I Was Disappointed in EVERY Dumble Clone - Until I Tried THIS with the Two Rock TS1

[@Jimmy4Thumbs]

John, you should start a Cordy 2 channel on KZbin. Populate it with nothing but your jams! I'd make a playlist and listen to it all day long.

[@_RLP]

Great idea, but I'd rather have the tracks on Spotify. Easier to listen to anywhere/anytime. Can't deny it though: dude's playing is awesome.

[@tiagoramalhais5493]

indeed a great idea

[@GuitarsOK]

Been done, on KZbin 😊

[@charlesstratton5335]

Wow! Never heard you with a sound like this before. Spooky and ethereal lead sound...so cool!

[@ksharpe10]

He has that BAKED in on most of the videos I have thrown into my Favorites list. HAUNTINGLY GLORIOUS, the slides, the Chirps. His vibrato can get Spooky too sometimes. And he gets a bit of that Glassy stuff, especially in the cleans.

[@brrblack497]

Beautiful playing as always sir, took me away in a daydream! I was holding hands with my dad in heaven and my favorite dog by my side there for a second, thank you!

[@ksharpe10]

Wow that is Quite the Compliment.

[@davidwoods358]

That opener was bomb! (An FYI to all) not everything has to be a shred fest of impossible licks to be cool. This was clean, cool and melodic, not a bad note in the batch .. and the tone was superb. Super listenable. I think I'll learn quite a bit just from this opener.

[@GuitarsOK]

Well said and I agree. I put together a whole video of John’s intro playing. Fun to listen to and watch. I dig John’s improv

[@rockdanger]

Yes, i just got a vht d50 and i found myself running the input at 3:00 oclock to dimed... still plenty of clean headroom and makes the overdrive section sing much more sweetly.

[@martindoluz6320]

I have a VHT 50 and your description of how to use the cascading drive is spot on. This is how you get the saxophone singing sound. I think of it like stacking drive pedals You can’t treat it like most amps. I think you understand it now and you explained it well Martin

[@grahamcoxon]

Lovely sound-- I think this might be where the secret weapon the Boss GE-7 comes in… a little bit of EQ and increase the volume on the pedal- my tech says that this is pretty common when going perhaps to a strat from a humbucking beast to increase the hittage on the preamp and to be more consistent drive wise and volume wise with the Les paul or whatever humbucker guitar you are swapping with the stratling- esp in love setting…:

[@grahamcoxon]

In live setting…. Love setting is a completely different thing….

[@ksharpe10]

@@grahamcoxon See those three dots to the left, if you hit those on YOUR post Left Mouse click 2 things come up Delete and EDIT, you can Edit and correct you post with that. Now on someone else's it merely says REPORT, unless offensive do not hit that one.

[@shanemcconnell1736]

You’re such a great guitar player! But your videos saddens me sometimes, and it’s nothing about your playing. It’s your life gigs, when I say, you’re a great player I mean really, it’s not you. It’s our era, I am only half as good as you, but in the 80s, I was in Toronto and there were huge rock ‘n’ roll clubs that fit anywhere from a couple hundred people, to five or 600 people, bands were using 60 lights, giant PAs, I was using a full stack with a 200 W marshal Major, with a half stack beside it with 100 white head, on four, people everywhere, every weekend was a giant party, great, great gigs, I see your videos in your playing in these places that look like restaurants, and you’re shoved in a little corner, you’re so stinking good and this is all they have for you, times change, I know you can’t avoid that, but my my my rock ‘n’ roll has really died, and it’s a shame! Rock on anyway dude cause you sure can play, I just wish you were around in the 80s and 90s

[@MarketingVideography]

Great point.

[@stevemacdreamcolours]

Times have changed indeed, every thing is online today (with a number of advantages, don’t get me wrong), but there is no local “scene” anymore to grow, develop and thrive 🎸

[@JasonT-xp3kh]

You just won the run on sentence of the day award. Congratulations 🎉🎉🎉

[@shanemcconnell1736]

@@JasonT-xp3kh did you get to do didn’t you? I know I’m almost illiterate, but I meant what I said, I guess you don’t recognize commas and exclamation marks ? Sorry to offend you, Mark twain, or am I conversing with the bard

[@TeleTonemonkey]

He has a wife and daughter and lives in a cottage in rural England … you chose your life! Was yours better? 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@EasyHeat]

It’s difficult to chase a Dumble tone and be disappointed when no one original ever sounded exactly the same and fetch $100k. That said? I dig your content. Cheers.

[@raucousrowdy6540]

A local negative feedback circuit on the first preamp tube works well, most Dumble amps have them that I've seen. I made my clone switchable for that reason when switching from humbuckers to single coils.. also the FET input circuit also has a trim pot which can be used as a boost for weaker single coils and piezo pickups... I encounted the same problem after building my clone with the clean volume pot.. Most Dumble builds used a 30% taper log pot whilst most clones use a standard 10% Taper...there in lies the difference.... On mine I switched to a linear pot which is a little overkill but does the job, perfered it to the 10% pot which was embarassing having it almost full on all the time...

