Grateful Dead Music Forum

Rigging up a sms classic pre amp to either a mesa 2:20 or mesa 2:50 not playing stadiums but also want to play at home.

Thoughts, suggestions?


Naataanii

Having good and consistent tone at all volume levels are not necessarily even the main reasons I chose a Carvin DCM200L solid state power amp to mate with my SMS preamp but they're good reasons to.

Just turn the volume down. Use any decent dirt pedal if you need/want. I suggest the Earth Drive in the bedroom situation for low volume and slight grit.
If you do a bunch of research here and a couple of years of experimenting, you will find it is not possible to really achieve a great Jerry tone at bedroom volumes. Close can be achieved as mentioned.

I don't know much about the mesa amps, but what I like about my SMS/mc50 rig is that it is very consistent in tone all across the volume. I can play through at reasonably low volume and get great clean tone.

My twin is fairly consistant from 2.5 until 7 or so, but the Mac rig even more so. The warmth (slight breakup) is coming from the preamp. Some of th hair also seems to come as a result of an impedance mismatch between the cabinet and the amp. The speaker break up, particularly when using 200 plus watt E120's is harder to duplicate. The Earth Drive pedal can immulate some of that, but I digress.

What speakers are you using? Also, if you're thing about the Mesa 2:50, might want to consider the Freyette/VHT. The 20:20 will still be loud, but won't be enough to ever get the JBL's where they need to go. And if you ever end up playing out somewhere besides the bedroom, ala a decent size venue or outdoors, it's never a bad thing to have too much power available.

That said, as Hippieguy stated, throw in a dirt pedal for tone shaping , and it should sound fairly good at lower bedroom volume levels.

Some guys here might tell you to just go for a small Fender combo. I kind of disagree with this, especially for the bedroom player; at home you can set up a real rig and never have to worry about lugging all that shit around, setup/teardown, worrying about drunk spinners next to your 3k setup, etc.. I think If I were a real gigging guitarist and not a mostly weekend warrior, then I would probably just grab a small combo and an M13..

My 2c

Smolder wrote:I don't know much about the mesa amps, but what I like about my SMS/mc50 rig is that it is very consistent in tone all across the volume. I can play through at reasonably low volume and get great clean tone.

I agree with Smolder. In my case, I mate my MC50 with my FYD preamp. The two together, though, are not a total weight (including 2U Gator rack) of 16 lbs. which is pretty darn cool.

Naataanii wrote:Rigging up a sms classic pre amp to either a mesa 2:20 or mesa 2:50 not playing stadiums but also want to play at home.

Thoughts, suggestions?
Naataanii

fwiw... I'm still kinda noob to this realm but I'm not sure a tube power amp is the way to go for the Jerry thing. He used solid state & the consensus around here is only a Mac cranked pushing E120's get ya there, but I've yet to truly "get" there meself because I can't push it that loud inside either nor have the correct hardware goods... but I use SMS as a killer clean base tone vs. going full on Jerry authentic. The Carvin ss amp would prob be a good choice for sure. What I did was put my Weber ceramic Cali in a iso box (converted old high school wood shop storage chest! lol) with a dedicated Audix i5 mic & use one channel (70 watt @ 8ohms) of Hughes & Kettner CF200 200 watt ss amp (CF = "current feedback") I bought new in 93 that still works great, so if you can find one of those I'd highly recommend one, but I do dig Carvin stuff tbh (have a SH65 synth guitar that is sweet). The other ch powers external cab w/ Weber ceramic Chicago, which btw does allow break up better than the alum dome cali for sure for goofing with other SMS settings with actual bass turned up some. But if I try to do JG tone & push the Cali to just before amp starts to clip in that iso box (or till box vibrates) I still can't quite truly get there, but it's close. It does allow me to hear a better "cranked" tone but at lower volume through studio monitors/headphones (as well as record easier & not make the wife scowl). tip: with iso box, it's usually better to my ears to mic without verb & then in a mixers' fx loop that the mic is plugged in add verb from a dedicated unit.

if ya do want tube power, maybe this Carvin can save a few bucks... the guys on the Carvin forum report good results
http://www.carvinamplifiers.com/product ... -power-amp

Andrew @aoguitars.com is building me an exact replica of rosebud complete with on board roland synth, etc ect. As well as a cabnit w/ dual Jbl E120's voodoo pedal board with the usual jerry suspects of qtron , phase, tube screamer, chorus, to name a few.

^ nice!

anyone using a attenuator between their pre amp and power amp?

No to the attenuator.

SMS into MC50 here. Awesome!

I was using the Carvin DCM200L before, and it is great, just not as great as the Mcintosh!

Naataanii wrote:anyone using a attenuator between their pre amp and power amp?

No. the sms has a trim pot so no need.

Honestly, the 20/20 is a great amp and very powerful. Send unique feeds to each of the speakers, have the sound engineer mic the lower one, increase or decrease the upper one on stage for yourself and you'll be thrilled.

I'm currently using a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe with a K-120 almost always at low volumes . I am a huge fan of the Boss Turbo OD-2 to get Jerry dirt at low volumes.