trinityamps.com

Sound bytes need a good player. I have to line that up. ASAP boys. Hang in there!!

_________________
Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

Well, over the weekend there have been two more players have a got at the Tramp.

Player #1 - was picking up a JTM45 and Zaphod was here as well. At first he was upset he'd forgot a few pedals I asked him to bring but in the end he said it just doesnt need them. He could get clean easy and dirty, overdrive just as easy. Who needs a pedal? We tried the 0.68 & 1 uf on the 'tude setting, and the difference was enough to think about a Bright and Normal input. Look fot it coming soon...

The array of tones he was able to get was quite impressive. He owns a Silverface Champ, a Tweed Princeton, a Fender DR and a JTM 45. Certainly, he felt on the Tweed setting, he was able to get really close to both of them by dialing down the B+ to Tweed era levels, and then up to SF/BF levels for the Champ. He thought it was a little brighter than the Tweed using a Strat but dialing down the Treble and B+ level helped aleviate that. Recall we did add a little feedback boost. In general, I think he was pretty satisfied the Tramp can do a good job of the Tweed Champ/Princeton. He was able to nicely get the Tramp on the edge of breakup, which is not so easy to do with the Champ or Princeton. They are kind of One Trick Ponies he says. The nice thing here about the Tramp was you can set where you want that breakup to ocurr.

In the 'tude mode, it was a big change. He played around with the settings a lot and proclaimed it can do a decent Marshally sound. He took a few swipes at China Grove intro and , boy, it seemed to be pretty close so we grabbed a reverb pedal. Darn close! That was with the Gain not even maxed so you know it had more bite to give. Ozzy perhaps?

You can do all this and then brown it out with the Power /VRM control (Van Halen style), and drop the master to get very quiet but nicely distorted tones. While I installed the JTM head into a 210 combo cab for him, he played some nice Hendrix and Zeppelin riffs.

The Tramp is growing on me now.


Player #2 - a local Singer/Songwiter wih a couple of CD under his belt. He has played with some stunning players, records in his studio, so knows tone. He also has a studio set up at home and promises clips. He played a Custom Shop Tele with the Tramp, then TC15, 18 watt and came back to the Tramp to close. [He had already used my Tweed for a gig and recording]. Not being a lead player, he appreciated the clean tones it could get for soft country rhythm and blues. On his more bluesy pieces, he used the 'tude mode and discovered a new take on one of his upcoming songs. At twice the songs original tempo, with some nice break up - Gain at about 6 - it was the perfect tone. He said he was inspired.

The next step is to get the tramp into a proper cabinet with the 10" speaker and install the custom Heyboer transformer. Listen , tweak, Go to the chapel, record

Cabinet this week, transformers next week.

Anyone else local, who wants to try the Tramp?

_________________
Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

Jan and I are coming down the 6th of Feb. for a lunch downtown and plan on staying over. Maybe Sunday we could get a peek on the way home?

sure thing. if its here you can try it out.

_________________
Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

The prototype cabinet is built out of pine and looks like a tweed cabinet. I stuffed the Tramp into it. Didn't even tolex it. I then installed a Jensen 10" Blackbird AlNiCo Jet.

The Blackbird is advertised as "extremely warm and smooth with a very rich, fat low-end and sparkling highs. It handles overdrive distortion by bringing out colorful detail and holding strong even at maximum crunch."

The combo is not as light as you'd think for a small amp. I'm looking forward to hearing it in this application.

So j-rock has the combo now for a few days, so look out. Hoping for some clips. Acoustic to Metal.

_________________
Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

Hey Coco.

Yeah, the heft of the thing immediately let's you know this ain't no toy.

Lit her up last night before putting the kids to bed. First off, I dimed everything, but the VRM, the 'Tude disengaged and plugged in my Lace Sensor equipped Strat... As expected, good tone, a bit of crunch. I don't own any pedals, so ther were none. I need some more time to explore the sounds on the clean side...

Certainly usable tones at VRM levels even my parents, who complained when I had my 1 watt Yamaha POS SolidState amp above 5 (that was an amp with unusable tone....!) I started out on a really low VRM setting, as coco told me the speaker was brand new, so I noodled around with the controls a bit, trying different settings, all sounding good, even at the low volume - VRM Standard, right, Coco?

Engaging the 'Tude added a good deal more crunch, as promised.... First impressions, a rock tone, but I wouldn't call it Metal, though. So, I wondered how it would sound with my "Tuned to B" Explorer. Indeed the hotter humbuckers added another level to the distortion, I could certainly bang out some heavier stuff with this. After a while playing some Korn and Ozzy stuff, I had the kids put on their ear protection and cranked her... Pretty loud! Not 18 watt, but loud, you COULD annoy your co-habitants, if you desired.

So, first impression is good, but I plan so spend much more time, dial up some sounds I can play to and see what I can get on my Hard drive. Stay tuned!

J.

Depends what kind of metal you mean, the JCM800 kind or the Messy Booger Dual Rectumfrier kind. I certainly found I could get into the JCM800 zone with this amp in 'tude mode, and the Gain control turned up. My impression was of quite a modern distortion tone, which softened to a more Plexi vibe as I eased the Gain off. This was with regular H/Bs, ie not super hot ones.