[@olric63]

Dumble amps are all about the preamp, into a clean power stage.

[@derrickmickle5491]

^^^This

[@SuperBatiskaf]

According to the circuit, the drive section goes after the tone controll section of the preamp. In case of OD it acts as pre EQ, so you can shape the drive character as you want, but it will not affect the post gaine structure. Other words, you can adjust only the sand by adjusting the presence knob of the master section, but can't increase output bass because it overloads the OD and becomes fuzzy. Good news that you can controll this fuzzyness by bass knob, just try to remove bass at all for test, or increase mid and high for melodiousness. I know it sounds strange, but this is how the circuit works.

[@martin_gemme]

great job john , fairly new subscriber here, i got to say really amaze of the quantity and quality of content you are putting out there ,always relevant , keep it up brother

[@blumeenie]

Works that way with my Bombshell Overdrive, even if it is a bit less expensive. Understand the frustration. Mine also has a boost that bypasses the tone stack regardless of channel. Glad you found the sweet spot, it took me a while, also.

[@jimamsden]

On amps that have multiple drive/overdrive controls, the first one might often have a treble bleed, while the 2nd doesn't. If that's the case, then you can try setting the drive control first to get the high end you want, then turn up the overdrive to get the amount of saturation you need. For single coil guitars, you might want to have the drive higher to reduce the effect of the bypass cap, and then adjust the overdrive a bit lower.

[@woofcity6307]

Yes! Same here. Fill the first gain stage as high as you need and then pass it along… in my rig i use 2 boost pedals - 1 for les paul one for stats… strat set higher. Its kind of externalizing the input but same staging idea

[@steveliberty]

So basically, reduce the drive. This is often the rule of thumb. And yes, you need more voltage gain (input signal) to get the amp to sing. To my ear, the best Dumble sounds are rather clean and smooth, but they really sing like an amplifier that is flat out.

[@Sam_Sparks144]

Sounds amazing John💯😎 Love your videos brother. Your incites into the various gear and your demos and tweaks on the gear have helped me tweak my own gear and sound 🎉🙏

[@johnmiles3655]

Not sure if it's the case for the TS-1, but on several other Two-Rocks the tone controls are subtractive. So 1200 is not the 'natural' position like it is on something like a Soldano. And on many of them you can bypass the tone stack with a switch (again, not sure if the TS-1 has this, but many dumble-y things do). Even without a switch, you can set the tone controls at max and the tone will be close to the bypassed tone. You can then take them down from there to shape the 'unbypassed' sound. Might be worth trying, since the level of the tone controls can have a big effect on the amount of gain ending up at the overdrive channel. I've found that the more drive you have up front, the smoother the end result on the drive channel (which I've sometimes thought is just like a fancy post-tone stack tube drive pedal integrated into the amp, but saying that doesn't do it justice). Using the input gain is key, as you've found. It's also very easy to push too much bass and make things fart out. I usually have the bass at about 0900 on my Two-Rock. Using a bigger cab (2x12, preferably, like Robben's...) transforms things again. Plus a suitably detached reverb given the sometimes dodgy serial/semi-buffered effects loops (mine is through a Fryette Power Station's loop). And it all gets a million times better if you can get the master up to a decent level, of course!

[@rogb3199]

Not sure why my comment was deleted. Maybe because I linked to a helpful forum post. Oh well... Here's my words of wisdom after over 15 years studying and building Dumble circuits, yes even before Amplified Nation built his first😂 1 Try a Dumbleator. You can use it as a global master and set amp master much higher. 2 Go to Amp Garage/Dumble Discussion/pinned post/ How to set PI trim. 3 Your smooth pick attack and Les Paul are perfect for D circuits. However if the amp is set right, you can vary dynamics much more. 4 For Strats, the FET input if you have one can be useful. Also Mid/Deep/PAB should be tried. 5 Speakers that work- EV12 for loud stage work. I thought they didn't sound good at moderate level. Celestion G12-65 either original or Heritage. Using a Thiele cab. I built one with 150w Swamp Thang and it sounded brilliant!

[@TeleTonemonkey]

Thanks John, clearly lots of work went in to this!

[@NorthGeorgiaMountains]

I just bought your Pod Go presets. I spent several hours going through them. I got about 40 amazing tones out of the pack.

[@cliverkay]

Try using the FET input !!

[@derrickmickle5491]

Yes!! Plug the Strat into the FET input, and the Les Paul in the normal input. The FET input is a built-in boost to the preamp, so it's going to provide more midrange fullness to lower-output, single-coil pickups.

