GUITAR
GOING BACK TO TUBE AMPS | Chris Rocha
For those of you who use amp simulation , remember the roar of the good ole boutique tube amps ? I certainly do and I wanted to take the extra step to integrate tube amps on my new bus tour with the band I play with Miel San Marcos . It took quite a bit of preparation since I haven ’ t used tube amps on the road since 2014 . Back then when I joined the band all we did was fly dates , so I had to find a way to get my sound from amp simulation and I think I did a pretty good job of that .
This year the opportunity arose for us to tour in a bus and have trailers to take gear in so I took the leap and teamed up with BadCat to integrate two of their amp heads into my rig . I went with the Hot Cat and Jet Black amps . A few months back I was out at their booth at NAMM and had a chance to try out their amps . Honestly , I liked every one I played so it was hard to narrow it down to which amps were my favorite . In this article I want to break down my setup and explain how I was able to take it back a bit ( at least for me ) and put together a setup that is working well for me .
I have gotten accustomed to the convenient world of snapshots and presets that can be easily programmed from Line 6 and other companies so there were some things I didn ’ t want to let go of . I ’ ll go into how I kept those functions in a bit . First let ’ s dive into what made it to my board .
For my pedalboard I went with the Schmidt Array I had from a few years back . It ’ s the perfect size and also comes with the MkIII ALL STEREO 6 channel Connector box . I utilize all 6 connections . I come out stereo from my drives and go straight into my amps , come back from my amps and then go to my stereo effects such as delay and reverb . After that I come out and go straight into the PA . It ’ s a bit complicated but it gives me the result I wanted .
I had a company reach out to me from Italy called Cornerstone . They make high quality pedals and I really like their overdrive pedals . They make this one pedal called Colosseum which is a dual overdrive pedal based on Emilio ’ s interpretation of the Blues Breaker and Klon circuits . He also added his “ signature ” Clean control taken from the Gladio , to add the clean sound on top of the overdriven signal for more tonal versatility . This will restore a lot of touch sensitivity , especially on pick attack , as well as restoring the bottom end from your original clean sound . At the back of the pedal you have 4 jacks to connect each side of the pedal with your favorite looper . You can use the sides independently or put any other pedal in between . I fell in love with that function because I can use this pedal for my 1st and 2nd stage drive . It can all be controlled from my foot controller .
For my lead tone I stuck with my signature Mr .
58 May 2024 Subscribe for Free ...