ADA Depot - A Forum To Support Users of ADA Amplification Gear

Miscellaneous => Introduce Yourself => Topic started by: Dano on September 07, 2016, 04:57:38 PM

Title: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: Dano on September 07, 2016, 04:57:38 PM
Hello gang,

My name is Dan and I'm in Orange County Calif. I have owned my original MP-1 since around '88. It was the core of my dream rig with a B200S pushing a pair of GK 1x12s loaded with 200 watt EVs. Over the years a small combo has become more convenient for me and my rack has gone neglected. I got the itch a few weeks back and fired it up for the first time in the last few years. I almost instantly remembered why I loved it soooo much!!! Truly a tone machine, from crystal clean to sizzling crunch with LOTS in between. My love for my rack system is rekindled!!!  :homer:

I have read this forum over the years as it has always been the place for the info I needed. I remember all to well looking for it and the horror of finding out that it was gone. It is so awesome to see that it is back and doing so well once again! I want to get the old beast cleaned up, updated and do some tube rolling so I am sure I will have some questions to post that I know the gurus have the answers to.

Some thanks are due up front here to Jurrie of course and to Dante for carrying the torch. And to all the regulars who always seem to be willing to share their knowledge. this is a truly wonderful community here and I am looking forward to participating!


See you all around the board!

Dano
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: MarshallJMP on September 08, 2016, 04:34:57 AM
Hey Dano

Welcome to the depot, we'll try to help you out as good as we can  :thumb-up:
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: Harley Hexxe on September 08, 2016, 04:54:56 AM
Alright :banana-jazz-smiley-emoticon: Another lurker joins in!

    Hi Dan and welcome to the club! I believe what MJMP meant to say was, that we'll try to help you out as good as we can!

     Harley 8)
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: MarshallJMP on September 08, 2016, 04:58:59 AM
Yes, sorry, just edited my post, thanks Harley!
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: rnolan on September 08, 2016, 06:11:10 AM
Hey Dano, welcome to the depot  :wave: , glad you got your rack going again  :thumb-up: :whoohoo!:
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: Dano on September 08, 2016, 08:36:32 AM
Thank you for the greetings guys. I feel like I already know some of you from reading your posts over the years. So it's time I stepped out of the shadows and lurk no more!

I really love the versatility of my MP-1 + B200S through the EV's. I have never seen a head or combo that could give me the kind of tonal variety I can achieve. With a good effects processor and a midi foot controller I have all I need. I do not own a single pedal! There, I said it! :P I have also just started playing my acoustic through the system as well. That is where the EV's really shine! I use the rear input for this since my Martin has active electronics. In the front input it sounded real quacky (impedance?). Sounds great through the rear input though!

MarshallJMP, I will be contacting you soon about a firmware upgrade and some other parts. Thanks for being such an awesome resource here!
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: MarshallJMP on September 08, 2016, 08:46:24 AM
If you have an older MP-1 with the topswitch the rear input is low impedance,so might work better with an active acoustic guitar.

Ok just let me know what you need.
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: Dano on September 08, 2016, 09:41:43 AM
Thank you MarshallJMP! I do have the older one with 1.38 software. I will surely be upgrading this as soon as I figure out what else I need. I would really like to keep her stock, at least until I get a chance to do some tube rolling (something I have never tried with the MP-1). I have read about the MDRT and it sounds promising! I also keep seeing references to a "noise mod" but I cant seem to find details anywhere.
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: Kim on September 09, 2016, 02:54:19 AM
Welcome!   :wave:

I also keep seeing references to a "noise mod" but I cant seem to find details anywhere.

Check out The Vault (http://adadepot.com/index.php?topic=148.0)
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: Dano on September 09, 2016, 08:25:00 AM
Thank you Kim! I had not yet dug into the Vault. Lots of good stuff in there!  :banana-guitar:
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: Dante on September 09, 2016, 01:44:31 PM
Welcome to the Depot, Dano!

I left San Bernardino in '89, hung out a lot at Newport/Huntington. Nice to have you here, as you know, you'll get all the help you need.

FWIW: I did a bunch of toob rolling with a stock MP-1 and ended up with one 12AY7 and one 12AX7. The lower gain tube smoothed out the tone a bit. I was still able to get plenty of gain, but there was a more refined range of tuning it in. I'll see if I can find that post somewhere...I know I referenced it from the wayback machine.

