Tech 21 - Blonde or Liverpool?

[johnny5]

I am in the market for a direct recoding devise and am very interested in the Tech 21 Character series. I bought a Liverpool model the other day and am pretty impressed by it. I am really curious about the Blonde though.

I am looking for something that does the "slightly" broken up thing the best. It would be ideal to set it up on the verge of breakup and use other drive pedals in front of it to get different shades (like an amp).

I like the Liverpool but I keep tweaking it trying to get the mids right. I feel like there is always too much or too little. To much and it kind of sounds muddy, to little and it looses all it's body.

My thought is that the mids on the blonde will be a little easier to dial as the fender amps where never known to be middy sounding amps (except tweeds).

Anybody have any experience with both the Liverpool AND Blonde? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Again, I will mostly be using this for direct recording.

Thanks!

 

[Dave]

I have both and like them equally for different reasons. The Blonde is a little less compressed and the mids control seems to be voiced differently. The Blonde might be exactly what you're looking for.

They both have a huge range on their controls, I am surprised you're having trouble dialing in the Liverpool.

 

[johnny5]

There is tons of tones in the Liverpool, and it does sound great. I am simply trying to find the best one for my application. Thanks for the response.

 

[62Tele]

I use both the Blonde and the Liverpool - I'm wondering if what your not bonding with is the speaker sim in the Liverpool; it's voiced to sound more like a Vox Blue. The Blonde takes on more of a clipped blackface with the Character knob rolled back to around 11:00 and more tweed sounding when you bring this up to say 2:00. The sim on the Blonde is more Jensen sounding, or for my ears more neutral. I've found the Liverpool a little easier to dial in overall, but the Blonde, once I got a handle on it, is probably my favorite - but it's a narrow margin.

BTW - you can get some cool hybrid tones running both, makes for some nice recording/live options along the lines of a two amp rig.

 

[tochiro]

Anybody tried these pedals in a combo amp?

 

[62Tele]

If you mean in front of an amp, yep, done it a bunch. Despite some opinions that the speaker sim is an issue I find that they can be dialed in to sound great. You just have to EQ them differently than you would going direct.

I like the Liverpool set for some low to med crunch and it really spraks to life when I hit it with an EP Booster. The Blonde does a beautiful clean boost and has HUGE EQ potential in that application. When I had a Barber LTD SR, one of my favorite low gainers, I could dial in the Blonde to sound early identical.

One thing though - I'm going into a pretty clean platform, and I think the cleaner the platform the more these pedals shine. Running these into a dimed low wattage amp might be a little trickier.

 

[johnny5]

Also the output of the Tech 21 is VERY hot. So when running into an amp, I have the volume barely open. Like said above, into a clean amp is best.

 

[62Tele]

The Radial JDI works really well with these direct and has a pad if you need it.

BTW - you're in Oakland? Do you know Peter at Guitar-O-Rama?

 

[johnny5]

The Radial JDI works really well with these direct and has a pad if you need it.

BTW - you're in Oakland? Do you know Peter at Guitar-O-Rama?

Is that on the corner of Broadway and College?

 

[62Tele]

Last I knew he was on Telegraph. Funky little shop - Pete's a monster on a tele.