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Official Joyo Club Part 2: Beyond Thunderclone

#1,921
I have the British, not the American, but I think the function of the Voice knob does about the same thing across the range of models (maybe with slightly differing EQ centerpoints?):

Voice knob left of center...increasing scoop in the lower mids as you rotate counterclockwise.

Voice knob right of center...increasing peak in the upper mids as you rotate clockwise.

So you can sort of emulate a lower mid scooped Fendery tone, which ends up sounding cleaner and more polite, all other settings being equal...or an upper mids boosted gnarlier ruder dirtier sound rotated the other way.

The voice knob is before the drive stage, so rotating left cleans it up somewhat since there are less mids pushing it...and dirties it up somewhat to the right. There are a couple related sonic aspects shifting there as you adjust it.

The bass/mid/treble knobs are active boost/cut and occur after the drive stage; I think of them as finishing touches on a basic sound set up between the voice and gain controls...like controls on a mixer channel, shaping what a miked amp is delivering. That has worked well for me in recording direct.
 
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#1,922
On a similar note, I've gained a new deeper respect for the Clean Glass,
which is like the American but without the 3-band EQ.

My take on the voice knob is similar to @mexicanyella, that left is a cut while right is a boost.
I also think the centre frequency sweeps from mid-low (cut) to mid-high (boost).

I recently bought a set of vintage Japanese pickups which turned out to be pretty dull.
But I was still able to get a usable musical sound by adjusting the voice knob to either cut
the frequencies where the neck pickup was too boomey or boost the frequencies where the
bridge pickup was weakest, then adding / cutting treble as required.
With just a pinch of gain for attack definition and edge, it actually sounded pretty good.

It's a great little tone tool in a tiny package.
Colour me a fan.
 
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#1,923
Double Wubbler said:
On a similar note, I've gained a new deeper respect for the Clean Glass,
which is like the American but without the 3-band EQ.

My take on the voice knob is similar to @mexicanyella, that left is a cut while right is a boost.
I also think the centre frequency sweeps from mid-low (cut) to mid-high (boost).

I recently bought a set of vintage Japanese pickups which turned out to be pretty dull.
But I was still able to get a usable musical sound by adjusting the voice knob to either cut
the frequencies where the neck pickup was too boomey or boost the frequencies where the
bridge pickup was weakest, then adding / cutting treble as required.
With just a pinch of gain for attack definition and edge, it actually sounded pretty good.

It's a great little tone tool in a tiny package.
Colour me a fan.
Click to expand...

How would you describe the function of the tone knob on the Clean Glass? That does look like it could be a great tool for just quickly slapping a basic tone together. Maybe less fiddly than the character pedals...?
 
#1,924
Frndmoretti said:
I found the American on sale an don't have an amp at home right now to test it. I'll use it to record some songs next month, maybe.

How does the voice/character (I can't remember tge name) work in your opinion? What are your go-to settings?
Click to expand...

Hard to explain how it works tonally, but technically it is a pre gain EQ control that cuts a wide curve around the 400Hz center frequency when bellow the 12 o'clock position, and boost a wide curve around the 800Hz center frequency when above the 12 o'clock position, +/- 12dB.

mexicanyella said:
How would you describe the function of the tone knob on the Clean Glass? That does look like it could be a great tool for just quickly slapping a basic tone together. Maybe less fiddly than the character pedals...?
Click to expand...

That's just a regular standard post gain LPF/HPF tone control, and the [Voice] control works as above.
 
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#1,925
NoiseNinja said:
Hard to explain how it works tonally, but technically it is a pre gain EQ control that cuts a wide curve around the 400Hz center frequency when bellow the 12 o'clock position, and boost a wide curve around the 800Hz center frequency when above the 12 o'clock position, +/- 12dB.



That's just a regular standard post gain LPF/HPF tone control, and the [Voice] control works as above.
Click to expand...

So does the Clean Glass tone control tilt the curve around a center frequency? It’s not just a Rat-type filter or something?
 
