Trying to get clean, Milkman The Amp 100

[Aren Orsen]

Hi Folks,

Thanks in advance for your help.

I just got a Milkman The Amp 100, and cannot get a clean tone out of it, and get weird backwards background sounds when I slide or bend more than one string. I am using manufacturer's settings for clean (master all the way up, volume well below 9 o'clock). I have used the pedal out option to a Fender Steel King and another dinky practice amp; the direct speaker out to an 8 ohm D140F; and the headphone out. From all I get breakup if my volume pedal passes about 50%.

I am running a Justice ProLite with Lawrence 705 to a Goodrich 120 volume pedal to The Amp 100. The pickup is about 1.5 quarters' thickness from the strings, and cannot be lowered any more. While backing off the volume pedal helps, it does not eliminate the problem, and I want room to maneuver.

While my setup does drive other pedals pretty hard, I have not heard of anyone else having issues with a Milkman.

A six string sounds great through all the above setups to The Amp 100, very clean and dirty when dialed for it.

Questions:

-Has anyone else had this problem?
-Is my pickup "too hot" for this unit?
-If it is too hot, what can I do to mitigate this without loss of tone?
-Could it possibly be a defective unit?
-Are the weird backwards noises inherent to an overdriven tube (I get them with OD pedals as well, but never through a clean SS amp)?

I really, really want to love The Amp as it fits the bill for all my needs, but not if I can't get clean.

Thanks again for any advice!

[Brooks Montgomery]

Assuming you contacted the builder? He's very responsive here on the forum.

[Aren Orsen]

Assuming you contacted the builder? He's very responsive here on the forum.

Yup I did, and he has indeed been very responsive and helpful. I did get my pickup down a bit and it helped some.

[Paul Stauskas]

I am setting the volume knob to be just barely on, like 7 o'clock. Master fully on. I recently put a lower gain 12ay7 in which seems to have helped some when I tested using the speaker out. I'm getting a very small amount of breakup sometimes, almost not noticeable. I am using the 50 W version and mainly just running direct. This is still the best unit out there for my needs, and I am completely satisfied. Pickup is an Emmons 108n humbucker.

Edit: I put in a 12ay7, not a 12au7.

[Larry Dering]

Aren, have you tried a buffer in front just after the steel? I would expect it to be capable of cleaning up the signal while matching the input impedance.

[David Nugent]

May possibly be the pickup. If you perform a search, you may discover that the subject of members experiencing distortion issues with the '705' has been discussed before.

[Bob Hoffnar]

Are those backwards noises that move around as you bend 2 notes very low notes ?
If so they are an artifact that is always there but just more noticeable with tube amps. It is part of what makes tube amps sound different. There is a balance that amp builders decide on between a full, rich , sagging type sound and a clinical , clean ,strident sound.

If you listen closely to the classic sound of 60’s and 70’s steel guitar you will hear that sound.

[John Limbach]

I am setting the volume knob to be just barely on, like 7 o'clock. Master fully on. I recently put a lower gain 12au7 in which seems to have helped some when I tested using the speaker out. I'm getting a very small amount of breakup sometimes, almost not noticeable. I am using the 50 W version and mainly just running direct. This is still the best unit out there for my needs, and I am completely satisfied. Pickup is an Emmons 108n humbucker.

You can use a lower gain tube in the 12AX7 family to tame a hot pickup and keep it from overdriving the preamp. But the 12AU7 is as low as you can go and you've really choked the preamp's first stage. Take a look at this chart for guidance.

"The 12AX7 family of dual-triode preamp tubes consists of the 12AX7, 5751, 12AT7, 12AY7, 12AV7 & 12AU7. These are all pin compatible with one another, the only differences being the gain factor of each tube. A common substitution is to replace a 12AX7 with a 5751 or a 12AY7 to tame a preamp that tends to overdrive too easily, allowing you to get a better ‘clean’ sound out of your amp.

Tube Gain Acceptable Substitutes
12AX7 100 5751 12AT7 12AY7
5751 70 12AX7 12AT7 12AY7
12AT7 60 5751 12AY7
12AY7 45 5751 12AT7 12AV7
12AV7 41 12AY7
12AU7 19 12AV7

It is important to note that the above is not carved in stone and any of these tubes can be substituted for any other. For example in the 4×10 5F6-A Bassman the stock first gain preamp tube is designated as a 12AY7 which has a gain factor of 45. Replacing it with a 12AX7 that has a gain factor of 100 dramatically changes the tone and feel of the amp. Experiment and see what works best for you."

