microcube tone

jcoote

just whipped this up and its 100% microcube.

just for all the doubters..i think this is savage tone

microcube distortion

Sofaspud

I'll have one in about two weeks (It's a "surprise" present).

Stop testing my patience

Johnny Storm

Good sound!

Just for my info, how did you record that?

jcoote

cheers johnny...its just the tone i'm sayin is cool not the technique

thats just a guitar lead from the back of the cube (headphone socket) into the line in on the sound card (with a reducer conneter on)

recorded with goldwave

there is no effects or anything in the loop

sofaspud there is nothing worse than waitin on gear i feel your pain bus

Rustar

cool stuff, jcoote, is that full-on Classic stack or 1/2 rectifier?

sounds great, might want to pan it next time tho....my right ear was thirsty!

Eoin Madsen

To be honest, I'm not a fan of that tone.

Rustar

You have to admit, it has a whole bunch of cojones for a little 2-watt box you can take on the bus with you! (and runs on batteries as well!)

SirLemonhead

Please stop abusing your whammy bar :eek:

jcoote

i lost the tuning locks off my rg and just found em today so the whammy is a novelty sorry.


it is a lot of balls for such a lickle amp

its the rectifier setting with gain at 1 o clock and delay at 10:30

i meant to pan it only realised that it was single channel when i saw your message rustar cheers anyway

is it the style of tone u don't like eoin or do u think i could have mad it better... interested in your opinion

Rustar

jcoote wrote:

its the rectifier setting with gain at 1 o clock and delay at 10:30

Yep, a little over 1/2 rectifier...my ears never fail me. (Unless I've just gotten out of rehearsal, of course)

Eoin Madsen

jcoote wrote:

is it the style of tone u don't like eoin or do u think i could have mad it better... interested in your opinion

It has no depth and relatively poor high frequency detail. I don't think it's anything you could improve upon, it sounds like a fundamental characteristic of the amp. I'm a little disappointed after all the Microcube hype to be honest.

Rustar wrote:

You have to admit, it has a whole bunch of cojones for a little 2-watt box you can take on the bus with you! (and runs on batteries as well!)

Yeah, it's grand. Sounds like a digital preamp.

Don't get me wrong, it's lovely for what it is. I've just never been one to look at the smaller picture.

jcoote

nice one eoin

i think with all the hype people expect to hear tube overdrive and subtle delays but its only €100 worth of an amp like!!..basically it gives u a variety of acceptable tones that are worth raving about because its so cheap thats it really

Rustar

Eoin Madsen wrote:

Sounds like a digital preamp.

Going direct to disk is also quite a bit different than listening to it's tiny terror speaker filling a room.

There are also literally hundreds of permutations of its sound using the 5 amp models, 4 effects, and 2 wetness effects.

I'll have to whip up a "Blackface Blues" one of these days and change your mind.

Eoin Madsen

Rustar wrote:

There are also literally hundreds of permutations of its sound using the 5 amp models, 4 effects, and 2 wetness effects.

I'll have to whip up a "Blackface Blues" one of these days and change your mind.

Permutations of it's sound that are all based on the same basic template. From my experiences with amps digital, solidstate, valve, and every sort of bastard hybrid, I'm of the opinion that what I hear and dislike in this amp is fundamental to it and unlikely to be changeable.

I would usually consider this fundamental "sound" to be the "tone" of the amp, but I've noticed that some people have a different concept of what tone is than others (effects and eqs etc), so really it's a word made redundant by it's lack of a clear contextual definition.

Btw, what do you mean by "wetness effects" as opposed to "effects"? Wetness is just a way of describing how effected a signal is, it can apply to any effect.

jcoote

i think rustar means the tone knob..its eq (as far as i can see it is just like a bass,mid and treble knob rolled into one) but it does seem like it is wetting\drying the overdrive on the amp models.

you may have a point there eoin..l
ike the guitar tone comes from the amp but if u ask me how did i get 'my tone' then i would say delay and a bit of chorus or whatever...

so its kind of a contradiction the whole 'tone' thing

Rustar

By 'wetness' I simply mean reverb and delay....things that take the sound and 'expand' it as opposed to waveform or EQ modification. Distortion is a waveform modification and flanger is an EQ mod.
Definitely not an 'industry standard' type of classification, but it fits.

Chorus I would also consider a 'wetness' type of effect, since it doesn't modify the basic sound, only repeats/fattens it.

As far as fundamental 'tone' and whether it's good/bad, well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This ain't a unit used for professional sound and mixing....it's an amp used for rockin' out in your bedroom or busking, for a hundred smackers, and does the job admirably. The amount of people in the world who can actually tell the difference between pro tone and "hey, that's really cool!" is actually very small. If you were jamming in the house with a friend who had a 100-watt bass amp, no one would ever say "hey, could you lose that thing and get a real amp?"
And there are a thousand times more people jamming with that 100-watt bass player than those searching studios for the 'perfect tone' or trying to fill an arena with 50,000 watts.

Phew, sorry, I DO ramble on at 5am after a night of Scots whiskey.

jcoote

good god i think u passed your hangover onto me with that rant...my head hurts

Voodu Child

The microcube sounds like a cheap crappy multi-fx plugged into a cheap crappy amp. But its cheap, and handy, and you can play Eruption in the loo...
I love mine

Fingers Mcginty

here's a clip of how the black panel setting sounds. The noise in the background is just from the computer monitor

http://www.sendspace.com/file/q9pyec

Eoin Madsen

Rustar wrote:

By 'wetness' I simply mean reverb and delay....things that take the sound and 'expand' it as opposed to waveform or EQ modification. Distortion is a waveform modification and flanger is an EQ mod.
Definitely not an 'industry standard' type of classification, but it fits.

