An amp idea...

[James Morehead]

A twin or vibrosonic might do the trick, and I think this option is overlooked. As John Billings eluded to, loop the reverb into the normal channel, and have your amp tech voice THAT channel for guitar, and the vibrato channel for steel. If you will use a volume pedal for your guitar, you can crank the volume where the tubes sing, and control it with your volume pedal. I'd rather carry a second v.pedal than a second amp. If you need crunch, get a stomp box.

Now you are carrying one amp. But, now let's hear the down side of this theory--what-cha-think?

[Dave Mudgett]

Dave, did you use a relay for the switching?

No, I never took it that far - this was purely a breadboard type of thing with mechanical switches. If it had been what I was looking for, the plan was to put some type of electromechanical relay in to switch everything at once, but I decided not to do it. I did use it on some gigs - it sounded good, but I just preferred my old DR and VR amps for guitar. I had just started playing pedal steel, and used one of those for guitar and a Peavey LTD 400 for steel. The pair of them weren't really worse than dragging around a hogged-out Twin Reverb chassis and speaker cab.

I think if one designed an amp from scratch with this or any of the other ideas we're talking about, they might work nicely. This chassis was pretty beat, so I probably should have fiddled with it more - it wouldn't have been a travesty to just tear it apart and rebuild it. But I was about to get out of the full-time music biz at this point and was more into computer science than electronics right then.

James, the Peavey Transtube Studio Pro 112 is a Transtube amp, which is not a vacuum tube but Peavey's solid-state tube-sounding technology. The manual is here - http://www.peavey.com/assets/literature ... 302311.pdf - there's no vacuum tube in there. I think the Transtube technology works pretty well in place of a preamp tube, but that is nothing like a pushed power tube, to my tastes.

If you will use a volume pedal for your guitar, you can crank the volume where the tubes sing, and control it with your volume pedal.

If one is looking for even mild power tube distortion (or so-called 'bloom'), it doesn't matter whether one attenuates at the volume pedal, preamp volume, or master volume - the power tubes won't be pushed. The thing that matters is the signal voltage level going into the tube grids. If I play guitar loud enough to push the power tubes to the threshold of distortion, I would be fired from any band I've been in for the last 10 years working a typical "club" gig. I simply can't get my typical Tele/Strat sound from that loud an amp at a reasonable volume level. I'm not talking about a hard distortion, but simply running the amp loud enough to bloom properly.

That's my experience - YMMV. If you play in a loud band, it may work fine for you.

[J Fletcher]

If you could get consensus from steel players as to what constitutes the ideal steel amp, and then get consensus as to what constitues the ideal guitar amp, then at least you would have a starting point for amp design.
Then it's just a matter of enginering...Jerry

[Jay Ganz]

The best way to acheive tonal flexibilty is to have a powered speaker cabinet, then use a preamp with multiple (possibly programmable)settings.
Either that or two switchable preamps.

[Joel DeGarmo]

I think the hardest thing to do would be gather a consensus on anything tone related. As a 6 stringer I usually don't favor the same speakers I do for steel so that makes a big problem for me. Combining any 2 different things into one always calls for some compromise and who likes that?But as a gear junkie I'm up for trying anything.

[Corky Anderson]

I am currently using a Nashville 1000 for both steel and guitar. I have an A/B box to switch between rigs with an outboard EQ for the guitar. However, I have just ordered two Nashville 112's, and I will use the same set up except I am going to add a tube preamp. My theory is that I will be able to run stereo no matter what the gig is. I played my Tele rig through a single 112, and with a little tweaking I can get the sound I want. I use a Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive pedal to get that slightly overdriven sound. When I get this up and running I'll update here in case anybody else wants to try this setup.



...Steel Guitar...it's the only thing that.......really matters!....