just got a cheap treble booster ($30-40). Or like i did get an attenuator. Currently lovin my marshall powerbreak. I can max a 100watt marshall stack and still get tones too loud for the house :lol: . Luckily the poweramp drives at around 6-7.

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Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 7:36 am
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Aspiring Musician
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I've never really formed an opinion on the Mesa sound... whatever it may be... heh. I've followed some of your attenuator capers with interest, but still don't feel ready to stick one in my little Swart amp... apart from anything else, I'm one of those people that other are referring to when they say "you'd have to be a real moron to be unable to do this", so I don't want to be mucking around with wiring and the like.

I do actually have a treble boost, a nice germanium one from the same maker as the amp. At home levels, it can definitely supply a little grit before it gets too loud... but really, with the amp on 2 or 3 and the boost also at 3... that's about as high as I can go at the moment. My amp starts to break up at 4 to 6 (depending upon whether or not the negative feedback switch is thrown), and I get the feeling that the boost also at around 6 would give me the tone of the gods.

I'm thinking that I'll still be able to use that boost to drive the V-Twin a bit... some reviews seem to say it's a bit muddy and mid-heavy, but I don't know if that'd be the case with single-coils. Plus I can swap out the tubes and kid myself I know about that stuff.

I've just been using boost --> tremelo --> reverb pedal --> amp so far. I think possibly this V-Twin is impulse-buy overkill, but if it can give me a nice throaty roar on tap all will be forgiven. With my current setup, I can get very nice "melodic rhythm" tones that break up only when I dig in a bit harder with my picking... and that would have to be my favourite overall sound from a strat, I think... but there's nowhere much for me to go when I use the bridge pickup except honking twang. Now, I quite like a bit of that, but I'd like the option of something a bit... creamier, and *retch* hundred-pound-violinish. That "scooped" business sounds a bit disappointing... hopefully I will indeed be able to get some other sounds from it.

This is the first time I've ever bought something and then had heart palpitations and said "uh-oh" to myself... breathe, mondo, and remember you can sell it if it's not right...


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Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 1:47 pm
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May i suggest a simple digitech bad monkey overdrive for £20.

Used one for years and its just packed up. It gives a valve amp all those smooth gain tones you want. Its a bit like a tubescreamer but has a wider variety of tone and a realistic price. Very good for a throwaway pedal. Dont be fooled by high prices. You do pay for what you get with pretty much everything except pedals. Current prices are through the roof for not a lot of quality. BooTeek manufacturers are killing the pedal world.

I think your going the wrong way by concentrating on the preamp section but its your choice. Given that i stick by the bad monkey recommendation. Or try my mate Alan, he's even open to suggestions about pedals. Top quality pedals (yes atleast as good as zfex or trex) at real world prices. He ships to houston so Oz should be no problem.

http://www.projectguitarparts.co.uk/Pages/burfordfx.html

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Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 5:45 pm
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Sound advice, of course... I could well be going the wrong way, but I wasn't actually concentrating on anything... heh. That's how I ended up with this thing. I know what you mean about the boutique pedals, although I'm as guilty as the next man of being seduced by their hand-made goodness. The amp on its own is like a lovely little Champ, and I wanted some reverb and tremolo that wouldn't be out of keeping with its character. The Mr Springgy pedal sounds as much like a Blackface reverb as any stompbox can, and the Fuchs tremolo is the closest I've ever heard to a Brownface sound. Almost Leslie-ish at some settings. The Atomic Boost I bought because it was going cheap and is the only pedal made by Swart, so I figured it'd have to be a match for his amps.

I think when looking at my overdrive options I was getting rather carried away with that boutique side of things. It would have been far more sensible to make time somehow to head to a shop, try a few boxes and trust my ears. But... some impulse made me click, and I was surprised to win the auction. I never succeed with those... I'm usually a buy-it-now kind of person after careful research. Oh, well... it does look like an entertaining toy just on its own, and its armour-plated construction is amusing... seriously, what were they expecting to happen to them? Looks like RATs would shatter if you threw them at this thing. And... in my current situation, the headphone option seems handy. Though that's one expensive headphone amp.