Chorus I would also consider a 'wetness' type of effect, since it doesn't modify the basic sound, only repeats/fattens it.

Okay. Really "wet" is used in reference to effects which are added by proportion to an uneffected (dry) signal. Hence, not generally eq or distortion (neither of which are normally considered "effects" as such anyway).
A flanger is not an eq modulation, it's actually a time-based effect, similar to a phaser or chorus. The effects on the frequency spectrum are caused by interference.

Rustar wrote:

As far as fundamental 'tone' and whether it's good/bad, well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

That goes without saying. The issue is not good vs bad tone but in fact what we're comparing when we talk about "tone".

Rustar wrote:

This ain't a unit used for professional sound and mixing....it's an amp used for rockin' out in your bedroom or busking, for a hundred smackers, and does the job admirably.

No one is debating that!

Rustar wrote:

The amount of people in the world who can actually tell the difference between pro tone and "hey, that's really cool!" is actually very small. If you were jamming in the house with a friend who had a 100-watt bass amp, no one would ever say "hey, could you lose that thing and get a real amp?"
And there are a thousand times more people jamming with that 100-watt bass player than those searching studios for the 'perfect tone' or trying to fill an arena with 50,000 watts.

This is kind of off the point really. The fact that someone can't identify a difference because of a lack of experience does not prove that they can't hear a difference. I have plenty of friends who have nothing to do with music on any level of the business beyond being listeners, but they can tell an expensive record from a cheap one just as well as I can. The difference is that I can usually tell them why it sounds cheap.

(Edit) Dear god! This is what happens when I don't have breakfast. I need coffee, right now.

fish-head

Fingers that's some nice playing you've got there, never mind the tone..

Rustar

Eoin Madsen wrote:

A flanger is not an eq modulation, it's actually a time-based effect, similar to a phaser or chorus.

Right-o, now that I'm merely 'hung over' and not 'drunk', and after some research (where would we be without Wiki?), I find my ideas about the nature of phasers/flangers was wrong. I thought they were just simple filter sweeps (EQ) up and down the spectrum of a single signal.

I've also come up with a better description for my non-professional definition of 'wetness' - effects that one might add to one's vocals.
(Yes, distortion, flanging, etc. have all been used to great effect on vocals, but reverb, delay and a bit of chorusing are more the norm.)

Eoin Madsen wrote:

The issue is not good vs bad tone but in fact what we're comparing when we talk about "tone".

Agreed. If perfect tone was considered a major determinant of quality in music, Randy Rhoads wouldn't have become a Guitar God for millions of people.

Eoin Madsen wrote:

I have plenty of friends who have nothing to do with music on any level of the business beyond being listeners, but they can tell an expensive record from a cheap one just as well as I can.

I maintain my stand on the 'average viewpoint'. I think there are far more people in the world who think that the Carpenters and REO Speedwagon are 'quality' and that Rush, Jethro Tull, and BB King are not.

I'm guessing that doesn't include the creme de la creme intelligentsia here at boardsie Instruments.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite sayings -
"The reason that this country is in so much trouble is that half the people are below median intelligence!"


Edit: Pretty sweet, Fingers! Must be why they call you 'Fingers'!

Johnny Storm

Fingers Mcginty wrote:

here's a clip of how the black panel setting sounds. The noise in the background is just from the computer monitor

http://www.sendspace.com/file/q9pyec

Yeah! Very nice playin'. I feel so much more ...relaxed, now.:D

(On the other hand that site thats hosting it has some mad pop-up action :rolleyes: )

jcoote

i don't think that sound compliments the cube at all...i think its feedingback badly on the low end...the playing is lovely tho

Fingers Mcginty

jcoote wrote:

i don't think that sound compliments the cube at all...i think its feedingback badly on the low end...the playing is lovely tho

Agreed...when it comes to dialling in a good sound from an amp i'm brutal.

jcoote

i only know cos i have some trouble with that on the clean channels..i'd love to try the real deal blackpanel if thats what a 100 quid copy of it does tho

Rustar

jcoote wrote:

i don't think that sound compliments the cube at all...i think its feedingback badly on the low end...the playing is lovely tho

Really? I thought those were actual notes he was hitting...playing 'claw style' sort of.....how's your EQ set in your media player?

jcoote

i'm in work so i just stuck the song on me mp3 player and listened...its just a flat eq on it afaik.

the humming sound is exactly that that i have heard from the cube thats why i'm saying i think its feedback

Fingers Mcginty

Rustar wrote:

Really? I thought those were actual notes he was hitting...playing 'claw style' sort of.....how's your EQ set in your media player?

Yes they are actual notes.

jcoote

yeah i thought that they were notes alright all i'm sayin is the lower notes were feedingback when i listened on the headphones

fish-head

I thought it was just a kind of bluesy dud-dud-dud thumb riff (to use the technical term)

jcoote

maybe it was i'll listen when i go home to be 100%

Eoin Madsen

Rustar wrote:

Right-o, now that I'm merely 'hung over' and not 'drunk', and after some research (where would we be without Wiki?), I find my ideas about the nature of phasers/flangers was wrong. I thought they were just simple filter sweeps (EQ) up and down the spectrum of a single signal.

It's an easy mistake to make. I think wah is essentially what you were thinking of - a sweepable bandpass filter of the low mids.

Fingers Mcginty

Ta for the comments....just wanna say though the clip definitely doesn't do this little combo justice. I still can't believe the sounds comming from that little speaker. I'm gonna mic it at the next practice session, put it thru the PA for the craic and see how it competes.

jcoote

u definatly have to let us know how that goes fingers