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Hi All.

I had a blast building an 18 watt kit (I think three years ago) and with a tone tubby tone bomb, it was perfect for the band I was in. We had a good lead player and I did a few leads but mostly rhythm. Our lead player moved, and I was left doing everything - awesome fun, but I found that the amp wasn't versatile enough for our band and it didn't seem to take pedals too well...too much sag?

So I went to the dark side and bought a boss GT8 and a keyboard monitor. Now I'm tired of the fizziness, and am pining for a real amp again...

The question is, can I mod my 18 watter to get it to work well with pedals (or maybe the GT8 without amp/speaker sims)?

Effects/sounds I need include a nice crisp funk tone (with wah), a lightly distorted marshall tone for rhythm (and that can take some chorus), a dirtier marshall tone, a cleaner tone with reverb and delay for country, and an overdrive tone with lots of compression (soldano or boogie-like) for leads.

I play a PRS mira. The pickup configuration makes it a pretty versatile guitar.

I'm open to suggestions, including an effects loop or other mods to tighten the tone up a bit.

I was perusing the trinity site and think that the triwatt or the 15 watter might be a better choice, but if the sIII can be modded to give me what I'm looking for, I'll give it a shot and pull out the soldering iron (I'm guessing that an effects loop and SS rectifier might do the trick).

Pete

Which pedals are you using?

I use many different pedals with my sIII without any many issues. For modulation FX like your Delay and Reverb it is usually desirable to have these FX after any distortion stages. The issue with the smaller wattage amps is much of the distortion comes from the power tubes. This makes it difficult to have any of these FX after all distortion stages. An FX loop will still be an improvement because it will put the FX after the preamp distortion.

One easy thing you can try is to add a line out jack after the output transformer. The wiring is shown on the sIII schematic in the reference section. You would take this signal and route it to your modulation FX. You would then take the output from the FX and drive your keyboard monitor. You would want to set it up so you're using a "wet" signal from the FX. Your dry guitar signal would be playing through the sIII and your echoes and verb would come from the monitor.

Personally I just use the FX before the sIII, but I am usually using the delay with a clean signal.

These 18W amps can usually take all kinds of pedals without any problem, so I'm not sure what's happening in the case of your amp. There are some lengthy threads on 18watt.com with people talking about all the different kinds of FX pedals they use. Normally you just plug these straight into the front end of the amp. However, it's also pretty easy to put a series FX loop between the TMB channel's main volume control pot and the PI input. It's just a pair of jacks which short through when nothing's plugged in..

The sIII's TMB channel gives a lot of clean compared to many 18Ws. And remember the trick with vintage style amps is to roll back the guitar volume for cleaner tones. I actually use a passive volume (aka swell) pedal on the floor for that purpose. In the case of the Mira you can also run the pickups in single coil mode. You can additionally increase the amp's overall clean range by changing out the two 470k grid reference resistors in the power stage to 220k. You should note that this will extend the clean range of both channels.

On current sIII amps there's a boost switch at the cathode of the 2nd TMB preamp stage. Do you not have that? This will give you your dirtier Marshall tones, as will the Normal channel. In fact you can parallel them together with patch lead (or ABY box) for even bigger tones. For the higher gain tones you can either put a dirt box in front of the amp, or else you might want to consider doing a cascade switch mod on your amp. This routes the output of one preamp stage through the other one for some great high-gain lead. Stephen has just finished building an sIII Plexi with cascade switching, and it's a real blast to play - www.trinityamps.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1798

Ultimately, the Triwatt is probably the most useful amp for the kind of gigging you want to do, but I don't see why the sIII shouldn't be sufficient for what you need.

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Great tones come in small glass jars!

Thanks for your replies - these are really good suggestions.

I'm going to try a few of these things. I've looked at some of the other posts, and I think I'll try to change the voicing on the normal channel to give a bit more overhead. I've got some good pedals (will need to add chorus and delay), so it's a shame not to use the amp (I wish I had a garage or a basement!).

When I first got the GT8 I used lots of effects, but over time have settled on a few patches that (surprise surprise) are more straight forward. In fact, I'm now inspired to haul my sIII (as is) to my next practice to see how it sounds!

I like the idea of the volume pedal - used to use my volume knob a lot, but am now in the habit of using a pedal on the GT8 for volume.

Pete

Well, this will make some of you cringe, and it makes me gag a bit...but I programmed a patch on the GT8 that didn't use any amp or speaker sims. I plugged my guitar into the hi input of the normal channel, ran the low normal out to the GT8 and then the GT8 to the hi input of the TMB channel. After tweaking the TMB controls (I scooped the mids), it worked surprisingly well...reverb, wah, tremelo, chorus, and delay were all OK (I cranked them on the GT8). I didn't have time to dial in a good overdrive setting, but I think it will work. I set the normal channel volume to be fairly clean with my guitar at 7 (I have a PRS mira). Twisting to 10 gave it some good crunch. I think that putting the modulating effects in front of the pre-amp sounded OK because I only used them when I had the guitar volume backed off...and this is how I'll use it in the band.

