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Post subject: Overdriving my Fender HRD 3 - help please
Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 7:28 am
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Hi Everyone. I'm new here, but veteran player. I need help understanding how I can "push" my HRD3 into natural overdrive....without making my ears bleed. This amp is a great little amp, and it can get super loud, for a 40watt, 1 x 12. Also have a 2 x 12 Deville 60watt.

This amp has a "clean" channel, and a "drive" channel / "more drive" channel. The drive channels do not sound so good, actually pretty thin and grisley. So I use the clean channel and push my overdrive pedals ( TS9, OCD) through that and it sounds great, and I like it.....But it's not "pushing" the amp's natural overdrive. The overdrive is coming from my pedals. I hear all the talk about turning up your amp to the point of breakup and then is when you get "natural overdive", the overdriven sound of a tube amp being pushed hard.....thats supposed the best tone...... How do you do this on this amp without going deaf, or having the club owner or your band mates yell at you ?

Are they talking about pushing the clean channel or the drive channel ? thanks in advance. Telegib


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Post subject: Re: Overdriving my Fender HRD 3 - help please
Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2017 5:23 pm
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Welcome to the Forum Telegib. There is an amp section in the Forums that may help. I think I understand the question but have no experience with that model amp.

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Post subject: Re: Overdriving my Fender HRD 3 - help please
Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2017 11:12 am
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I agree that you will get better answers on the amp section, but here's something (very much IMHO) to keep you busy...

Part of the natural, vintage style, warm crunch is volume - that's what makes the speaker come alive. Think Roy Buchanan or early Jimi Hendrix, both masters (in different ways, though) on how to go from gentle to rough; they both dimed the amp on stage so the pick attack and guitar volume could make all the difference.

If you can't get what you want with turning the gains up and the master volume down (and using a vintage style Overdrive pedal), you could of course try if you like attenuators.


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Post subject: Re: Overdriving my Fender HRD 3 - help please
Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 8:00 am
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Telegib wrote:
I need help understanding how I can "push" my HRD3 into natural overdrive....without making my ears bleed.
We get asked this question a lot.
Everybody wants to know how to get an amp to sound like it's cranked up and bristling with gain and harmonics and distortion that only comes from a cranked up amp .... without actually being cranked up.
The shortest answer is also the only true answer.

You can't.

There are a couple things you have to understand.
The tubes in your amp behave differently at different volumes.
The speakers in your cabinet behave differently at different volumes.
The circuits in your amp behave differently at different volumes.

People have been trying to capture that and put it in a bottle for several decades.
Once in a while they come up with something that seems like it might be really good but once you hear a real amp in a real rock band playing at old school gig volume, you realize these new fangled solutions just don't do it.
They do not capture the tone, dynamics, feel, and the pure joy of a cranked amplifier.
Sorry.

There are power soaks available that allow you to run your amp hard and then bleed off some sound pressure but they usually also bleed off some tone as well.
I've tried a few of these units over the years and none of them was completely transparent.
In addition to altering the sound of the amp there is also one very important thing that these attenuators simply have no ability to address; the speaker.
One of the components of great rock n' roll tone is the sound of a speaker, fully excited and being pushed to or near its limits.
It's not just so-called speaker breakup I am referring to.
An amp speaker, when being given a good workout, exhibits things it doesn't do at lower volumes.
It simply is not possible to get that from a speaker that is only half awake.
Even the guitar itself sounds different at higher amplifier volumes than it does at lower amp volumes.
As the volume goes up there begins an interaction between guitar and amp that does not occur at low volume.
Until you've spent some time playing in a loud raucous rock 'n roll band you don't fully understand or appreciate that some of the best aspects people like about good guitar tone are directly because of a loud, cranked amp and they just cannot be properly achieved by any other means..

The new thing now in the digital world is something called impulse response.
It is something that is supposed to digitally mimic the dynamics and the tone of a speaker cabinet.
The idea is to plug straight into a recording console and still have the tone and feel of an amplifier.
I myself have a high end piece of gear that employs impulse responses.
I have yet to try them as they were intended, into a recording without using an amp.
What I have done is try them with an amplifier to see if they can help get the real sound of a cranked cabinet.
They don't.
They just don't.
To the best of my knowledge .... nothing does.

I'm sorry but if you want to sound like you push your amp into overdrive you're going to have to push your amp into overdrive.

There are other things you can do, like buy a pedal that is supposed to sound like a particular cranked amp but they are just imitations and the discerning musician can spot the difference rather easily.
Some of them do an OK job of getting the hair of the grind just right.
Some do an OK job of getting the overall EQ good.
Some do an OK job of cleaning up with soft pick attack.
Very few capture the dynamic and feel of a real amp being pushed hard, though.
For lots of people it's good enough.
It might be good enough for you.

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Post subject: Re: Overdriving my Fender HRD 3 - help please
Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 5:09 pm
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Great response BMW!!!
You could always try to follow the trend of a smaller Cranked amplifier approach(5-15watter). But still, it wont feel or sound like its bigger brothers. It will generally have fewer tubes driving it, smaller speakers and cabinets all components that effect the overall tone/sound.
If you happen to own Fender, The Soul of Tone listen carefully to the demonstration CD's. Sure it's difficult to discern some of what was intended, but the half and full volume approach is spot on as to the different characteristics of an amplifier in conjunction with the use of the guitars volume knob.


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