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Hello,
I know this tread title has been created a few times but since many buyers eventually found their shipping accomplished after quite a few months of wait, I thought it’s worth to gather experiences again. This is pertaining to the typical old style chord melody flavour that many jazz guitar players use as some sort of jazz standards mostly heard on Polytone amps and such kind of dark flat tone or may be a bit more modern flavours e.g. solo lines of Pat Metheny with Yamaha G50 both solid state and both played with full hollow body. Although Yamaha G50 was Japanese attempt to create Fender equivalent, I don’t hear much of an inevitable twang of Fender guitar amps in Pat Metheny lines and personally when I bought Quilter Superblock US I was concerned how flat I can get my tone and how I can stay away from the twang territory.
I contacted Pat Quilter about the flattest settings on the amp. This was his response: “3” refers to a position on a 0-10 knob and corresponds to 10 o'clock. “5” would be straight up.I asked Pat if the first voice was 61 or 65 (since 57 is in the middle) and brought up that my impression from 61 was quite a bright sound so I assumed he was pointing at 65. I didn’t hear back from Pat and based on my flat(ish) and warmer tone impression from 65 and feedback from this forum I was using that. I changed my speaker a couple of months ago and noticed this one has a more high freq roll off and warmer low mid range freq hump. I wasn’t quite happy with the tone and either I had not-a-pleasing nasal mid-range boost when my mids were sitting in half or a bit lower and the tone wasn’t transparent enough, and with increasing treble it would make my high E and B strings quite spiky sounding but lowering treble while addressed that spike but made the tone even lacking more in transparency department and became too bland. Recently I started using 61 model and tried to tame the high mids and highs using mid and treble control. To my surprise I found 61 actually sounds least coloured and most transparent. I’m wondering if Pat Quilter’s mention of the first voice is that. I found 57 has a very accented mid freq hump and sounds quite coloured, 65 comes the 2nd but still has a bit different kind of freq hump and most importantly lacks enough transparency which for me is important for getting a flat sound that speaks to you clearly. The only trick for 61 that I had to apply is: since the high mid range and high frequencies are revealed, by lowering the mids control you can avoid spiky twangy high mid range frequencies but leaving the high frequencies staying mostly (treble just slightly less than 5 or 12 o’clock) to have just enough air in the high frequencies to create a flat (as flat as this amp can get) yet transparent tone.The limiter is wrapped around the main gain stage to maximize its dynamic range.
The flattest tone uses the first Voice, with EQ on “5” but since speakers are not flat you should systematically run each control through its range to find the sound you most like.
Also I heard an advice from an accomplished performing jazz guitarist that uses the same setup and he pointed increase the gain till your loudest sound is almost at the breaking point. In the beginning I was trying to control the dynamics by limiter and leaving gain at 10 o’clock which was the suggested clean gain but when I applied his advice I managed to go up to 1 o’clock on gain which helped to balance the tone a bit and avoid using the limiter. I found limiter made the tone more one dimensional and some little details instead of showing up or not based on playing techniques it was just there all the time. For me in order to get a tamer tone I roll back my volume knob to around 7 or 8 and I can manage the tone knob at full or almost full brightness. This combination of lowering volume on the guitar and increasing gain in the amp gives me a near ideal mix of expressiveness without typical Fender like colouration and a tame sound to be a good foundation for my ideal jazz expression. The combination of my hollow body guitar, neck pickup (classic 57) and this setting on the amp and guitar volume / tone that I mentioned above creates a sort of acoustic like tone with a hint of tone thickness almost similar to nylon string acoustic guitar. I’m using half round D’addario 12-50. Hope this info is useful and I’m curious to hear your experience. Thanks.Reply With Quote
03-31-202211:49 AM
Similar approach here. Most of the time I use the 57 voicing. Some guitars do better with the other voicings. Lately I have been running the gain a bit past noon so that it breaks up a bit when I really thwack the strings, then I dial the guitar volume back and try to balance the treble with the guitar's tone knob. Definitely a "use your ears not your eyes" situation with this amp's EQ settings: I have the bass at around 2-3 o'clock, which I don't think I could ever do on my blackface Vibrolux-like clone. Funny you mentioned Polytone—the settings above kind of remind me of the Henriksen sound, which I'd classify as Polytone-like. My cab is made of reclaimed antique pine and is roughly the size of a Deluxe Reverb cab. It has a 10” Eminence George Alessandro speaker and I usually remove the back panel because I don’t like closed cabs very much.
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Gitterbug
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I have gigged with the SBUS since April last year. This amp would be perfection with just a little bit more oomph, i.e. clean headroom. No problem with 97-100 dB speakers but on the verge with less sensitive, smaller calibers. You get the most headroom from the -57 Tweed setting, which harks back to Rudy van Gelder's fabled studio sounds. Moreover, the way Gain gradually blends in lint, hair or whatever you want to call it, is very discreet and controllable. (Whether it's from the amp or recording equipment, Wes was not squeaky clean on many tracks.) I find SBUS combined with my TOOB Metro 6.5GP sufficient from most gigging assignments. If I need more oomph, I either take a 10" or 12" cab to the stage or feed a Metro GP+/BG from a TC Electronics BAM 200 amp.
Disclaimer: If somebody didn't know it yet, I make Toobs and Metros. Over 400 cabs in soon 30 countries; in the US, in at least 17 states.
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nevershouldhavesoldit
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I've always wondered why this was the case. He's said to have borrowed a tweed 5E3 Deluxe from Kenny Burrell to record his first album, and there's a picture out there somewhere of him at a recording session with an Ampeg Gemini. But the three amps he used most through his career were a Super, a 70W Standel, and a Twin. I know he plucked very hard, but it's difficult to imagine that his thumb drove any of those big amps into preamp saturation. Originally Posted by GitterbugWhether it's from the amp or recording equipment, Wes was not squeaky clean on many tracks.