[Scott Swartz]

If you search 705 distortion on the forum you will find similar issues, especially into a tube amp. The 705 pickup needs to be lower, it is a very high output pickup even compared to other steel pickups, but if you physically cannot lower it, maybe have to look at a shallower pickup.

With the right cable adapters, you could theoretically use a passive direct box or a reamp box to transform the voltage down to a lower level, reamps are usually around a 4 or 5:1 ratio on the transformer and passive direct boxes are 10:1 or more, so if your pickup was putting out 1 volt of signal the box output would be maybe 0.1 to 0.2 volts. This would be exactly the same situation as a recording engineer taking the higher voltage line level signal from a direct recorded track out of the DAW or tape machine and routing it back to a guitar amp, have to lower the voltage .

Probably simpler to get a different pickup.

[Dave Meis]

I love the 705 and have them in a few guitars, but they do have to be lower than others. I was never able to use one in my Emmons..(just won't go low enough). Seems they need to be about 3 Quarters away for my taste...
Is the 705 the pup that came with it, or are you trying to put it in?

[Paul Stauskas]

I am setting the volume knob to be just barely on, like 7 o'clock. Master fully on. I recently put a lower gain 12au7 in which seems to have helped some when I tested using the speaker out. I'm getting a very small amount of breakup sometimes, almost not noticeable. I am using the 50 W version and mainly just running direct. This is still the best unit out there for my needs, and I am completely satisfied. Pickup is an Emmons 108n humbucker.

You can use a lower gain tube in the 12AX7 family to tame a hot pickup and keep it from overdriving the preamp. But the 12AU7 is as low as you can go and you've really choked the preamp's first stage. Take a look at this chart for guidance.

"The 12AX7 family of dual-triode preamp tubes consists of the 12AX7, 5751, 12AT7, 12AY7, 12AV7 & 12AU7. These are all pin compatible with one another, the only differences being the gain factor of each tube. A common substitution is to replace a 12AX7 with a 5751 or a 12AY7 to tame a preamp that tends to overdrive too easily, allowing you to get a better ‘clean’ sound out of your amp.

Tube Gain Acceptable Substitutes
12AX7 100 5751 12AT7 12AY7
5751 70 12AX7 12AT7 12AY7
12AT7 60 5751 12AY7
12AY7 45 5751 12AT7 12AV7
12AV7 41 12AY7
12AU7 19 12AV7

It is important to note that the above is not carved in stone and any of these tubes can be substituted for any other. For example in the 4×10 5F6-A Bassman the stock first gain preamp tube is designated as a 12AY7 which has a gain factor of 45. Replacing it with a 12AX7 that has a gain factor of 100 dramatically changes the tone and feel of the amp. Experiment and see what works best for you."

Thanks for the explanation. Upon looking at what I recently ordered, I actually put in a 12ay7 not a 12au7. Sorry for the confusion. I am very happy with it!.

[Dave Mudgett]

I have both old metal-surrounds 705s and modern black-plastic-surrounds 705s. My experience is that they do sit pretty high on some guitars. The 705 is a pretty hot pickup, and I think they need at least 2 or, even better, 3 quarters distance from the strings. I have a modern 705 on my Mullen G2, and it has enough adjustability to get a bit more than 3 quarters clearance, and that sounds fine through all my amps.

My biggest issue with 705s was with an Emmons LeGrande that arrived to me with one of the stock Emmons single-coil pickup destroyed in shipping. A stock metal-surround 705 sat too close to the strings and pushed every tube amp I had into distortion. I normally run my old Fenders with a lower-gain 5751 V1 preamp tube for steel, but no dice.

I couldn't get that 705 low enough without pulling the back plate off, and I didn't want to do that to this original metal-surrounds 705. So I got an XR-16 from Bob Carlucci that already had the back pulled off, and fastened it to the guitar with silicone RTV as he suggested. That worked like a charm and sounded great. I wouldn't hesitate to do this with a modern 705, since they're not especially valuable and readily sourced.

