Amp Slaving - GAS

[Pualee]

So I was pretty happy and satisfied with my Standard Telecaster and Mustang IIIv2.

But last night I was stuck in the library with the kids while my wife was doing other things. I found the music books and started browsing through some titles.

I found an interview with the Rolling Stones rhythm guy, Keith Richards. So anyway, he said for his distortion, he really likes slaving amps together to have a clean and distorted sound at the same time... e.g. Twin and Champ.

So I immediately start thinking I gotta try that! The moral of the story... don't read books.

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On a side note, I found a guy at a homeschool convention that teaches electronics from 0 skills all the way up to college level electrical engineering. I talked to him for a bit and he immediately jumps to the connection between electronics and building pedals/amps. So, I'll try to be satisfied with what I have... and make amp building a science project. I'll put it down as 'electronics' on my curriculum.

[perttime]

There are - or have been - amps that give you the possibility to run overdrive and clean channels simultaneously. My old Session is one. It has a switch for the channels, and the middle position lets the footswitch do the selecting. If you don't use a footswitch, you get both channels at the same time. Like, as much gain as you want from the overdrive side, and the attack of clean from the clean side.

[zabdart]

Slaving amps is nothing new. The Stones started doing it early on in the 60s before the advent of Marshall 100-watt heads to increase volume output.
Keith has done a lot of exotic things with his amps over the years, including placing his Fender Champ in a galvanized ashcan. Try it sometime.

[Pualee]

I know it's not new, but it's new to me I'm a relative newcomer to the world of guitars.

I had just settled on buying a single amp that met every conceivable purpose (PA output, recording output, loud by itself, quiet enough to practice, programmable foot switches, multiple voicing's in different amp models). You see, this amp was supposed to save me lots of money by not buying anything else... but that library book has wrecked my joy!

On another note, I really liked the insight about always changing something to make a new song... he would change his guitar, amp, groove, etc. so that he was always in a new place to discover something and make the song original. I really like that idea.

[zabdart]

Originally Posted by Pualee

On another note, I really liked the insight about always changing something to make a new song... he would change his guitar, amp, groove, etc. so that he was always in a new place to discover something and make the song original. I really like that idea.

Yeah, Keith was always tinkering around to see what worked best in each particular song. You've got to remember though, that he didn't start doing that until around '66 or '67 and the Stones were established enough for him to have the money to experiment with things. If you read his autobiography, you'll get some idea of just how much the Rolling Stones scuffled in the early days.

[MBE]

You can always get an ABY switch and use two amps to get that mixed type if tone without worrying about things like slaving (slaving really was just an old school way of getting more volume for stadium gigs before we had amps with effects loops/preamp outs/direct outs etc).