#1,926
mexicanyella said:
So does the Clean Glass tone control tilt the curve around a center frequency? It’s not just a Rat-type filter or something?
Click to expand...

Don't know the exact technicalities of it, but to me it seems to work as just about any tone control on your average dirt pedal (Tube Screamer, DS-1, BD-2 e.t.c), cut high end bellow the 12 o'clock position and cut low end above the 12 o'clock position, as said a regular standard post gain stage LPF/HPF tone control, so no, not a curve with a center frequency but a slope with a cut off frequency, the cut off frequency changing according to how you set the tone control, respectively cutting low end off at a higher and higher frequency the more you turn it above 12 o'clock and cutting off high end at a lower and lower frequency the more you turn it bellow 12 o'clock, as just about any other control labeled as "Tone" on just about any other pedal (except the Rat which is reverse, but that is labeled "Filter" anyway and not "Tone", even if it does the same just in reverse).

I think you might have misunderstood what I wrote in my last reply and somehow mixed up my description for the [Tone] control and the [Voice] control of the pedal.
 
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#1,927
NoiseNinja said:
Don't know the exact technicalities of it, but to me it seems to work as just about any tone control on your average dirt pedal (Tube Screamer, DS-1, BD-2 e.t.c), cut high end bellow the 12 o'clock position and cut low end above the 12 o'clock position, as said a regular standard post gain stage LPF/HPF tone control, so no, not a curve with a center frequency but a slope with a cut off frequency, the cut off frequency changing according to how you set the tone control, respectively cutting low end off at a higher and higher frequency the more you turn it above 12 o'clock and cutting off high end at a lower and lower frequency the more you turn it bellow 12 o'clock, as just about any other control labeled as "Tone" on just about any other pedal (except the Rat which is reverse, but that is labeled "Filter" anyway and not "Tone", even if it does the same just in reverse).

I think you might have misunderstood what I wrote in my last reply and somehow mixed up my description for the [Tone] control and the [Voice] control of the pedal.
Click to expand...

No, I got it; I had reached the same conclusion about the low mid cut/high mid boost voice knob on my British sound. But your description of the tone knob on the clear glass got me thinking about the tone knob on my old DOD FX10 Bi-Fet Preamp pedal, which I’ve read is considered a “tilt EQ.”

I need to learn more about how EQ circuitry works, in any case!
 
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#1,929
New owner of an American Sound. Loving it at this point. Really adds something. Liking to be just an the edge of some grit. Classic Rock and Country. P basses with flats. Both pick and fingerstyle. One has Alnico 5, other has ceramic pickup. Really liking the Voice knob to both cut the harshness of the ceramic pickup and add just a bit of oomph to the Alnico.

Settings that I'm digging:

Low - 1 o'clock
Mid - Noon
Treble - 11 o'clock
Level - set where desired
Voice - 1 o'clock with Alnico5 pickups, 11 o'clock with ceramic pickups
Drive - 9:30 o'clock.

I guess I need a number!
 
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#1,930
This enough or do I need more?
new_pedalboard.png
 
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#1,935
Any other TBers have any experience with this one yet?
C234E295-8816-4F28-820C-764747310CDD.jpeg


So far it seems like a pretty polite but versatile, agreeable overdrive to me. It goes from clean to crunch, plenty of output level available anywhere on the gain knob’s range. EQ could be a little more powerful/interactive for my tastes, but it works.

“Compression” toggle strikes me as sort of a polite limiter. Not sure how useful that function is to me; I like it better in the uncompressed center position setting with a compression pedal in front of it.

So far I’ve tinkered with it in some home recordings and gotten a pretty cool guitar solo tone, and sort of a “spaghetti western guitar-heard-over-a-telephone” sound out of it. And a decent gritty edged clean, and a decent P-bass honk.

Anyone interested in hearing examples of this can hear them in post #478 in this thread:

Totally amateur recordings thread
 

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