Ah yes...thanks to the handy search box, here it is: Tube Cocktail (http://adadepot.com/index.php?topic=303.0)

Dante
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: Dano on September 09, 2016, 05:03:14 PM
Dante! You da man!!! :bow: If not for this incredible library of ADA wizdom where would I go? Thank you for all your effort here!!!

I will be trying a lot of the tubes I have read about here. The Mullards, SPAX7s and I will add the 12AY7 to my list. The GT's I have in there now are around 15 years old, so its time and I got the tone chasing fever for which there is only one prescription!

BTW, I read your post about the scratchy volume pots in your pwr amp. Did cleaning them fix the problem for good or did you end up replacing them? My B200S does the same thing, bad. Probably from sitting idle for so long.
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: rnolan on September 09, 2016, 07:15:39 PM
Hey Dano, B200 pots get a bit scratchy over the years, a clean will help and they are easy to get at when you open it up.  It's worth changing them for new ones if your up for it but a clean will improve it for a while.  The other tip with B200s is to reflow (remelt) all the solder joins particularly around the power supply.  I doesn't take long to do, they aren't a particularly complicated amp.
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: Dante on September 10, 2016, 10:07:11 AM
Happy the help out, any way I can.  :thumb-up:

As for the scratchy pots, I just cleaned mine. It must've worked, because I didn't replace them  ^-^

Be sure to document your findings in the MP-1 board, for future toob rollers.
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: Harley Hexxe on September 10, 2016, 11:58:41 AM
Hey Dan,

    Just for reference, when you are shopping for tubes, keep in mind what characteristics you want to enhance in your preamp. For instance, if you want to have plenty of low end on tap, then I would recommend long plate tubes. That will allow you to dial in the amount of bass, and warm up your low mids a bit. My personal tastes lean more towards these types of preamp tubes since I primarily play Stratocasters. and this helps me sit in a band mix better.
   Short plate tubes sound very shrill to my ears, even with my humbuckers, but some guys like that linear kind of tube response. From personal experience, I would recommend NOT buying any tubes from places like Musician's Friend and the like, but I would recommend checking out Doug's Tubes in New York.
    When I got my current MP-1, which I bought from another member in here, It had GT Mullard Reissues in it. They sounded good, but didn't last very long. I replaced them with the same, but they didn't sound quite as good as the original set. I guess these days, buying from GT is a crap shoot as to whether or not you get lucky with a good batch of tubes. I haven't tried the Russian Mullard RI's in the MP-1 yet, but I do have those in both of my MP-2's. Currently, I have a pair of Penta ECC803's in there, and I'm still exploring the range of those when I have time to mess with my MP-1 rig.
    My MP-1 is in a monster rack along with a 3TM modded MP-1 and several ADA rack effects, also running through B200S poweramps, and running into ADA Split-Stack Cabs. It's basically your 80's tones, with a lot more hair :metal:

     Harley 8)
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: Dano on September 10, 2016, 01:12:28 PM
Thank you all for the warm welcome and awesome advice. You guys rock!  :metal:

I have just ordered a new smaller 6U rack to consolidate everything into a more manageable case. Everything will get looked over and cleaned up when I pull them out of the old rack. I will be looking to try to clean the pots in the B200S and do some solder reflowing per rnolan's advice.

The last item to go in will be my stock MP-1. I will leave it sitting on top while I try some toob rollin'. I'm with you Harley, I like a beefy bottom (like with my women!) and all of my patches have bass around 10-12.

I never got into the details of tubes before and I have read enough about them over the last couple of days to make my head spin! Thanks to this site, I think I have a logical place to start. For my first round I ordered a pair of long plate Mullards and an EH gold 12AY7 (per Dante) from Doug's. I look forward to trying them out.

I will let you all know how my adventure goes and once I get the new rack assembled I will post some pics.


Dano
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: rnolan on September 10, 2016, 08:55:04 PM
Cool, looking forward to hearing how it went and seeing some pics of the new rack  :thumb-up:
Title: Re: Greetings from Southern California!
Post by: gibsonrich on October 10, 2016, 07:16:04 AM
Hey Dan welcome to the depot. where abouts are you in orange county? I am in west garden grove. I have some very cool ada stuff