To answer how a Non Master amp sounds ........check this out

Is this somebody you know? Is it legit?

The reason I ask is that if it is legit, the guy seems to have gone to an awful lot of trouble to isolate the vocal, keep it and set up the guitar part again. I'm not sure if I believe it........ unless you're gonna vouch for him that is...

 

Trouble? Do you know how early VH was recorded? Guitar on one side, bass on the other. Guitar reverb/delay bleeds to the same side as the bass guitar. Setting something like this up is easy with recording software nowadays.

I believe this is the amp he says it is. The guy has most of EVH's playing style down and he's using the right guitar, right cab for the job. When you get those elements together, the sound can be had.

BTW, just so people are getting the right idea--not every NMV amp sounds like this. Most of them don't.

 

Jim it's Brad in Honolulu...

Yeah, I'm pretty clued into the VH1 recording. I worked in a few different studios as a kid when I was doing my band thing and now I've got a nice project studio in my house... Big fan of Templeman and the gang that engineerd that first album.

What I meant was that it's still a pain in the ass to stip a vocal off of a stereo mix. I guess there's easier ways to do it now, but I'm still pretty old school. Maybe there's more early track prints out there for early VH than I think there are...

The guitar sound is good and he's got the licks down pretty well. If it's the real deal then I'm impressed...

 

I'm still of the NMV persuasion, however you can twist my arm.
There are a couple of recent designs where the Master is completely defeatable which I like a lot. The one I tried is a true point to point (another can of worms) Sommatone Roaring 20 (check out the wiring at www.sommatone.com) where when the Master is fully clockwise it has no other effect on the circuit.

Has anyone produced a Master control that has no effect on the tone or "gain" (as we generally understand the word) but simply raises or lowers the overall level (I don't mean Dave Z's wonderful stuff)?

Best, Pete.

 

Adding a MV has no effect on gain. It simply allows you to turn an amp down and keep the gain the amp already has. Adding a MV does NOT add gain! I think a MV should be put on every medium to high gain amp. No need for it on lower gain amps, as it does not do anything anyway.

 

Yes, and it's been mentioned here many times over.

Clue: Guy Hedricks

 

Have to agree with John Phillips here. I'm generally a fan of non-master volume amps...not because there's anything wrong with master volumes per se, but simply because so often, I don't like some element of the circuit design and the resulting effect on the amp's sound/behavior. But when done "properly" (IMO, of course), a good master volume amp can get some pretty glorious sounds at very reasonable volume levels. But you just can't make blanket generalizations about MV or NMV amps.

I did that clip over the weekend with my Orange Rockerverb 50 and my homemade strat (thanks Ed D for backing track!). The volume was not set to 'bedroom level', but it was low enough to talk loudly over. I would have absolutely killed to get that kind of performance from an amp back in the 70s. The MV circuits in the Mesas, Fenders and others back then just didn't get it. But there are quite a few amps available know with really excellent masters, IMO.

 

I'm somewhat puzzled by this thread. What is the point of clips to show us what a non-MV amp sounds like?

There are about ten amps of various shapes and sizes in my apartment, they all sound quite different from one another, and not one of them has a master-volume control.

Perhaps if there were two clips, before and after, that showed the difference in sound of a single amp once the MV control had been completely ripped out of the circuit. That might make sense.

 

Hi Brad,

In this case, the mix allows for it readily. The vocal isn't stripped so much as one side is "deleted". It could be panned a bit too. Then another track was added on the right (the new guitar recording) and then mixed down again. I can do this myself with those early VH recordings, the only hassle being waiting for the ripper to finish decoding to WAV files for use with the multitrack software. Two other guys on HC's amps forum did similar things about a year ago too, to show how closely they could get that kind of sound (using totally different gear). It was cute.

 

non master: http://www.syrnett.com/downloads/Dougdblues.mp3

master; http://roccaforteamps.com/sounds/Track05.mp3

 

I know one thing, your post makes excellent sense.

 

Nope, sorry Doug that's impossible--you must mean that's the non-master amp.

 

I like the first one better too. It sounds like there is far less gain in that one. The second clip even has too much gain for the Van Halen tone imo.

 

Good points, James. Out of curiosity, if someone wants to get very close to the tone in that clip without buying a '67 plexi or blowing an assload of cash...what cab, speakers and amp would you suggest? I have heard a lot of plexi-ish clips, but that one takes the cake IMHO.

 

Nonetheless, Doug's comparison still doesn't provide any evidence one way or another for your premise that NMV amps sound better. The clips clearly use different settings, different playing, different backing, etc.

To back up your premise (which makes no sense to me) you would have to compare 2 amps which are completely identical except for the presence of a well-executed master volume circuit in one of them. And then you would have to play them both, WITH THE MASTER TURNED ALL THE WAY UP on the MV amp. They should (and likely would) sound exactly the same. Once you turn the master volume down, the comparison isn't valid anymore.