Hey Myles
I emailed you but you mentioned it would be easier to get ahold of you on one of the forums, so here goes.
Love your articles…really neat stuff. I recently upgraded to JJ tubes at your recommendation and am very pleased. Anyhow, I have a quick question for you, since you're one of the people I KNOW has a good ear for sound. My rig is built around a Les Paul with Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro (bridge) and '59 (neck) pickups and a Mesa Boogie Maverick. Both the guitar and amp produce nice, warm, vintage-y tones. The Maverick is similar in design to the Vox AC30 in regards to tubes…I'm using 6x JJ ecc83s and 4x JJ el84s; the Maverick I have is a 4x10 combo with Jensen P10R alnico speakers. It also has two channels—one cleaner and one that pushes the gain. However, I do not have much opportunity to play my amp to its fullest potential—normally, I'll end up w/ the master about ¼ way up. I've done my best to find a workable setting between the master and gain; but because of volume limitations (I'm pushing it as it is) I have to have the gain up around 5-6 to get a good crunch.
Let me explain what I am looking for: I want to be able to use this one amp (as I cannot afford another one) and get some el84-sounding distortion as well as a nice clean sound. I am buying a hotplate this summer, so I will be able to get it up to levels right before the el84s begin breaking up, but I'm still stuck using the preamp distortion (which is good, but just not power amp sounding). I've included a few hundred dollars in my summer budget to buy some distortion/overdrive/boost pedals; what should I get in order to have a nice distortion sound that's as close as I can get to el84 breakup without going all the way? At this point, I'm looking primarily at the Menatone Top Boost in a Can, the Vox V810 Valve Tone, and the Vox V830 Distortion Booster.
I play Brit pop / alternative music (heavy influences are U2, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Oasis, etc. along with some more American-sounding bands such as Third Eye Blind and Goo Goo Dolls along w/ all the classic stuff-Hendrix, Zeppelin, Beatles, etc). Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.