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- I wonder if it has something to do with the interaction between bass and treble settings and affect on overall gain. In order to get a flat-ish frequency response on a typical Fender TMB tone stack, you have to lower the bass and treble to near zero. On my Gries 35 (a 35 watt sort-of Vibrolux clone with a master volume), there is a tremendous amount of bass on tap with the bass at noon. But as I lower the bass and treble knobs, I also need to increase the input gain to make up for lost volume. Also, consider that things can distort at other stages in the signal chain—speaker, mic preamp, when the signal hits the tape, etc. It needn't necessarily be coming from preamp distortion. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
I've always wondered why this was the case. He's said to have borrowed a tweed 5E3 Deluxe from Kenny Burrell to record his first album, and there's a picture out there somewhere of him at a recording session with an Ampeg Gemini. But the three amps he used most through his career were a Super, a 70W Standel, and a Twin. I know he plucked very hard, but it's difficult to imagine that his thumb drove any of those big amps into preamp saturation.
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Well, if you don’t like a Fender-y tone I am surprised that you went for the Quilter at all. Other than that - man, that’s some serious cork sniffing! I am genuinely impressed.
The other thing that surprises me is that Gitterbug keeps repeating that the 57 setting has the most headroom. Maybe we have different notions about what headroom is, but my Superblock breaks up at much lower gain in the 57 mode than in the others. When I turn the tone and volume to around 6 on my Tele and the gain to 10-11 o’clock in the 57 setting that actually gives me a nice fat jazz solo sound with just the right amount of hair. When I switch to the 65 setting it’s still nice and chimey, everything else being equal.
I am still searching for that bridge pickup sound that Tim Lerch gets with his Nachocaster, though. Haven’t found the right amount of gain for it without a pedal, and I don’t like pedals.
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A few days ago we were testing the SBUS with Peter Lerche, a former studio musician with golden ears, and Eero Dunkel, a 18-year jazz guitar talent aspiring to study with Jesse van Ruller. All three of us found the 57 voicing to be the loudest, fullest and jazziest. The guitar was an ES-330 with P90s, the cabs a Metro GP+, Metro GB and Toob 12J. (Peter has a Dumble, a Carr and many other tube amps but prefers my cabs powered by Quilter 101R or TC Electronic BAM 200.)
Sure, we may have different notions of what headroom stands for. Peter Melton from Quilterlabs, himself a trained jazz guitarist, suggested the 57 voicing when we were discussing the adequacy of volume before my SuperBlocks arrived last April.
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Many jazz players use a slightly hotter tone than say what a clean funk player would use, and choose to play with a very soft attack, possibly lower output pickups or setup as well. So in that scenario, a slight hint of a breakup wouldn't be a problem. Whereas if one uses a bit more gain in the input stage, you would need less gain after it. So the perception of headroom also has to do with how someone enjoys to play, their attack on the guitar, settings, etc.
5E3 amps, many tweed amps, are typical examples of this. They might work for some players, but not for others. For me, it has been a learning experience, them being so sensitive and responsive, they tend to force you to play a certain way for them to work, and can really go from semi clean to overdrive with just the pick attack.
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I've been using the amp for quite a while now. When I'm playing through just to play, I generally use the 65 setting (if only because I'm most accustomed to playing through a black face style rig). But when I'm recording, I almost always use the other two voices. The bass is just too prominent on the 65 and I have a very long standing problem of ending up with too much bass in my recordings. The 61 gives me a much better balance. As noted by others, the 57 gives me a thicker mid but that's not something that I typically look for.
My settings rarely change regardless of which voice I'm using. From left to right (assuming that pointing straight up is 5) my master volume is around 7, my reverb is at 5, treble is at 3, mids at 4, bass at 4, limiter at 0. and gain at 4.5. this gives me a sound that I can then control from the volume and tone controls on my guitar and with my attack.
And for anyone who hasn't seen it, here's the video that I did a few months ago comparing the three voices. It's a single lick played on one guitar through each voice with all of the settings on both the guitar and the amp unchanged throughout.
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Just checked my settings for a tweed deluxe rich midrange kind of classic sound:
Voice: 57
Master: 9 o'clock
Treble: 1 o'clock
Mid: 2 o'clock
Bass: 4 o'clock
Limiter: 1 o'clock
Gain: 1 o'clockControl overall volume and breakup with the volume knob on guitar. Quick and dirty video here—no EQ in post, may be a bit boomy but works well for my room. Just raw signal from a Sennheiser e906 mic about 8 inches from the grill centered right on the dust cap. I'm a cheap hack, pardon my playing.
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It seems with the Superblock that a healthy amount of gain really warms it up.
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I've seen people claim that that tweed amps are great with alnico speakers and blackface amps are great with ceramic speakers.
I kind of agree with that when it comes to the Quilter superblock US.
I have a C12N (ceramic) in a Toob 12J and I usually end up playing it on the 65 setting.
I also have a P12Q (alnico) in an open cab and I think this speaker is a great match with the 57 setting (I also love using this speaker with my 5F1 and 5E3 clones).
I usually go for the 65 setting if I use the xlr output with cab sim (with headphones or active monitors)
But generally I think both the 65 and the 57 settings sound great with all speakers I use, but yet I have not particularly enjoyed playing on the 61 setting. It's not bad or unusable or anything. I just don't seem to choose stay on it when I fiddle with the knobs and settings.
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Originally Posted by GitterbugTo The Top
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