| ref 1086.1
The title of this note caught my eye..... Joe Jas seems to have
summed it up nicely.
What you have got is in fact a compressor, to prove it set the RMS
control down low, turn up your channel and/or master volume, and
belt out a chord. You should hear the usual compress sound.
The point around tube life is correct. Use it as a limiter on
gigs by setting what you believe to be your max playing volume that
evening ie. set up your channel, master volume, tone etc. as you
normally would with the RMS control set to max, then gradually lower
the RMS until you start to hear limiting/compressing, turn the RMS
back up a notch to give yourself a little headroom and there you
go !!
You will certainly extend tube life, and also if you have to use
your amp up near it's max output ( heavy chords, solo's ect.) your
speaker's life will also be protected. I once worked with a bass
guitarist whose playing style made a lot of use of chord playing.
As the band volume increased towards the end of the evening, and
we started to put in more rock numbers, his speaker started to break
up a little. He had a 200 watt Peavey, and after about a month,
his speaker blew. I analalysed his settings at home, replaced the
speaker with a dummy load, and found, although his "average" power
level was only around 30/40 watts, the peaks were trying to drive
about 500 watts out of his speaker. Human ears are not very good
at telling us relative power level on peaks, so us musicians often
overdrive our gear ! I built him a power compressor ( sort of a
pre-set version of your RMS control) and set it to hold the output
to a max of 200 watts. The result is he does'nt blow speakers any
more.
Getting back to the master volume/difference bit....think of the
RMS control as an "absolute" control, no matter what you poke in
the front end of your amp, no matter what settings you use, the
RMS control will only allow the set power through to the speakers.
The master/channel volume however, sets up a power (or volume),
but playing the guitar harder, and/or boosting tone settings, will
result in playing louder.
Hope all this helps Joe.
/Dave
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| REF -1.
Yup, that's it in a nutshell. But, changing tube bias and or current
'on the fly' will kill tubes. Tubes love to run one way, and stay
that way. That's why class A to AB controls are switches, not
pots.
And, although running tubes coller will extend tube life, running
them hot will sound better. What ya want?
Sound good? or Less $$$$$?
Jay Tashjian
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