Unfortunately, I live in a condo, so I used a BBQ mini mass to heavily attenuate the output. I won't really know how it sounds until our practice next week. Plus, I gotta say, this arrangement does suck a fair bit of tone...would be much better if the GT8 had a bypass.

Just the same, I'm pumped about using a real amp again. I'll let you know how it goes.

Pete

I've heard of that kind of thing being done before, although not specifically with a GT-8.

I've recently been experimenting with running a modded Boss chorus pedal into the front of a cranked 18W amp, so that you got the tube distortion and chorus combined and to me it sounds great. Somewhat like the big chords Alex Lifeson does. So I don't think you're only limited to clean sounds with the modulating effects.

One of these days I'll have to get myself a Mira....

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Great tones come in small glass jars!

Thanks Zaphod, I'll give this a shot. I'm going to show up early to my practice on Thursday so that I can try it out with some real volume. The challenge with the GT-8 is that good sounds are all about EQ. The GT8 does not have a true bypass and it is far from neutral. I'm going to try to set the GT-8 so that the output without effects is as neutral as possible. Then I'll tweak each effect...

The mira is great - voiced a bit dark, but versatile, light, and way too fun to play.

Pete

You may find you need to limit some low end so that the amp doesn't sound flubby on cleans and mushy with distortion.

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Great tones come in small glass jars!

I was using a GT-8 with my Triwatt. I was runing the Triwatt relativity clean, used the GT-8 for Modulation/Delay Effects, and ran a Fuzz, Compressor & Fulldrive in front of the GT-8. If you need the Wah & the Uni-vibe from the GT-8 then you might run the OD Pedal thru the Effects Loop of the GT-8.

I ran no Preamps/ODs/Distortions/EQ from the GT-8 (You could use the EQ a high/low freq. cut if needed). I thought these sounded a little to fake, but the GT-8 sounded good if either you are using the 4 Cord Method (GT-8 - Amp Preamp - GT-8 - Amp Power Amp) or using good Analog OD Pedals.

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ROB

The experiment 'sort of' worked. My band mates thought the GT8 sounded good, but I wasn't all that happy with it. To me, the effects had a lot of ugly digital distortion - a problem with running the effects cranked up. This week, I'm going to try running it straight in, and I'll also pick up an AB/Y pedal so that I can have a channel without effects.

I'd forgotten how great it is to play with a real amp. It was a blast. When we got into rock tunes, I shut off the GT8, cranked the amp, and let it rip. Yes, yes, yes, it was fun.

Pete

I borrowed a friends AB pedal for our band practice last night. I ran the GT8 into the normal channel and the guitar straight into the TMB channel. This worked surprisingly well. For pop tunes, I used effects on the GT8 (turned off amp and speaker sims) and set the GT8 output to headphones (GT8 users will understand this...it affects the EQ used for the line out). The only amp sim I tried was the soldano lead stack with no speaker sim. It sounded very good and had huge sustain.

For rock tunes, I used the TMB channel. I could change the distortion a lot using the volume control on my guitar. I'm going to try some mods to bump up the gain a bit - it got a bit flubby when I cranked it up.

All in all, it sounded much better (and was a lot more fun to play!) than the GT8 into a keyboard monitor...

Thanks everyone for their suggestions.

Peter

In that case, you need to reduce some low end response, not increase gain. Increasing the gain will only give you more flubb and mushy distortion, unless you limit the bass.

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Great tones come in small glass jars!

I am actually getting some very nice sounds using the GT-8 into my Marshall JCM 900 Combo. (Not as nice as my Triwatt with True Bypass Effects though, but the Marshall/GT-8 is my back up rig.)

I am using the 4 Cable Method (GT-8 to Marshall Preamp to GT-8 to Marshall Power Amp)

I am running the "Natural Overdrive" setting in the GT-8, but more as a semi-clean boost. It actually doesn't sound as buzzy as a lot of the other OD/Distortions in the GT-8. I am using the Marshall Preamp, & no GT-8 Amp Sim's, but I am using the GT-8's EQ after the Marshall's Preamp.

Using the Marshall's Clean Channel with the GT-8's "Natural OD", it can do a decent cruchy Plexi imitation at a nice basement volume level.

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ROB

Hey, thanks for the info. I've found that I can use the amp without effects (TMB channel B=3, M=5, T=8) for about 75% of our songs by using pickup selection and guitar volume. It took 3 practices before our drummer even noticed that I'd switched amps. I could use a bit of extra overdrive for some solos, but other than that I really like it (and love playing through a real amp again).

I don't think I'd go to an effects loop right now given that the GT8 seems to be sounding 'good enough' through the normal channel...