Hot rodding a DRRI?

[buddastrat]

Can it be done to get it more ballsy and rockin'? More like a Z Wreck or something on the 2nd channel?

I know it'd be a lot more than a tube swap or simple mod, something a competent tech would need to do, but it'd be cool to have a little beast. I wonder if anyone knew of any good results. There's a million of these things, someone had to do it!

 

[Gnarlly]

Stick a good pedal or two in front of it. Bam! There's your hot-rodded DRRI.
I find that if I remove V1, plug into the Vibrato channel (input 1) with a hot pickup, crank the amp to 10, and lower the bass, that my DRRI turns into a fire-breathing amp that can compete with Marshalls, rolling back the guitar's volume for some sweet cleans.

 

[guitarcapo]

If you can't rock hard enough with a pedal in front of one, you need to get a metal amp or something.


People talk about rolling back the guitar's volume for cleans but that's never worked for me at all. Dull and muddy and sterile is all I get. I'd love to see how that works.

 

[semi-hollowbody]

Stick a good pedal or two in front of it. Bam! There's your hot-rodded DRRI.

beat me to it...a good dirt pedal or 2 in front of the normal channel...a splitter to switch between clean bright channel, and dirty normal channel...there you go!

There was a drri mod someone posted where they completely re-wired the pcb to turret board, readjusted the mid stack, changed the normal channel to a dirty marshallesque channel...but IMO it is NO longer a DRRI...for the money it takes to do this, why not just by a custom amp, or buy a marshall and a splitter and switch between the drri and marshall...

 

[Badfrog]

Get a Les Lius pedal, click on both buttons and hammer away. If that doesn't do it for you, like someone else said you need an entirely different amp.

 

[semi-hollowbody]

you could mount the dirt pedals right on the amp, use the splitter as a channel changer...thats what I would do

 

[BigPapiFan]

Hicks Mender and a speaker/tube upgrade and you have a sweet channel-switching amp.

https://www.thegearpage.net/board//showthread.php?t=1019776

 

[buddastrat]

I knew I'd get some pedal replies. After many, many years of using tube amps and ab'ing a zillion pedals....Pedals IME, just don't have the meaty tone I like, they have a thin compressed, or often fizzy tone when used into a totally clean amp. They can sound good but either sound thinner than a real driven amp or they sound distant. I want a chunky kind've tone, like only a good amp can get. I'm not into pedal distortion.

The single BEST pedal distortion I've heard and actually sounded an FELT like a real driven amp was a Soldnano Supercharger and it used high voltage. It was a very noisy pedal, but the voltage I believe was key.

I do like overdrive pedals, into a meaty amp, but not distortion pedals into clean amps, as they do what I just mentioned. I still need to hot rod the DRRI so that the OD pedal will crunch how I want. I don't want a blues type thing. More of a tight, hard rock sound that's thick but cutting.

 

[buddastrat]

If you can't rock hard enough with a pedal in front of one, you need to get a metal amp or something.


People talk about rolling back the guitar's volume for cleans but that's never worked for me at all. Dull and muddy and sterile is all I get. I'd love to see how that works.

Rolling back the knob is the only way to go for me. I love all the shades inbetween. I don't see it the way you do. I see it as my volume down is a nice chunky and a dirty clean, when I pick harder, and nice and clean when I stroke easy, and when I roll it up, I get more gain and more highs for clarity. I love being able to 100% control the sound with only my playing. Perfecto! I grew up using Marshalls and that's the way you play them.

 

[buddastrat]

Stick a good pedal or two in front of it. Bam! There's your hot-rodded DRRI.
I find that if I remove V1, plug into the Vibrato channel (input 1) with a hot pickup, crank the amp to 10, and lower the bass, that my DRRI turns into a fire-breathing amp that can compete with Marshalls, rolling back the guitar's volume for some sweet cleans.

I haven't tried removing V1 yet. I did read I'd get more gain. Have you tried using V1's 12ax7 in place of the phase inverter's 12at7. That's another trick I read about.

I was thinking of a solid state rectifier though. To give it a tighter bottom.