Getting a great overdrive sound with Express 5:25+ combo

Hi.

I have the Express 5:25+ combo, and love the (slightly pushed) clean sound I get from it. For the most part I play jazz, and the Express is such a perfect match for jazz that I can't believe more jazz players have switch to it.

Anyway, as much as I love the clean-ish tones in jazz settings, I find that when want to play dirty blues and soft rock kind of stuff, and push the amp's gain into slight overdrive territory, the amps goes kind of harsh or "boxy" or however one could describe it.

Does anyone have the same experience, and might have some insights into how to go from the above sound "issue" to a great slightly overdriven sound?

Try a different speaker. A cab is the easiest way. The Blues channel has a wide range from clean to slightly clipped. Or a pedal - I am not so familiar with pedals.

I've got an older 5:25 non-plus 1x10" combo. It's a different amp, but using the Contour (preset scooped GEQ) sparingly (I think I have it set around 11:00) takes some of the boxiness out of the Blues mode. Maybe the GEQ in the Plus can be used in a similar way.

Also, changing the speaker made a huge difference. I put a Celestion Gold Alnico in it and it made it less boxy and there's a lot more chime and sparkle in all modes.

I use the burn channel at about 9 on the gain with contour on about 1 - 2 oclock, T maybe 11 ocock mid bass about 1 oclock. Original Vintage 30 that has been broken in.

Burn channel on 9 is nice. There is so much gain that a lower setting still has plenty of dirt. I also find that turning down mid and bass can reduce thickness. Couple with Contour or GEC.

Yes the on board EQ is dependent on what you are playing too. Me, mostly single coil a and mid and bass at around 1 o'clock fattens it up. Burn on 9 is my "Dumble" setting. Fine tune the gain to taste.

Stinger22 said:

Yes the on board EQ is dependent on what you are playing too. Me, mostly single coil a and mid and bass at around 1 o'clock fattens it up. Burn on 9 is my "Dumble" setting. Fine tune the gain to taste.

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Wow, I tried this setting using my Fender strat, and the sound is really great! The channel is so dark sounding that I don't get those bright, ear-piercing highs I often get with my single coin strat. On the other channels I've usually worked around this by setting the graphic EQ in "sad face" curve (i.e. opposite to the traditional "smile" curve), but with the dark quality of the burn channel the need for this is close to eliminated.

I've had this amp for 3-4 years, but as I can't seem to get a nice high gain sound out of the amp I've kind of disregarded the burn channel, but for fat, low gain strat sound the burn channel is really great. Thanks for the tips!

For me, it still remains to get a nice overdrive/distortion sound, though. The drive on this amps, at least with my guitars and playing style, sounds thin and fizzy. May it be that I need to push the power tubes more to get a non-fizzy overdrive/distortion sound, possibly by purchasing an attenuator?

b00g13mk2B said:

Try a different speaker. A cab is the easiest way. The Blues channel has a wide range from clean to slightly clipped. Or a pedal - I am not so familiar with pedals.

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Thanks, that's a good advice. I'll definitely consider trying a new speaker. I don't own a separate cab, so I'd probably need to replace the speaker in the combo. Have you tried this yourself, and if so: Is it very difficult to replace the speaker - do I have to remove a lot of other stuff to access the speaker?

Did you use the 5 watt mode ? I use it for all kind of overdrive/distortion. Explore different modes with the gain cranked or with the channel volume cranked up.

GuyB said:

Did you use the 5 watt mode ? I use it for all kind of overdrive/distortion. Explore different modes with the gain cranked or with the channel volume cranked up.

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Thanks for your input. Actually I use the 5 watt mode most of the time. For clean and slightly pushed sounds it sounds great, but when pushed to overdrive/distortion it sounds kind of thin and boxy/harsh.

Do you use an attenuator?

No, I don't use an attenuator. I did experience a lot thought ( and I mean "a lot") , with different gain and volume settings and with the e.q.

GuyB said:

No, I don't use an attenuator. I did experience a lot thought ( and I mean "a lot") , with different gain and volume settings and with the e.q.

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After some more experimenting, I found that the cause for my main issue that made me initiate this forum thread, was as simple as this: For the crunch mode, which is the mode I've been focusing on for getting overdrive/distortion sounds, I've simply dialed the tone controls to low. When maxing out the volume controls in general, and the treble in particular, I got rid of that boxy/harsh type of sound. Starting with all the volume controls on max, I dialed down and/or used the graphical EQ to fine tune the sound.

To further improve the sound, I added a 10 band EQ in the effects loop, and pulled the high frequency bands all the way down, causing the overdrive to smoothen out even more.