What is a cold Clipper?

The cold clipper is designed to clip on the cold side of the operating point. This clipping is asymmetric because there's plenty of room on the saturation side of the bias point so the guitar signal's negative lobe is clipped while the positive lobe passes unmolested and carries the original musical content.

What does blocking distortion sound like?

Blocking distortion sounds like mechanical cutoff. The amp can be very NOT hissy but bang a chord and it goes BLAAAT and stops with no "thub" when you mute, just stops. Sounds like lowend fizz.

What is a grid stopper?

The grid stopper resistor RGS blocks radio frequencies while allowing audio signals to pass. This keeps the amplifier from becoming a radio receiver and prevents the stage from breaking into parasitic oscillation. Large values can be used to attenuate treble and improve the dynamics of overdrive.

What is bias excursion?

Bias excursion time characterizes how quickly the effective grid bias changes when the power tubes are overdriven. Bias recovery time measures how quickly the bias recovers from an overdriven state. The excursion ratio is dependent only upon the resistor values in the grid circuit.

How do you overdrive a low amp tube volume?

Guitar Amp Attenuators

One of the easiest and most reliable ways to overdrive a tube amp at low volume is to use an attenuator. There are many of these devices which are specifically designed to be used with guitar amps for this very purpose.

How Does A "Cold Clipper" Affect Overdrive Tone? Experimenting With Guitar Tube Amp Clipping Circuit

How do I get the best sound out of my tube amp?

The method I use with tube amps is fairly simple. I turn the volume up on the amp as high as it goes, and then use the volume controls for my guitar pickups to control the volume on the amp overall. If your amp has a master volume knob, it can be used to get a similar sound at lower volumes.

What is SAG Helix?

Sag is caused by the amplifiers power supply being unable to meet the demand when the map is pushed hard with high Master. When the power sags, the amp output drops and then recovers, creating a unique compression effect with some additional, but temporary distortion when you pick hard.

What is SAG and Hum on amp?

Large sag gives more compression, better sustain, and can accentuate pick attack. But the amp will appear somewhat less responsive especially at the low end and can get muddy. Hum. Controls how much heater hum interacts with your tone.

How do you increase tube amp gain?

Try both options: rolling the pedal drive down and turning up the preamp gain and turning up the pedal drive and rolling down gain on the preamp. Ultimately, getting a good distorted tone requires some experimentation and only you can ultimately say what works for you.

What does a screen resistor do?

Increasing the resistance value of the screen resistor will increase the overdrive screen voltage drop and therefore decrease gain. ... Pentodes/Beam Power Tubes have higher voltage gain when screen voltage is made smaller.

What do grid leak resistors do?

A resistor (the grid leak) is connected either in parallel with the capacitor or from the grid to the cathode. The resistor permits dc charge to "leak" from the capacitor and is utilized in setting up the grid bias.

What is crossover distortion and how it is eliminated?

Crossover Distortion Summary

By applying a small base bias voltage either by using a resistive potential divider circuit or diode biasing this crossover distortion can be greatly reduced or even eliminated completely by bringing the transistors to the point of being just switched “ON”.

What is SAG and bias?

Bias: With more voltage biasing a tube, you'll get the hotter tubes and an over-saturated tone. Sag: Can be explained as “tube compression”. Sag happens when the power amp transformer drops the voltage for a fraction of a second, it's like the signal is choked. Compressed sound! Bias.

Will new tubes make my amp sound better?

We use tubes simply because they make the music we create sound better: smoother, warmer and cleaner. Ditto for guitar amplifiers used in creating music. The ways that tubes distort when pushed to the edge are much more musical than the artificial sounds that come from transistor amplifiers when overdriven.

How do I make my guitar tone crunchy?

Although you can get a crunch tone with pedals, it came about by running an amp hard and pushing it past it's happy clean sound. The first way to achieve a crunch tone is by pushing the amp with pedals. A boost pedal does just what the name implies. It boosts the signal coming from the guitar.

How long should you let a tube amp warm up?

The Importance Of Warming Up

As a rule of thumb, your tube amp needs to be warmed up for 20 to 30 minutes at least before you can start playing your guitar.

How do you avoid cross over distortion?

How to avoid cross over distortion? Explanation: By using two more voltage sources and thus by shifting the Q point slightly above the cut off, we can remove noise over distortion. 9.

How can you reduce cross over distortion?

As with most kinds of distortion, another way in which crossover distortion can be reduced is through the use of feedback. By comparing the output to the desired output, and adjusting the input to correct for any error, we can significantly reduce distortion.