[Dave Meis]

...
couldn't get that 705 low enough without pulling the back plate off,

On my PP, I removed the adjusting plate completely, and the body of the 705 wouldn't fit between the arms of the changer mount, so even removing the back plate wouldn't have done it...the 705 is a full 7/8" high. Wish it would've worked! 😜

[Aren Orsen]

Thank you all for the great advice. The 705 came stock in the guitar.

A search yields some good old threads:

https://steelguitarforum.com/Forum11/HTML/007554.html

I'll see what the 12AY7 does in a couple days, and what I can do to drop the pickup further if need be, and will let you know how it works.

[Marc Jenkins]

Aren, roughly where on your volume pedal do you generally pick?

[Aren Orsen]

Aren, roughly where on your volume pedal do you generally pick?

I'm probably usually around 60-75% open.

[Tim Marcus]

A six string sounds great through all the above setups to The Amp 100, very clean and dirty when dialed for it.

if another instrument sounds normal through The Amp 100, then the problem is not with The Amp 100... its probably something to do with what you have plugged in to it.

Have you measured the resistance of your pickup? Or tried lowering it? Thats way too close to the strings having the pickup less than 2mm away.

In general, the amp 100 has much more input headroom than the original 50W The Amp. You should be able to run even the hottest steel guitar into the input without having to buy a lower gain preamp tube. That was useful advice for the 50W The Amp but its not as practical for The Amp 100.

With my Williams 600 and a Telonics 12 pole humbucker I am getting a big clean sound with the preamp volume at 12 o'clock and the other EQ settings at 12 o'clock. I can add the FET boost and its still clean until about 11 oclock. After that things start to get slightly saturated. When you turn the master up with those settings you can get the full 100W and its plenty clean.

But I have a lot of luck with these things because I designed them. You just need to spend some more time figuring out where the bad sound is coming from and it should click into place.

Common failure points for pedal steel:

pickup
volume pedal
cables (especially if they are solder less George L cables - those fail constantly)

keep us posted!

[David Gram]

I'm testing a Milkman 100w this friday with a telonics 12" 4ohm. I've had similar issues with the 705 pickup in that regard as well. I had to lower mine substantially to get a decent clean tone on my Milkman 40w pedal steel mini. I had no problem getting a clean sound with my old sho bud with a truetone single coil pickup.

[Aren Orsen]

Thanks all again. Pretty sure as Tim says it is the pickup and its proximity to the strings; getting it as low as it will go (still not very low) helps, I'll see what I can do to with the baseplate to get it lower. If not...

Tim, what Telonics pickup are you running? Was perusing their site...lots of nice stuff. Will eventually be running this all through their 15" Neo.

Another rookie question: is this a situation that something like a matchbox would help with?

I appreciate the time you have all taken.

[Aren Orsen]

Update: In my excitement over fancy new gear I forgot I have a Maverick in my closet to try; it stays clean all the way up on The Amp...and sounds awesome. Got to be my red hot 705 in the Justice.

[Jim Robbins]

Try turning the amp up and keeping the vp low.

[Marc Jenkins]

Aren, roughly where on your volume pedal do you generally pick?

I'm probably usually around 60-75% open.

Try turning the amp up and pick at 30-40% open. You should have lots of headroom to dig in, and sustain for a long time with all that volume pedal throw to use,

[David Gram]

Update:

I tested the Milkman amp 100 today and was absolutely blown away by it so i picked it up immediately. I play a show pro guitar with a 705 and a passive Goodrich volume pedal. I can get an extremely loud clean tone (more than my ears can physically endure) I set the pre amp volume around 10 o clock and the master around 2/3 ish maybe. After that it gets a little too loud.

I screwed my 705 way down and use short jack cables. Tested on a Telonics 4 ohm and on 2x12 Eminence Red Fang Alnico's running at 8 ohm. The Alnico's where a little more tight in the low end than the telonics but both combinations sounded absolutely incredible.

Also an amazing amp for Telecaster guitars.

[Aren Orsen]

I screwed my 705 way down and use short jack cables. Tested on a Telonics 4 ohm and on 2x12 Eminence Red Fang Alnico's running at 8 ohm. The Alnico's where a little more tight in the low end than the telonics but both combinations sounded absolutely incredible.

Also an amazing amp for Telecaster guitars.

David thank you for the update.

How low are you able to get the pickup from the strings? The lowest I can go before my pickup base hits the changer arms is about 2.5 mm from the strings.

[David Gram]

That sounds very close. Mine is around 6mm from string to pole