[@AlanW]

So it seems like, you need to treat it like a Mesa Mk series amp: All the gain character comes from the eq section because that's before the od, opposite to most amps where the eq is post clipping.

[@ksharpe10]

The STrat tones at the End are Really Stupendous. The sound is sort of what Clapton got with Cream from Plexi's, but with a more Rounded Bloom sound to it. It also sounds like a VIOLA Timbre Tone, sort of the Rounded sound EJ gets. JOHN sure can Do ROBBEN FORD, it would have been to COOL if JOHN had been on that PEDAL ShOW with Robben and his DUMBLE, we would have ALL REMEMBERED that Show for sure!!!! Robben Ford would have heard one of the UK's Finest Players for sure!!!!

[@peterhall4852]

I've always considered the gain stages are.. Fingers Preamp Gain Volume Guitar Volume I've always tried to run gain high and volume low for a thick sound and guitar volume to be the master volume.

[@stefromfortworth]

Cool video, how would you apply this logic to a virtual Dumble? E.g. The Line 6 Litigator?

[@videohost5489]

Where would you set an Od trim pot if it had one? Like the VHT-D50.

[@mikejenny667]

Didn’t hear a word about what you said about the amp…. Just a little mesmerized by the playing….

[@TLMuse]

I really enjoyed the intro (tone and lines). The backing track is simple but lovely (cool drum part); I hope it ends up on Patreon. -Tom

[@Pepe00ad]

Many ODS-clones (including the VHT) have an OD trim pot on the back to adjust the level from the preamp into the OD circuit, so the OD-feel is less "determined" by the overall inputlevel

[@brammanck]

So this could probably work for modellers as well i asume, will give this a try

[@UnknownStone-b7w]

If I were looking for that kind of sound I think some of the OD models offered by Fuchs would be at the top of my list.

[@tbluesboye]

Way cool John! Sweet tones!

[@charlesstratton5335]

John, where are you getting the reverb from, the amp or a pedal or MFX?

[@TeleTonemonkey]

Amp has no reverb. Believe JC was straight in, so post production!

[@brianice9846]

Robben Ford hits his with a transparent clean boost I do believe. I’ve never seen him play a Strat, but maybe he needs to clean boots for the Tele.

[@ludlow555]

That guitar sounds amazing.

[@GolecLuka]

Thats what I do with my JCM800. If you turn up the gain it becomes to muddy and flabby in bass with the strat and turning up the treble makes it brighter and fizzy but still flabby. I found out if you wanna have the same feel on strat and LP guitars you need clean boost pedal in front and compensate for weaker pickups.

[@joemiller9856]

Great video!

[@picksalot1]

That sounds more like it (for an Amp I've never actually played). It would be interesting to see if that approach for dialing in a creamy tone works as well with Modelers, and Dumble Pedals.

[@justindavis2162]

Just noticed that your TS-1 is the old version. I owned one of those too. Never could get it where I wanted. The new version is much better. Has built in dumblator effects loop too. Try to get your hands on one of the latest version TS-1s

[@TeleTonemonkey]

Still got to do the donkey work to open it up as John did ….. who really 4 cables off a pb in real life?

[@icarusi]

I usually start off with the tone controls at 12 o'clock, then adjust the mids, then the bass+treble to suit, then check the mid again, usually the T&B have interacted, so all 3 may need readjusting. If any of the controls get close to their min/max, it's a sign the amp isn't well voiced to my preferences. Not a deal breaker but to ideal. On Blackstars with ISF I alter the mid & ISF together! They both work on the mids and the mid control alone is weedy compared to other amps. Blackstars often severely shelve the low end on the dirty channel, so not good for extended range guitars. Better with a pedal through the clean channel. I get to the 'dirt channel' first as I don't generally use pure clean for much, and can always use an EQ pedal to tune that if required. I don't want an amp that needs a pedal to get a good dirty sound, although I definitely need it on single channel amps and single coil PUs, to get my preferred clean and dirty sounds from the same amp. If the clean is ok the dirty is too bright and harsh, and if the dirty is ok, the clean is muddy,

[@ksharpe10]

Got rid of that Fartyness sound, and approaching the Timber of a VIOLA, HAUNTINGLY GLORIOUS opening for sure.

[@kylefletcher8489]

Shoot. Now you got me wanting a TS1

[@TLMuse]

To the extend modelers or capture players like ToneX have accurate Dumble-like models, shouldn't this be how the models work? Have you tried this in Helix (Native) with Grammatico, or ToneX with an ODS Legends capture? -Tom

[@NerdcasterMaster]

This is what I am wondering, too. I could imagine that the AI captures (ToneX) do perform worse here than a properly built model (Helix). Would love to see a TS1 vs ToneX ODS vs Helix Grammatico comparison!

