crunch tone on 1200s?

[schizoidman93]

Hello all first post here
I have an early 70s 1200s with no gain stage and am having trouble dialing in a natural crunchy tone. Ive been using a vintage big muff, modern nano muff and metal muff but whenever i stomp the boxes the tone always sounds oversaturated and unatural! If anybody has any advice on dialing in a tone it would be much apreciated! The sound im looking for is very similar to Mike cooley of the drive by truckers "birthday boy" or "sinkhole" are very good examples

Thanks again

[Isaac]

I'm not sure what you mean by "no gain stage." If the amp had no gain stages, it wouldn't amplify the input, and you'd get no output. I'm thinking that you might mean no master volume control but, as I said, I'm not sure.

In fact, the old tube 1200S has two gain stages. The volume control is between them. The amp is typically very clean, and most players find that they take pedals extremely well. However, that seems not to be your experience.

One thing you might try is a clean boost pedal. With that, you can increase the input level to overdrive the first gain stage of the amp, then use the amp's volume control as your master volume. That would give you only one stage to overdrive, which might not be ideal, but it's worth a try. A more invasive method would be to have a master volume installed later in the circuit, but a lot of people don't want to modify their classic amps, which I fully understand.

[Isaac]

Of course, there's always the possibility that the 1200S simply won't make the sounds you want (by itself. See my previous comments on pedals). Different amp circuits sound different. If you want a Marchall sound, don't try to get it with a Fender, and vice versa.

Here's a page about what the Drive By Truckers use: http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/21903-rig-rundown-drive-by-truckers

[loudthud]

When is the last time your 1200S got any service? Has it been modified? Is the speaker impedance properly matched?

[schizoidman93]

Thanks for the advice. I think ive come to the conclusion that the amp does need servicing soon and that the pedals sound so saturated because the volume of the ampbhas to be set below 1 in order to play it inside the house.  Im going to try out a speaker cab with 12s instead of 6 10s and buy a volume attenuator so i can turn the volume up but keep the decibels down. If you guys have any suggestions on what speakers work well with this amp or a good yet affordable attenuator id apreciate the advice

[Oli]

Hello,

the DIABLO from OKKO!

http://www.stompbox.de/diablo_english.html

our gitarrero ueses this with an 1959 Marshall amp, maybe this is intersting because the "two channel" version...I like it for recording and it sounds awsome!!!!