The Steel Guitar Forum

It's about half past 4 a.m. and I just finished my daily lap steel practice session which started when I tipped in midnightish, and thought I'd take a snapshot of my beloved amp and steel to share, making me wonder if others here love the oinking sounds of the cute little Pignose 7-100 amp as much as I do?

This is my fourth Piggy, the last a tweed, the two prior pigskin models, which I've given away as gifts to dear friends. I use my Pignose busking, rehearsing, recording, and live mic'd plus the direct out on its backside. To me, simply a versatile, inexpensive, rugged little amp I've had around more years than I care remembering, some of which I can't.

Anyhoo, please share your thoughts, good, bad, or indifferent, if you wish. I'd love to know what you think.

You must have read an international thought!

I only have a practice set up with no amp involved (I used to be a bass player and that rig is sold) so I was thinking of buying something small but not necessarily a typical practice amp. I like the look of the Pignose but I've always heard them described as distortion amps, in other words it always sounds like a mild distortion is switched on. Can you get a clean sound out of them?

You can get a clean tone, Paul, yet it takes some doing and depends if your running single-coil or humbuckers.

The Pignose snout runs clean to mildly over-driven from 12 to about six o'clock for singles, and to about 4 o'clock for humbuckers, depending on its impedance, the higher the more over-driven. Beyond these set-points, the Piggy begins increasingly becoming more distorted reaching something akin to the Fat Possum sound at full-tilt. Backing off your volume not only cleans things up nicely, but adds this treble attenuation effect not unlike a low-wattage tube amp with a rectifier stage.

Make that a little neglected vintage tube amp just on the verge of blowing a cap or power tube. Some call it noise, I call it heaven.

Thanks Alexa, that's good to know. I own a Framus Bali which has yet to be heard plugged in(see my other posts) although other owners report a weak output. I also have a home built 6 with a Tele-like pickup so it sounds like I'll stay fairly clean. Pignose are not so easy to find in European stores but I'll let you know how I get on.

Hey Alexis,

I never played through a Pignose amp, but I have a Vox DA5, and I'm glad I brought It, because It has 11 built in sound effects such as reverb, delay, phaser etc...
It also has" Style" settings such as clean 1, clean 2 etc... I get a clean tone with the humbucker that I put in the guitar that is also split for single coil tone. It takes batteries as well. I couldn't believe I got all of that for $99.99

Ron

Hello Ron,

I haven't tried the Vox DA5, but I've heard only good things about it. I've owned two Roland Micro Cubes, which have similar features, yet the puny speaker tended to die out if played loudly which is, after all, the point isn't it? The lowly Pignose 7-100 is but a one-trick pony, but those of us who get hooked just love its funky sound. Plus it's pretty loud.

I have a Pignose Hog-20 that works good with my lap steels. I use it primarily when sitting on the porch practicing.

I've got a Pignose and a Zoom FX box and the combination is pretty fun. You can do a play hookie from work trick, load up on batteries and head down to the Seattle waterfront on one of those "the bluest skies you'll ever see are in Seattle" kind of day, drop your hat money side up, and fly into Henehene Kou `Aka, Sweet Lelani, Hi`ilawe, Crossroads, STH, you name it, they'll toss coin. All goes to charity and it's fun to do.

I might need to make a Stick lap steel guitar - that might be pretty cool, and bus friendly. I wonder how long it would take to get tossed off da bus in Seattle .

How long do the batteries last in your pignose?
Dom

Hello Dom,

Glad you asked about battery life. I change the six AA batteries every Sunday after, at minimum, four hours practice use daily, so I'm squeezing out a good 40 hours until totally inaudible. I say squeezing since its sound once the batteries commence losing their full 9 volts is part of the Pignose 7-100 allure. this is a lovely, harmonic, artifact-rich crunch which is probably why so may artists use it to record. This sound is so sought after, there's a device you can buy or built to create it...

http://beavisaudio.com/Projects/DBS/

That said, I've wired one model I owned to accept four 9-volt batteries wired as two pairs in parallel and those pairs in series to yield the correct voltage. That amp would go several weeks with Dollar Store batteries.

A little snippet about the origins of the Pignose® you may find appealing.

Rivera amplifiers: During his career Paul Rivera has done design work for Fender - and not only with tube gear: Transistor amplifiers like Yale, Montreaux and Studio Lead are some of his designs. Rivera has also designed amplifiers for Yamaha (G-100) and Pignose.


I found it here in this article about the history of solid state amplification for guitar.

Clete

I have had some people tell me that they don't like the tone out of my Hog 20 with my Georgeboard. They much prefer the sound of it through a the other very popular mini amp whose name escapes me right now. I'll have to look it up. But my Hog 20 has a very long lasting, built in, rechargeable battery. It will last through an entire weekend of jamming without recharge. I hate buying AA's. And the mini amp says not to use rechargeables in it.

Some years back, I bought a Pig Nose G40, thinking it would be a nice mid sized amp. It had a pair of 6L6s for output tubes. A big dis-apointment for sure. That thing was in overdrive at any volume setting.
So I traded it back in on a Fender Acoustasonic Jr, which is a solid state type. I didn't like that one either, and gave it to my niece, who loves it!

Hello guys,

Just pulled the trigger on this bizarre contraption, the Beavis Audio De-Volt, which drops the 9-volt feed on an effects pedal or, in my case, a Pignose 7-100, to dial in that 'just on the verge' sound. Will let you know how this works out and post some comparative mp3s, too.

I'd be curious as to how well that device would work on an amplifier. Since an amp draws a lot more current than does an effects pedal, that 10K pot might be a bit big. An interesting experiment. Keep us posted, Alexa!