clean headroom?

[huntermj]

My apologies for the rather newbie-ish question, but I did make an honest attempt at searching through all 11 pages of posts for an answer to no real avail. (Honestly I did!) Anyhow - I'm leaning towards getting one of the 50-watt kits, and was wondering if current owners could comment on the amount of clean headroom one could expect to get before clipping. If I were to go this route, I'd most likely also purchase the LarMar MV kit and some sort of attenuator to get the rock at more reasonable volume levels but I'd also like to make sure I have some amount of clean power too. Thanks in advance for the replies, or feel free to call me a dumb*ss and point me towards a relevant post I might have missed.

Mike Hunter

[novosibir]

... I did make an honest attempt at searching through all 11 pages of posts for an answer to no real avail.

What topic?

... or feel free to call me a dumb*ss and point me towards a relevant post I might have missed.

Nobody is entitled, to offend anybody else here.

Larry

[mwm523]

I wouldn't say the 50 watters are known for their clean headroom. A stock 1987 lead circuit is a gainy beast... The one I built starts to crunch at about 3 on the bright channel volume.

You can get more headroom by using smaller bright cap (or none at all), playing around with negative feedback, and changing the amp to be closer to bass specs, but I still don't think you'll get a ton of headroom out of it.

[908ssp]

Yes the 50 has plenty of good cleans and semi cleans. Just turn your guitar volume knob down. Seems terribly hard to get people to use the guitars volume knob turn it down and the amp cleans right up loud and proud and clean. The few amps that don't clean up well with the volume are ones with added gain stages where the gain is dictated by the gain between stages. Old Marshall style amps generally don't have that problem. I run my amp on 9.5 and turn the guitar volume down for the best and cleanest cleans.

[Roe]

removing the .68uf cap on v2a results in an amp that cleans up better IMO

[Frankie Sixxxgun]

My 50 watter gets plenty clean if I roll the volume on the guitar down. Best clean tone I've ever heard comes out of my 50 watt Metro head with my White Falcon in the neck position and the volume rolled back a bit.

[huntermj]

Again, many thanks for everyone's responses! I'm a bit torn as to whether to the 50-watt or the JTM45 route, so feedback like this is quite helpful.

[mwm523]

You'd probably get a "nicer" clean sound out of a JTM45, but you'll get a lot more overall volume from a 50 watt.

[Twistingcrow]

removing the .68uf cap on v2a results in an amp that cleans up better IMO

And what would you replace it with Roe? Another value or nothing?
Thanks!

[Roe]

removing the .68uf cap on v2a results in an amp that cleans up better IMO

And what would you replace it with Roe? Another value or nothing?
Thanks!

nothing, cf. the jtm/bass schematics

[Twistingcrow]

Awesome, gonna try this for my tonight rehearsal...