jazzkat amplifiers?

badjazz · January 2007

Has anybody had a chance to play a jazzkat amp? Any opinions?

Bob Holo · January 2007

I heard John Pizzarelli & Vinny Corrao on Jazz Kats at a tradeshow once.

It sounded really good despite the fact that it was a completely open room. I was pretty impressed, actually - so I snapped a picture of it.

Granted, it's a different ballgame than close-miking a Selmac or running a bigtone or Piezo into any amp without a preamp to equalize it to mitigate the Piezo's character - but I was fairly impressed.

I'm still madly in amp-lust with Whit Smith's 1930's Gibson EH150 amp though... that boy's live tone was "it" ... the kind of tone that stands up and says: "May I have your attention please, this is a public service announcement. What you are now hearing is the tone that modern amplifiers are trying to emulate - and now that you've heard the real thing you will spend the rest of your life never quite satisfied with your expensive new amps and their whizzy emulation modes."

Colin Perry · January 2007

The EH-150's are great amps. All modern jazz amps sound to me like anartificial acoustic tone. If you want to sound acoustic, then play acoustic Get a mic and deal with the feedback issues as they arise. If you want to plug into an amp, then get an old amp like everybody we all love used, and use a dearmond or stimer. There is no such thing as acoustic guitar through an amp, and there will never be.

badjazz · January 2007

I concur on the eh-150, in fact that is the only amp that I use when playing my L5 with a Dearmond FHC, very similar to Whit Smith's setup, though I can't bring myself to sticking the Dearmond on with office putty. If you are interested in eh-150 like tone, you may want to look in to a Vero amp.
http://www.veroamps.com/
Their 20th Century limited is similar to old gibson amps, and there is even a clip on their website of what they sound like with a Dell Arte and either a Dearmond or Stimer.

BTW, I've owned about 10 eh-150's, and after all these years no two sound alike, which I guess is to be expected; but even after having a tech go over them, and getting NOS correct tubes, etc they were still surprisingly different. In my experience, the ones that look great were almost always the worst sounding. The one that I have that is falling apart and held together with rusty screws and parts of a gas can is by far the best sounding. Don't always go for the pretty ones is my advice! Also, if you get one, start collecting NOS 6C5 tubes, because they fail all the time and go microphonic and make loud, ugly noises.

Bob Holo · February 2007

Actually that makes a lot of sense (that they sound different) Unlike today's electronics where everything is modular and subminiaturized and manufctured to very close specs.... thos old buggers are made of hundreds of individual components - including inductors, capacitors, resistors and ...diodes? (did they have diodes back then or was all that done in tubes?) At any rate...

Add to that the fact that all of these parts are connected via solder joints of varying quality because soldering irons were fairly rudimentary back then. (nothing like the ISO-900x soldering stations of today)

Now, add to this the consideration that in the 1930's these little components were actually pretty cutting edge.. manufacturing technologies were rudimentary and tolerances of +/- 10% were pretty common.

Now, add half a decade of degradation of those parts and the solder joints connecting them...Inductors are pretty good at holding their inductance and resistance stable over long periods of time if they're potted well, but most capacitors and resistors experience significant degradation due to heat and oxide & other nasty vagaries of time & heat & humidity etc.. I once refurbed a speaker crossover from a 1971 speaker (in ~2003 - so it was 32 years old at the time) and the capacitor and resistor values were all out of spec by at least 20%. (the inductors were almost perfect) Granted... these speakers had been run hard for a lot of hours for decades, but wow!... no wonder they didn't sound so good!

The really freaky part about old electronics is how completely out of spec. they can be and still operate. Even if they were "all created equal" after half a century of use - it's a wonder they sound as similar as they do.

One of a gazillion projects I've undertaken (and is in progress) is to build a vintage amp. I have the parts... they're sitting in my den... with a thin layer of dust on them that gets thicker by the month

Colin Perry · February 2007

That's something I've wanted to do. My main amp is a 46 Gibson BR-1. I have two of them, but I still get nervous about taking them on the road. It would be incredible to have something that sounded like my BR-1, but was completely reliable.

Campusfive · February 2007

Bob Holo wrote:

"May I have your attention please, this is a public service announcement. What you are now hearing is the tone that modern amplifiers are trying to emulate - and now that you've heard the real thing you will spend the rest of your life never quite satisfied with your expensive new amps and their whizzy emulation modes."

Nobody is trying to emulate that sound - I only wish they did! (although I haven't heard the Vero, so I'll make that caviat). The pre-50's tone is really rare to hear being played or find for sale. I have an early 50's Oahu Tonemaster (which was made by Valco - white tolex with three rectangular cutouts for the speaker), and it sounds so, so different than either my '36 EH-150 or my '40 EH-160 (the wierd AC/DC version of a 150). As amps evolved the got "better" at reproducing sound and so the frequency repsonse range grew and they got better at reproducing high end. 30's and 40's amps just have this really funky, chunky, solid midrange-heavy sound due to the lack of top end.

The idea of playing with a Benedetto-style pickup into a super clean amp. modern jazz amp - it all just sounds so sterile.

By the way, is that Loren over in Hawaii? Are you in Law School yet? Personally, I'm writing this from class, so its kind of fitting.

badjazz · February 2007

Campusfive wrote:

By the way, is that Loren over in Hawaii? Are you in Law School yet? Personally, I'm writing this from class, so its kind of fitting.

Yes, it is me. 1 semester down, 5 to go. It's too bad that it pretty much limits my music activity to responding to internet forums during class, I hope that you are doing a better job striking the school/music balance.

My conclusion is that somebody, for the sake of everybody on the forum, needs to get a Vero so that we can get a good idea of whether or not it makes the grade. Any volunteers? I already spent my student loan money (thanks, uncle sam) on a Dupont, so I'm out of the running.

Bob Holo · February 2007

Count me out, I just bought a Busato. Oh... and that didn't make me quite broke enough - so I decided it was time to replace my binding and fret slotting systems. At this point I'm so underwater that all I can make out is a dim glow somewhere up there far above me. But, theoretically... within the next couple of days, the postman will bring some really cool things to the Holo household...

So, no Vero amp for me... not for a while...

Campusfive · February 2007

My student loan money has already gone to (among other things) two computers, the '36 150, '40 160, oh and having to replace my vintage slingerland radio king set after it was stolen out of my car. (Which was later partially recovered - got the drums back, no cymbals or hardware - leaving me with 3 drum sets)
I'm this close to buying either a 150 or 185 today.....

By the way, if you ever have any questions about law school, let me know. When you get to the takings clause in either property or con law, you should see the impact hawaii has had.