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Pignose B-100V

#26
mike_v_s said:
I'm curious as to how it compares to your Trace...please let us know.

Mike
Click to expand...

That was my burning question, too. Both are 100 watt 1x15 combos, and both employ tube preamp and amp sections. The Trace uses two 6550's to make 100 watts, and the Pignose uses four 6L6's. I think this makes for an interesting comparison. Plus, I absolutely love the Trace, and have been using it for practice, but lately I am feeling a bit wasteful burning up those NOS GE 6550's "just" for practice. :hmm:

Another compelling factor for me to buy this is that I bought and borrorwed a number of different 6L6's to try out in my Mesa Strategy 400, so I have been looking for another amp to test/use them in.

You know me, though. I will be sure to report back once it comes in! :D

Tom.
 
#28
My Pignose arrived today, and despite being shipped with the tubes in place, it seems to have survived the trip in good shape. I haven't had a chance to directly A/B the two combos, as my Trace is at our practice room, but the first thing that hit me was how light this sucker is! The Twin Valve has the opposite effect, where you wonder how it is possible to make something of its size so darn heavy! But the Pignose is quite managable.

So, I fired it up and played through it a bit. One of the first things I noticed is that it has a very midrange-present voice. Not a lot of higs, and not a lot of lows. This may actually make it ideal for my initial notion of using an all-tube combo amp for my "rhythm guitar" parts (and the Trace, I am begining to understand, is something to be treasured, and I don't think I should be slopping it around at gigs all the time (at least not without a case and a dolly).

But back to the B-100V. The EQ knobs really don't seem to do much at all. I mean the difference between any of the knobs all the way cut to all the way boosted is subtle, to say the least. I'm used to Mesa Boogie and Eden knobs, where a small twist leads to a fairly noticeable difference, so this was a bit of a surprise. It's also a bummer that you only have a Volume knob, and not a seperate Gain and Master. And get this, no "standby!" I suppose I should have known this, but it still kind of surprised me.

This sucker definitely gets really loud, though! Much louder than I would have expected, and this was with the tubes that it came with (Chinese 6l6's with unknown hours). I haven't even checked to see what preamp tubes might be inside. The tone is really midrangy, but that is mostly from the 15" speaker. I plugged into an ACME Low B-2 and the sound was much more deep. Actually, it made for some of the best low volume tones I have heard from a Low B-2 (which seem to like to be driven a bit). If you try to push the ACME to higher volumes, though, the B-110V runs out of steam. I also powered my newest Berg stack - HT115/HT210, and it did a very good job, though the four Chinese 6L6's weren't as full or deep sounding as the 6550-based heads (Aguiar DB 359 and Eden VT-300A) I have been using with that stack. I am wondering what it might sound like with an upgraded 15". With the stock speaker, I wouldn't feel comfortable playing a 5-string at any volume. One thing to note, though, is that it has four small ports, and they really, really move some air! You can feel it quite strongly 10' away!

As it is, I am very happy for the amp with the money spent. I hope to try it with my Akai UniBass fairly soon to see what kind of "rhythm guitar" amp it makes.

Later, Tom.
 
#30
Well, I cleaned up my Pignose (which was quite the job, as this thing must have sat for years to accumulate this much dust caked onto everything!), and spent some more time with it. I'm happy to say that it cleaned up very nice, and now looks about brand new! :) I played my new Skjold Custom 5 through it for a while, and I found that with all of the tone shaping options offered by the Skjold pre, I could really dial in some nice tones (including a good bit of useable low end!). Then, I unplugged the internal 15" and used the head to drive my Whappo, Jr. Holy Handgrenades, Batman!!! This thing sounded smoking through the Jr.! It had a surprising amount of clean headroom, and then broke up fairly nicely. Accugrooves are fairly efficient, and I think that you could probably gig out in a number of venues with a B-100VH driving a Whappo, Jr.

But, this was all with the stock tubes, which are generic made in China bottles. After playing around a little bit, I ended up using Sovtek 12AX7's in the preamp and Svetlana "Winged C" 6L6's in the power section. The transformation was very, very impressive! The overall tone filled out significantly, the high end became more musical and harmonically rich, and the lows became both thicker and tighter. This has been one of the biggest improvements I have seen from tube rolling. Big smile on Tom's face, for sure! :D

I do have one niggling issue, though. The tone controls don't seem to be too powerful, which is fine, but the Bass tone knob doesn't seem to do anything at all. Has anyone else noticed this? I may need to pull the head section out and check the pot for the bass control. Also, I am not too familiar with 6L6-powered amps, but these tubes seem to run really hot. I noticed this with both the Chinese 6L6's and the Svetlana's.

Later, Tom.
 
#31
I spent some time over lunch A/B-ing the Trace and the Pignose. Interestingly, with the tone controls set flat (mid shift off on the Trace), they did sound fairly similar. Moreso than I expected. Volume is about the same, with the Pignose getting more clean headroom and the Trace going into a mild overdrive sooner than the Pig. I am not entirely sure what the mid shift button on the Trace does, but I do know that it makes the Combo sound much better to my ears. It seems like it cuts some of the boxy mid frequencies, while filling up some of the lows and highs (rather like the various iterations of the Enhance circuit). With this engaged, the Trace really shines, IMHO. You can mimic this tone somewhat on the Pignose, but I couldn't quite nail it.

All in all, I preferred the tone of the Trace Elliot Twin Valve in almost every way, but I was quite impressed at how well the Pignose compared. I expected more volume out of the Trace (because it always seemed like a pretty loud 100 watt combo), but I think I'll give the edge to the Pignose for the most useable volume.

To get a feel for how the head sections compared independant of the speakers, I drove one of my VL-208's with each. Here, the Twin Valve pulled away from the Pignose even more, and just sounded more well balanced, refined, and muscially pleasing. But the Pignose did sound pretty good driving the 208 (though I preferred it with the Whappo, Jr.).

Later, Tom.
 
#34
tombowlus said:
But, this was all with the stock tubes, which are generic made in China bottles. After playing around a little bit, I ended up using Sovtek 12AX7's in the preamp and Svetlana "Winged C" 6L6's in the power section. The transformation was very, very impressive! The overall tone filled out significantly, the high end became more musical and harmonically rich, and the lows became both thicker and tighter. This has been one of the biggest improvements I have seen from tube rolling. Big smile on Tom's face, for sure! :D
Click to expand...

Definitely. Thanks Tom, that's great info. :)
 
#36
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I just put a all original up for sale. I run it through a SVT410 and 115. Shockingly awesome tone and being it has the Chinese tubes. Really makes me think about some JJ/Tesla 6l6s. I had to call Pignose for the manual and schematics.

Awesome little Jem!!!
 

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