No Tonestack? Hmmmm.

[echobaseone]

Very interesting article from Don Mackrill in the MyRareGuitars monthly email...
http://www.myrareguitars.com/macktonecontrols.mht

I was wondering what amps are available with either no tonestack, or with a control to take the tonestack out of the equation. Anyone?

[plexi67]

its a very old mod thats been around.. it was even used in eary boogie amps i believe. Also its easy to place in a normal channel of fender amps,and do a few tweaks,so you can use the switch to kick it in and out for a nice gain boost. You can also then use an A/B switch to switch between your cleaner reverb channel to the boosted normal channel.
It works pretty good with a few tweaks,and makes use of a channel that most never use in the fenders. But depends on the amp and tone circuit,if it will be effective or not.

Richie

[fe911]

I had an old super reverb that was modded to hell and back. It had everything that you could think of stuffed into it. It was a silver face, so it wasn't a huge loss. It had a push/pull that bypassed the tone stack. Absolutely amazing. And it didn't sound bad at all(pretty noisy) normally. The crunch that it had would make you pee your pants. It felt like your guitar came alive!!!
The other thing I liked was a pentode triode switch. Best thing in the world!! It also had the full 3 pot reverb on it. But with all the crap in it, it was noisy!! That is, until you started playing. I would run it through an old 4x12 with greenbacks, and the other guitar players would ask what kind of marshall it was. I also used jbl d110's in the combo(over 100lbs. easy), but liked the reissue blue framed alnicos the best for SRV stuff.
This amp didn't cut through the mix, it layed waste to anything around it. My bass player used an svt with 2-8x10's.

[DWB1960]

A Carr Mercury removes the tone stack when you have it in its highest gain mode. The gain boost function on the Fuchs ODS models also removes the gain stack.

In essence it's not really increasing gain but actually reducing gain loss caused by the tone stack.

[trisonic]

It's a simple reversible mod - I had it done by Jimmy Somma on my BF Vibro Champ and it's switchable!
You get more gain, more mids (Tweedlike). Makes my VC very flexible.

Best, Pete

[wsaraceni]

dont champs have no tone stack. just the volume knob. i think the bad cat cub II has a switch that takes the tone stack out of the circuit too.

[sliberty]

The earlier model Champs didn't have a tone stack, but VibroChamps do have one.

[jmp]

Most Allen amps have a Raw control which gradually removes the tone stack as it is turned up.

[Dave_C]

The Fuchs ODS/TDS does it, as well as many other Dumble-inspired amps like certain TR models, Glaswerks, Skydstrup, etc, etc. On my Fuchs TDS, I use that mode as my high gain lead tone. It's very focused and articulate.

[mmorse]

I believe the nuke switch on Jim's major crunch bypasses the tone stack as well.

[aeolian]

The Brian May Vox just has one volume control. I don't know if there is a fixed tone stack in there or it's been eliminated.