January NAMM 08

by James Brown

 

Well, this time around, we really tried to present the amp in its full-blown glory.  I knew the footswitch circuitry wouldn’t quite make it, but we did the best we could to get the real amp to the show with all the other additional features. 

 

Direct Out:  I borrowed the same ’Blue’ microphone that we had used to develop the Coupe Direct Out circuitry, and proceeded to mic up our Vintage 30 cabinets.  I spent some time moving the microphone around until it sounded the same through a pair of nice Audio Technica headphones as it did listening to the amp.  Basically it was about head height so it wasn’t the typical close-mic in-your-face tone, but a more pleasant sound like you get when you’re standing by the amp playing.  This was used to develp the curves for the switchable DI….one curve for the 412 Straight and another for the 412 Slant.  

 

Footswitchable Effects Loop:  This circuit had to be tweaked a lot to make sure the levels were correct between active and bypassed.  This effects loop uses a True Bypass relay to bypass around it, but even when it’s active, it’s driven by a tube follower.  I spent a lot of time adjusting the gain of the Send and Return Level controls to make sure that you could drive a lot of different level effects without clipping or excessive noise.

 

Extra Gain Sw:  As mentioned on the last listing, it was tough to add this since it was more like traditional gain where it can get a little bit too compressed if you’re not careful….but I tweaked the amount of gain so that it couldn’t overpower the other added stages.  The result gives you a lot more gain, but you don’t lose the dynamics of the Tight and Thick switches.  And I guess it’s hard to argue with one more switch that gives you more gain!  Right?

 

LEDs on the faceplate:  This might seem like a lot of marketing or cosmetics, but I think it’s quite helpful to see what channel is active and to tell if the Effects loop and Boost are active.  Of course there’s a lot of circuitry involved to get that stuff to work, but I think the end result is worth it.

 

Rather than tool up a metal grill like this, we decided to spend some bucks on what’s called an SLA(Stereo Lithography Apparatus) version for the NAMM show.  It’s basically a plastic part made from a machine that ‘prints’ the part in a liquid by using to lasers that are computer controlled.  It builds it one layer at a time, and is pretty amazing as you can tell from these photos.  The nice thing is it allows you to fine tune the fit before you spend 10’s of thousands of dollars for tooling of a real metal grill.

 

Of course the reaction at NAMM was great!  We had a lot of interest in the amp, and took a bunch of orders on it.  This is always a good indication that it’s done right, since anybody could see that we had not cut any corners on the amp.  My motto has always been to try and make what I did last year sound bad.  I can definitely say that this is the best amp I’ve ever designed, and it definitely solves a lot of the subtle problems we’ve all fought with for years with high gain amps, in terms of their typical inability to stay dynamic once you add a ton of gain. 

 

Now if I can just get the footswitch in it and the grill finished……