When I used the Marshalls and the Dumbles, or the Van Weeldens, whatever the old rig used to be… the way I used to get the point on the notes and the articulation was EVs. “My whole career has been saturated amps with clean headroom. But I don’t know, it sounds great.” On what Electro-Voice speakers are good for This one’s not gooped, but it’s been fucked with, so it’s been worked on over the years. This is the money, right here, and that’s the preamp that’s where the overdrive comes in. You have two sockets and this section here is to make power. “If you look inside these things, this is your power amp section here. My whole career has been saturated amps with clean headroom The amp was made in 1980, so it’s almost a 40-year-old amp. About halfway through the set, you’ll hear it, it just starts going, ‘Wooooo…’ You either hit it on the top, or you stick these towels wrapped in tinfoil on it, and it’ll stop.
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“This Dumble in particular has been our problem child. Joe's Dumble onstage (back right) (Image credit: Joby Sessions / Future) On troublesome old amps I just don’t have the ability to back up the attack enough to where I find the sweet spot.” If the amp is too distorted and too compressed, I might as well just play miniature golf. “When you wail on it, it gets saturated, but it doesn’t compress, it doesn’t collapse. So, where I like it is when you roll the guitar down, the tone cleans up and spreads out. Then, by the time you’re down two or three, it’s still way too distorted. A low-wattage amp, if you roll the guitar down it’ll still destroy it and still compress it. “A low-wattage amp in the bathroom will do the same thing as all this will on a big stage. The thing is, when you overdrive a high-wattage amp, when you roll the guitar back it blooms and there’s enough clean headroom the amp has got headroom to where it’ll clean up and bloom, and bring in the overdrive gradually. “I would say 90 per cent of the overdrive comes from the amps. If it’s a dark room, the same but Fender versus Dumble.” On getting a great overdrive sound It’s 60/40 on some nights, Dumble versus Fender. Our engineer, Scott, probably tweaks that depending on the room a little. “I believe it’s probably a 50/50 blend of Fender and Dumble in the mix. These 50-watters, they’re a little bit more Fender-y in their overdrive, though. With some, no matter what you plug into it, it’s an instant Robben Ford or Larry Carlton, or those classic Dumble sounds.
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Les Paul, Tele… it doesn’t homogenise their sound like some of those types of amps do. I was like, ‘Oh, man.’ The way it translated out there, man, was big and thick… It still accentuates what the particular guitar you’re playing is. “But I would hear it on some of the videos that the fans would post and so I went out the front one day and just listened to the speakers.