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Digital Larry

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Feb 3, 2021
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Got one of these a month or two back from Guitar Center.

Been using it mostly with a Captor-X loadbox/attenuator. So I rarely put it into a real speaker cabinet on the 25W setting. Since the Captor has a level switch and level knob and goes into a mixer with front end and channel gain settings, it's probably possible to wind up with the gain structure along the way somewhat out of whack.

1) I am getting what I consider good sounds out of the box, however it seems less bright on most settings than my Eleven Rack modeler, even with the Boogie's treble and graphic high bands maxed, it is not too bright. I do notice the difference with these tone controls all the way up vs. all the way down, it just strikes me as somewhat odd that it is not possible to dial in "too much". You know, I always set it for "too much" and then back it off a hair! How do I know it's working properly, or if it isn't, what to fix? I mean, I'm sure a full set of tubes wouldn't be out of order and that's fine, but if just ONE could help in this case, I'd like to try that first. Also I do have a scope and I can check waveforms. Usually eqs are tested by boosting/cutting one channel at a time and then looking at response to a square wave.

2) The master volume seems to barely do anything between about 10 o'clock and full up. It could be normal if these are linear pots. It just strikes me as odd because I don't think my other amp (a Laney L5 Studio) acts this way.

3) Using a Line6 M9 in the effects loop, on some patches I get a lot of distortion (you know, on patches that I would not expect to have much, e.g. Sweep Delay with Dry Thru). I compared to running guitar directly into the M9 and it's much cleaner. Then I plugged my guitar directly into the effects return and I was able to get a fairly crunchy sound just driving the power amp directly from my guitar.

So now I'm confused.
- Is it normal to get a crunchy sound when plugging the guitar (two humbucker, medium output) into the effects return?
- If I can get a clean sound through the clean channel, then whatever level goes through the effects loop is not enough to distort the power amp (set to 25W in all cases).
- If the M9 distorts in the effects loop, then the input (fx send) is distorting the M9 input and/or M9 output is distorting the FX return.

Anyway I'm going to try to dial down the master volume as that is pre-send. Will report back on what happens.
 
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