Thanks for the link to your mate's wares... I like the cut of his jib.

Truth be told I'm hoping to maybe get to play out sometime in the next couple of years; if I have to compete with a drummer I'll get to crank my amp to precisely where it wants to be and that boost will shine. Maybe then the V-Twin will be for home practice only, or will have moved on... or just maybe it's a holy grail item I won't be able to live without... :)


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Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 6:32 pm
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As far as i understand the Vtwins are a love or hate pedal. You never see em 2nd hand so something must be right with em.

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Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 7:13 pm
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Casting about in retrospect, the user base seems to be:

1. People who bought one thinking that the more money they spent, the better their playing would be. Typically go on to publish reviews giving out scores of 0 or 1 out of 10.

2. People who had one, loved it but had to sell it to fund their education/housing/transportation requirements. Often on the hunt for a replacement.

3. People who enjoyed it for many years but are now getting out of the game and selling off everything.

Towards the end of their production life they were getting ridiculously expensive here in Australia (no doubt everywhere else, too, but musical equipment is routinely twice the price here), so I can understand the feelings of those who may have purchased one in the hope that it would be able to do everything.


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Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 7:03 am
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Are you trying to descibe the V-Twin user base? Trying to guess the inner workings of someone else's mind is a fool's errand. :D Let's just talk about what the pedal does.

A Mesa Engineering V-Twin is a great-sounding pedal, capable of producing most of the tones you can get from the front end of a Mesa DUal Rectifier amp. Many players of Mesa amps are guys who use insane heaps of gain, so people tend to associate Mesa with that sound. But that's not the only thing it will do.

The people I know who use them endorse them wholeheartedly. I know one guy who uses it in front a Soldano to create a face-melting gain cascade that still retains definition, and another who has it in front of a DRRI to create either a great big rhythm crunch or a liquid "Santana" lead tone. They both love it.

It's pratty much a Mesa/Boogie preamp stage in a pedal, and so is capable of everything from clean tones to the afore-mentioned "Nazis opening the Lost Ark" type gain staging. Yes, you paid just a few bucks more than average, but you should find the pedal extremely useful. A Bad Monkey will not do what the V-Twin does, ever.


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Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 7:43 am
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I didnt say the bad monkey will do a vtwin impression. I did push it as a ideal cheapie for pushing the front end of his amp. Mondo wants power stage clipping. In my experience you'll never get that from the front end of a amp.

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Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2009 8:09 am
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Well, that's encouraging! It's a bit of a shame about the price, but since yesterday I've looked around and it seems about average for Australia... the only cheaper ones were sold quite a few years ago. A couple of stores appear to have old stock still at AUD $1195, which is quite appalling. That's about USD $1000 or £500.

I should know better than to try to inhabit the minds of V-Twin users -- I got a bit caught up trying to get a feel for people's opinions as I'd not given them any thought until now. I got a bit out of touch with the electric guitar and its accoutrements for a decade or so back there. When I left it everything was Bradshaw racks and Soldanos, now it's Cornish pedals and Class-A '60s boutique reproductions. I think there must have been a phase where players were divesting themselves of that Mesa sound, because I came across quite a few messageboard posts of the "I played through this for years -- I don't know why I sold it, but I wish I had it back" variety.

Youtube yields quite a mixed bag, as expected. There's one verbally exhaustive ten minute review with a little playing at the end that sounds promising; then there's some nasty crispy chunky stuff that's not to my taste at all... but I don't play in that style, and I'm sure a preamp isn't going to force me to! It looks to have plenty of knobs, so there has to be a sweet spot for me somewhere. Not everybody who gets a good sound is going to be posting it online, I guess.

Now I shall twiddle my thumbs and wait until it turns up... thanks for the replies -- I just realised that this is the first thread I've started here. Heh. Usually I just give the kiss of death to long-running threads started by others... :)


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Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 8:05 am
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OK, this thing rocks.

