Honestly, if that 135-watt Twin won't cut through it needs service badly. See if the filter and bias caps have been replaced - you can lose half your volume with old caps. Then look at the driver and power tubes - make sure the power tubes are closely matched and biased just a tad on the cold side for a cleaner, cutting sound. If biased hot, the amp will be warmer sounding but have less headroom.

Also take a look at your speaker setup. What's in your Twin? As I recall it was Fender-labeled Utahs and CTS speakers in those, but I don't have my info at work. If you can, post the speaker codes and I can decipher them.

Regardless, the best speakers would be either JBL's EV's or Weber Californias. Those are the most efficient and sound the best with Fender amps for clean steel IMO.

If none of that stuff does it, then look also at the preamp tubes - sometimes 5751's are used to smooth out Ultralinear amps and would not be my choice for clean steel. Stock 12AX7's should be used.

At that point, if you still have problems cutting through either your output transformer is fouled, your pickup(s) have weak output, or there's something I'm overlooking. That amp should be able to rip the top of somebody's head off no matter how lousy the drummer's control is or how loud the rest of the band is. You could have 3 guitarists with Marshall stacks and that Twin should still be heard clearly.

So -

Check caps
Check power/driver tubes
Check speakers
Check preamp
Check guitar

Hope that helps.

[This message was edited by Jim Sliff on 10 February 2006 at 10:01 AM.]

As far as switching to 6550's, I'd advise against it. Four of them (what you'd need for a significant boost) will draw a lot more filament current than 6L6's. Pushing it hard could then result in a power transformer failure (about a $175 repair).

What you're describing isn't really too clear to me - you want to cut through, but not with more highs and not louder. That's the opposite of cutting through the mix. You either have to get louder or add more highs - mids and lows won't help, they'll just muddy things up.

I really think if you sound good now, you need to do NOTHING. If you can't force the other guys to get their volume under control, it's a losing situation and time for a new band. There's no reason for it to be that loud on stage.

One other thing you can try though - get a Baggs Para Acoustic DI. I know - it's an acoustic direct box. But it also works REALLY well with electric instruments. use it as a splitter - run the high impedance output to your amp, and a low-impedance line to the board. Use the direct-inject signal to reinforce your amp sound - basically, you won't need much volume out of the PA, you'll just be moving lots of air and spreading the sound. That can really help you cut through.

As far as people not hearing you, try putting your amp far away from you at the back of the stage with the bass and other amps. And put it up on a chair or stand. That will help you match volumes with eveyone else. The further from you your amp is, the louder you will play in the mix. I don't know if this applies for you, but for some reason steelers are the only ones who put their amps right next to their head pointed at their ears. Everyone else puts their amp in the back line and goes up to the front of the stage to play, and that's what you should do.

An echoplex...or anything plugged into the front end...is NOT going to increase the wattage of an amp. The only things that increase power are changes to the output transformer and/or power tubes. You can plug in 20 tube overdrive pedals and that Deluxe will still be 15 watts.

------------------
www.phelpscountychoppers.com/steelguitar

Sorry, but it's a simple fact that increasing input signal can't increase the *maximum* output of an amp. If you are running below maximum, then yes - you can increase power to a certain point. But not beyond what the transformer/tube/plate voltage combination is engineered for without circuit modification.

Typically the input is being driven fine, but I noted that he should also look at the guitar end as well.

And if his amp is not keeping up, wouldn't it be somewhat logical that he's cranking it as much as possible before it breaks up? Driving the input section harder in a case like that will simply cause distortion, which is NOT where he's trying to go. Your statement indicated that you can increase power by increasing the input level, and that is typically NOT the case.

Further, the RMS value of a sine wave is roughly 70% of the peak-to-peak voltage. If the amp rating is based on clean sine-wave power, then pushing the amp into saturation distortion increases the RMS power - up to 100% of peak-to-peak voltage for a pure square wave. I'm not suggesting that as a solution for most pedal steel players, but some players can reasonably push a tube amp past the purely linear range - it's one of the reasons tube amps often "sound louder" than solid state amps.

Personally, except on a real large stage, if a properly-serviced, cranked 135-watt ultralinear Twin Reverb with an efficient set of speakers is not loud enough for me to hear myself, then that band is way too loud for me. I'm confident that, using just a good, stock ultralinear Twin Reverb, I can blow a guitar player, using just a good, stock Tweed Deluxe, right off the stage. In fact, I would need to be careful not to. Of course, not all amps are "good, stock" amps. Some Twins are weak, and some Tweed Deluxes are far from stock.

To the topic - I've heard some "Dumble-style" mods on Twins. They were "singy-distortion" style, fine for guitar but I wouldn't want them on a steel amp.

quote:

---

it's amazing how blurry everything gets when a strat blasts a chord thru a blackface twin

---

As for the ultra linear Twins, there was certainly nothing wrong with mine. The guitar player and I once switched amps in rehearsal. He couldn't get the Twin passed 2 without blowing us out of the room. But the Deluxe sounded like a toy with my pedal steel (Emmons p/p, Truetones, Hilton pedal). Guitar and pedal steel just have completely different amplification requirements. We've been through this before. I attack notes with my volume pedal only about 1/3 of the way on. So right there, I need an amp with 3 or 4 times as much amplification. Also, the bar is not as loud as fretting strings solidly against the neck; and playing with finger picks is not as loud as flailing away with a flat pick and your whole arm. Furthermore, a guitar note's loudest point is the attack, which benefits from being softened by "crunch." From that point on, the signal is dieing off and creating less harmonic distortion. But for pedal steel, we can soften the attack with the volume pedal, but then we sustain or even swell with the volume pedal. So any harmonic distortion, especially on chords, is sustained or increased. So the amp has to have lots of clean headroom, which requires more reserve power. Put it all together and a pedal steel player needs an amp with 4-8 times as much wattage as a guitar player. That's why we play with 200-300 watt amps, when guitars are using 15-50 watt amps.

In my experience a 135 watt ultralinear Twin tube amp puts out about as much usable volume for pedal steel as a 200 watt solid state NV400. My 180 watt Super Twin Reverb puts out about as much usable volume as a 300 watt NV1000. There are plenty of situations where an unmiked NV400 is not quite enough. That's why they made the NV1000 a little more powerful. Likewise, there are unmiked situations where, for pedal steel, a Twin is not quite enough, but a Super Twin will do the job. There's nothing strange about that.

------------------
Student of the Steel: Zum uni, Fender tube amps, squareneck and roundneck resos, tenor sax, keyboards

WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!

;-)

Yep, that's WAY too loud. Threshhold-of-pain loud. 90-100 decibels is loud. Under 90 and you start to get reasonable. I carry a decibel meter - have for years.

As far as output tubes, for the 6L6 type I really like the JJ's for new production tubes. Run from Groove Tubes as fast as you can - they're just a marketing outfit. Their "made in USA" GE 6L6 is actually made in China with a few US parts.

Other good 6L6's are really all in the NOS (new old stock) category - Sylvania, Philips, RCA etc. Very expensive. I'd likely stick with the JJ's unless you have lots of spare cash to experiment.

Chris, check out a couple books for the average guy with minimal electronics knowledge- both are Gerald Weber books- Tube amp talk for the guitarist and tech, and hip vintage guitar amps.

both will tell you how to SAFELY maintain your amp and the "tube amp talk" book has a chapter on tricking a fender out for steel guitar.

some of the info in these books is, oh i don;t know.. marketing, as gerald weber is the Kendrick Amp guy. They are decent books, without getting out of hand technical.

You should be able to get that amp to do what you wnat it to do.