[@KozmykJ]

Still a hint of Big Muff but way better than before. Bottom Line - Gain staging can be turning things UP as well as DOWN 😉

[@dano9461]

Endless dumble content.

[@VinceHalvorson]

Great advice!

[@angrybuzzy]

JNC, isn't this why people push the front end of the amp with a drive? To boost the output beyond what pickups, especially single coils can give you. Your Helix and Fractal patches often (always?) have a compressor at the front pushing a +12db boost into the amp.

[@ultimatescalerc7151]

Pick up hieght to get that final tweak?

[@chrisgmurray3622]

Oh, and just to add, I have also played at a few hundred weddings or corporate functions that are musically soul destroying, but force you to try and make some magic happen anyway. I know it's hard, but it is the only way to pay for strings or nappies ( I too have had to raise kids , but as a primary caregiver while my wife worked, and had to put my playing aside for ten years, busked for five hours between dropping them and picking them up from school, and had to put my wants aside so I could concerntrate on the more important job of child-rearing. Now I'm free to play live again, and mist of the band venues in my town are gone because alcohol lisences have meant that we now have many small intimate venues rather than large rock ones, and it's uneconomical to have a real band these days. I'm happy to play for very little money just for my own enjoyment of music, if it comes to that, and since this was why I originally played anyway, I don't see it as a problem, but an adaptation to a world where money has led to greed which has led to the death of decent live rock music, much to the loss of many young players who will never have the chance to live in that world.

[@soloracer]

It WOULD be interesting to hear the D-50. Also very curious about your take on the Fuchs ODH.

[@robertandre778]

is it better than the Amplified Nation Wonderland ?

[@tiagoramalhais5493]

So it seems to work like a mesa mark 2c+, you need to push the volume on the clean channel to add drive to the drive channel

[@rockdanger]

Yes, this!

[@markw9512]

Yes but on a Boogie, the first gain stage is much higher so one needn’t turn it quite so high or sound can get muddy

[@Stratguy10NZ]

Now apply that knowledge to the Enigmatic pedal and lets have a listen.........

[@MrApprobatur]

Supernice! Would like you to try this out with the Enigmatic! :)

[@Sol7Studios]

Any possibility of modelling the tone going at about 7 minutes on...

[@zoomzoom3950]

Get a Fender Super Twin. You'll thank me after.

[@NorthGeorgiaMountains]

Put up a KZbin channel just playing solos and links to the presets used in the solo.

[@ChillLoungeBurner1]

bro pumpin content out like bodybuilder pumpin roids

[@gooberthoreau]

Very Eric Johnson in this video.

[@michaelschneider7590]

Exquisite!

[@pedroleal7118]

It's all good, and everyone would like to own an amp that is worth a house, but at the end, it might not be for everyone. Weren't those amps mostly designed for people who used 'clean' sounds? And taylored for everyone who had one made for him? Take care!

[@jazzzfer]

It’s sounds great up top but it still farts up in the low-end

[@antoonhermans8953]

mmm , sounded great , even through my laptop speakers , but still , the price has to be right , but yeah , man . pfff .

[@Herfinnur]

Good thing you sold the Gibson then

[@deddiev1718]

On a real Amp guitars matter All the modeling equipment compresses so it’s not as noticeable

[@chrisgmurray3622]

I'm always surprised that modt of today's better guitarists don't know hiw to set up valve amps for the best sounds. This is probably because the modern woke rock world is overly concerned with arbitrary decibel restrictions, and people don't have the chance to make all their mistakes during band practice or jam weekends. Most spend hours playing in their room with everything that is derived from a history of un-mic'd amps on a stage in a large hall or outdoors, but reduced to a line-level aproximation of a recorded version of what that sound would be in an environment in which they will never actually oerform. Experience and judgment in setting up an amp for use in moving sir on an actual stage is never learned by direct involvement and much time is wasted curating and sculpting a sound within an inch of its life at line level and never having to find ways to make that work in a real rock situation ( of which there are few nowadays) As with another commenter below, who is basically saying the same thing as me, I'm also a bit sad that young , good guitarists like yourself are missing this joyfull, but also much needed musical learning experience that they don't even realise they are missing. Think of the artists that inspired you,...; I'll guarantee they learned their craft in a vasly different world where rock music was common and not against the law as it is now. This is why there are few big venues, and you end up in a corner at a function gig with no onstage sound and in ear monitoring. It just isn't REAL.. ( sob)

[@matthewdortona237]

John, you are a sensational player! However, the multiple Dumble rabbit hole videos are getting old. Folks at the pubs, bars and events could genuinely care less, and couldn’t tell a Dumble from Dumbledorf. Time to move on. I thoroughly enjoy your channel too!

[@ae3898]

Nah, keep it up! JNC, you can do endless Dumble cork-sniffing videos if you want to, and I’ll still watch for the great playing, great tones, and unpretentious humanity of an artist at work.