Hi guys -
Several people who have posted on this thread have either speculated or stated that, in clean-boost mode, with the germanium diodes and indeed the entire main gain stage of the circuit out of the signal path, a purported clone of my pedal in terms of circuitry should or will sound just like the original. It's certainly possible, and maybe even likely, that a purported clone in clean-boost mode could sound very similar to my original set up the same way, but you should know that there are a good number of things the would-be cloner would have to do right - in terms of component selection, board layout, etc. - to truly realize the same results. As I learned again and again during the arduous process of designing the Centaur in the early 1990s, and as I have been re-learning during the arduous process of designing the new unit during the past two years, there are any number of ways to do something in particular not quite as well as it can be done; some of these little mistakes, and the sonic shortcomings they result in, may not be all that audible as single, stand-alone mistakes, but if you make enough of them you will almost certainly end up with something noticeably not as good as it might have been. Good design takes time and hard work, and for me anyway it seems to take an inordinate amount of time and hard work.
Regarding the results you can get using the Centaur to provide some dirt - and the results you'll be able to get using the new unit to provide some dirt - I can tell you that some pretty exceptional guitar players, including a few who are particularly known for their dirty sounds, have used the unit this way both live and in the studio, and been pleased with what it's given them. The key is to really use the unit as an overdrive - hitting the front end of your amp with a hotter signal than that with the unit off - and not as a same-level-on-or-off distortion unit. Different amps have different input-stage headroom characteristics, of course, so what you're looking to do is find out exactly how hard you need to hit the front end of your amp to get it to give up the good stuff; generally speaking, the Output setting on the unit should be above 11:00, and often settings in the noon-to-2:00 range work well. At a soundcheck once I saw a guy get a mindblowing sound using a Centaur to drive a 1970s Orange Overdrive Special (I think it was an 80-watter), and these were his settings on the unit: Gain around 2:00, Treble around 11:00, and Output DIMED. The old Oranges - like traditional Hiwatts, some Ampegs, etc. - have a lot of input-stage headroom, so I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised by what was coming out of the amp, but it was a sound I will never forget. Understand, though, that the actual volume coming out of the amp - whether high, low, or medium - is not at all important to getting the results the unit is capable of as an overdrive: what matters is your ability to figure out exactly how best to push the amp's front end.
Regards,
Bill Finnegan
Klon
[ 本帖最后由 伤感吉普车 于 2011-7-18 23:19 编辑 ] | 
发表于 2011-6-27 23:24:12
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