_________________
Great tones come in small glass jars!

It's pretty hard to get super metal tone with an open back combo. I bet it gets much closer if you plugged that sucka' in a 4x12.

We're getting there. So far we've heard nice Fender to Marshall. Just trying to nail down a couple of values, try a 20 watt Tone Tubby 10" next week. Heyboer prototype transformers arriving next week to, and then final listening, off to bgroup's studio for the golden ears & any last minute changes then we're a go.

_________________
Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

Comments from a local player (posted in another post):

I am liking the tramp a lot. After playing around with it for a couple of hours I got some really good overdriven tones from it from both my Les Paul and my Tele. From Aerosmith crunch to Keith Richards' growl.

I compared it with my Princeton. The Tramp is much brighter and has more of a Marshall sounding overdrive when in 'tude mode. The volumes are comparable but I would say the Tramp has a bit of an edge in the volume. (FYI the Princeton has a 6L6 in it)

I did not notice a huge difference when using the power scaler (VRM) knob.
I messed around with it both in clean and overdriven modes. When fully overdriven (all volumes to 10) the scaler made more of a difference than when in cleaner modes.

I did use the pull switch alot for switching from clean to dirty. I thought a footswitch for this would be helpful and broadens the range of its us - from practice amp to small club amp - especially if you can throw in more powerful tubes (6L6 or KT66).

As far as the cleans go, it is somewhere in between the tweed and the blackface. Not as jangly as the blackface but less wooly than the tweed. The clean has to be at a low volume but I think that is expected when the amp overdrives easily.

It definitely gets that Marshall tone! (in 'tude mode)

I like the idea of the two inputs that we discussed sat. The bright is good for humbuckers and the normal for single coils.

After playing it some more, I think the speaker has a lot to do with the brightness I am hearing. This could be the break-in factor but I think the tone tubby would sound better. Not as sharp and a little more warm crunchiness.

- Mike

Note: We're runing 6.3VAC into the Jensen now to see if we can break them in faster.

_________________
Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

Some FYI here for the folks. The Tramp in its initial form that kurtlives tested had a lot of gain when in Tweed mode and it was pretty aggressive, so that it overlapped quite a bit with the 'tude mode. So we tweaked out some of the preamp gain in Tweed mode, but it appears I went a little too far, so that it's somewhat more Blackface/Silverface like in gain terms. So we're now going to tweak it a little more back the other way, so that it's closer to the 5E1/5E2 ballpark and will really sound like a Tweed when it's in Tweed mode.

_________________
Great tones come in small glass jars!

Stephen, this would be a good topic for the Resource Section...

Joe G

_________________
Some assembly required,
Brain sold separately...

Been meaning to post to this thread for a couple of weeks, since I had my hands on the Tramp. I had communicated my feedback to coco when I gave the Tramp back to him. I loved the amp! While not a Deluxe owner, I found the Tweed settings to be representative of what I think of as a cleanish Fender sound.

Being more a distortion guy, I spent most of my time on the 'Tude channel, and, contrary to my last posting on this thread, I found there to be plenty of Marshally distortion, however, I found that the Jensen speaker didn't do it for me, for the reasons mentioned above, in the quote posted by coco. We'll see how that speaker breaks in. I suspect at 100W it is not being exercised enough to properly break in by the Tramp.

So, I plugged the Tramp into my 12" Celestion V30 cab and pulled off some Godsmack and Ozzy riffs. I recorded them, but due to my extreme Cakewalk incompetence, I clobbered one track with the other, so nothing usable came of it. Plenty of gain, of course, dependent on the input.

So, as I mentioned above, the Tramp is not a toy, but a real amp Joe Bedroom Rocker could get near any sound desired out of. I'd buy one....if I had any $$$$! Need your car washed 100 times, coco?

Just once would be an improvement!

Yes, I have put 14 hours of 6.3 VAC voltage through that speaker. It needs another hard core bashing. If it doesnt do it - in goes the Tone Tubby.

_________________
Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

Give it to me... hard core speaker bashing just happens to be my specialty!!!

_________________
Brent Bodrug
Producer-Engineer/Songwriter

www.slyfichapel.com

You are next on the list. We just need to coordinate.

_________________
Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

Awesome! Let me know when and I can drop by and pick it up... unless you were thinking of a chapel visit a la the initial Triwatt testing... I'm good either way...

_________________
Brent Bodrug
Producer-Engineer/Songwriter

www.slyfichapel.com

Still some more work to do. Received the new iron from Heyboer and the 10" Tone Tubby San Raphael yeaterday.

_________________
Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

OK, let me know... excited!!

_________________
Brent Bodrug
Producer-Engineer/Songwriter

www.slyfichapel.com

sue me
get rid of those resisters and put the real deal in.
I don't care about the noise
Hey BBE conditioner
make it a small Trinity and just rock there socks off.

"Cat Scratch Fever" was recorded on a ?????????
To much Too much!

Of course our opinions are just a suggestion.
Your choice, Coco
But I think in this instant this is overkill
sorry