Hmm. I've sat here staring at that statement for a minute or so, at a bit of a loss for something else to say. As a teen I imagined that effects pedals were going to be magic boxes that would be able to do anything, rather than just doing the one thing well, and this preamp comes as close as I've experienced to fulfilling that old dream.

I've only been able to try it with headphones so far, but just the fact that I can plug those directly into a distortion box and get a pleasing result is amazing to me. The clean channel is beautiful, and great sounds can be had from the Blues and Solo channels...biggest surprise for me is that my bridge pickup sounds best on Solo with the "mid" knob turned right down (guess I may turn out to be a scooped mid fan after all) and gain, treble and presence all at about 3 o'clock. I'd have expected those settings to produce a screech that would neatly remove the top of my head.

The only drawback I can see so far is that the three modes all share the same six E.Q. knobs (I don't see how they could have got around that), so you're stuck with the same gain, presence, etc settings if you switch between clean and solo, or solo and blues. I guess tweaking is in order to find an acceptable setting that works for all three channels, and handle the finer details the old-fashioned way...pickup selection, volume and tone knobs on the guitar. Then again, if I'm just noodling at home I don't mind twiddling knobs.

Mine must be one of the Mk II pedals, as it doesn't have some of the issues that I read about in older reviews. There's no lag when switching between channels, and the switching is silent...no click at all, the new channel just takes over. There's a sort of trim pot affair on the bottom under a panel that allows you to balance the gain of the clean and solo channels so there's not such a discrepancy between the two. The only feature it needs is an effects loop...it would be nice to add some guitar-level effects after the preamp when using headphones or recording direct. But then again...expecting even the fanciest distortion box to have an effects loop is a bit much. heh.

So...can't wait to try this through my amp with some other effects...so far this unit behaves exactly the way I hoped it would! With a bit of luck I may have access to a full spectrum of tones at a low volume yet...and I love the fact that the clean and dirty channels seem to use their own separate tubes, so it's easy to mix and match. Reining the solo channel in with a 12AT7 seems a popular move.

I asked the seller why he was letting it go, and he said he'd just bought a Mesa/Boogie head -- couldn't afford to hang onto a largely redundant V-Twin. He had used it to drive a Fender twin with good results (so he said), so I think it's looking promising for the little Space Tone.

Sorry about the lengthy post...just in case anybody was wondering how things turned out... :D


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Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 9:11 am
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I'm in a similar boat at home. Play through a 5w 5f1, I turn it up to around 5-6 but feel it would breakout nicer if I dimed it. I have 2 TS9s in the chain along with a MrSpringgy but it's just getting too loud.

I'm thinking of adding a hotplate from THD, the red 4 ohms one.

Now I am thinking, would it be overkill to have a hotplate on 5W? Has anyone ever tried a similar scenario?


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Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 6:17 pm
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Atolleter

All i can tell you is that attenuators are great, ive used thd ones btw. They dont colour your tone but do deprive you of the tone you get through putting pressure on the speaker. Its like a little of the high mids go out of the sound. Its a miniscule difference and better than flabby fuzzy bass end from driving a preamp with no power amp clipping that you can get.

I recommend, although i'd look to a weber mass series if i lived across your side of the pond. Cheaper, better and switch between ohm's (ohmage's).

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Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 6:31 pm
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So you recommend Weber over THD. Some local guy on CL selling a THD for $150 is why I mentioned since I heard good thing about them.

Now there are several models at Weber, 25W, 100W... I'd guess 25W would suffice.

I'm actually using that 5W amp on a 4x12 Marshall cab right now, I might just pick a Weber up and hook that in between the two.

Again I appreciate any input before I make a stupid move :)


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Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 7:20 pm
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The only attenuator readily available near me seems to be the Dr Z Airbrake... pricey. Looking at the Dr Z website, I see something called the BrakeLite that mounts inside a combo amp... seems pretty good, and $150 is cheaper than the Airbrake, definitely. It's not a standalone unit.


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