The Sushi Box FX Secret Society

[smeet]

If you want just clean, then Neptunium is what you're after.

I own a Finally v1 loaded with a 12AU7, a More, and a Lab Rat. Finally is my fave.

I used to have a v2 Neptunium and it was just clean. I did an a/b/c shootout with Finally/More/Nep. Went: lots of character / bit of character / clean.

Thanks! I have the Nep and yeah it’s very clean. I want “clean”, not clean. Finally sounds like the ticket.

 

[andare]

Thanks! I have the Nep and yeah it’s very clean. I want “clean”, not clean. Finally sounds like the ticket.

I bought a Finally because I want it to have character and occasionally grit. Otherwise it's too subtle, for my ears.

My Rumble does a decent impression of tube warmth in vintage mode. But Finally is a totally different beast. It literally sounds three-dimensional and I crank it for grit (mine has a 12AX7 that I'm going to switch out for a 5751). It's a night and day difference. I was already a tube fiend on guitar, I continue to believe in the magic warmth of tubes on bass.

 

[lomo]

IMHO the elephant in the room WRT pedals in general and preamps (when run clean) in particular is that much/ most of what is ascribed to "tubiness" is simply an inherent change in the freq response curve that can be reproduced by tweaking eq.

 

[andare]

IMHO the elephant in the room WRT pedals in general and preamps (when run clean) in particular is that much/ most of what is ascribed to "tubiness" is simply an inherent change in the freq response curve that can be reproduced by tweaking eq.

Neither the EQ in my Rumble nor that in my Spark can do what Finally does. Believe me I tried

 

[Ritter667]

IMHO the elephant in the room WRT pedals in general and preamps (when run clean) in particular is that much/ most of what is ascribed to "tubiness" is simply an inherent change in the freq response curve that can be reproduced by tweaking eq.

There is much more to tone than simply frequency response, in addition there is saturation (not right out overdrive or distortion), how harmonic content is emphasized and added to the signal, phase displacement of certain frequency areas, compression, and how all these 4 parameters reacts to dynamics, dynamic response, and not least how all these 5 parameters interact with each other.

You simply can't replicate everything with simply an EQ pedal, no matter how advanced.

EQ is just 1 parameter out of 5, that all interacts with each other, and determines tone.

 

[LSM07]

IMHO the elephant in the room WRT pedals in general and preamps (when run clean) in particular is that much/ most of what is ascribed to "tubiness" is simply an inherent change in the freq response curve that can be reproduced by tweaking eq.

I think the MORE makes a huge difference in the "depth" of sound, even though many people say it's a subtle difference to them. I had been using the Korg Power Tube Reactor as a low-power way to get tube saturation in the FX loop of some of my amps, and even though it does a really good job of getting tube drive/sag, the MORE blows it out of the water with the kind of "depth" it adds to the sound.

 

[Tassieviking]

I always thought that the Noble, Nobelium, Neptunium's purpose was as a DI, and a DI should convert an unbalanced signal into a balanced signal as cleanly as possible. A DI is just meant to change the signal so it can be sent cleanly to the next stage, not to add too much of anything to the signal.
A tube will always sound different to solid state components due to the way they operate, there seems to be more sag or bend in the signal with a tube where solid state will happily send perfect square waves down the line.
Also the use of a transformer to change the signal into balanced XLR also helps with "rounding" out the sound, transformers have to build and collapse magnetic fields to transfer the signal where solid state can again send through perfect square waves.

Any tube and/or transformer DI will change the tone slightly but usually for the better to most of our ears.
There are so many other delicious ways to add some growl to the tone so I think that DI's should stay clean

PS: My 28 year old Daihatsu shopping trolley (G200) has done over 400,000km and the only time I have to add oil is when I replace the oil filter every 5-10,000km, I have thought about buying a new car for shopping trips but the Daihatsu just wont roll over and play dead.

 

[shirojiro]

I listened to Ivan’s video of Noble bs Finally v3, and they are close, but I did like the solidity of the lows on the Noble.

Has anyone compared the sound of the Noble, Neptunium, and Nobelium? How do these three compare to each other and to the Finally v3?

I’m mostly interested in a clean tubey sound.

With Grado headphones, the Noble seems to have a clearer top end as well. I think this is what he was referring to as the wider frequency spectrum. The Finally sounded like a broad bandpass filter was applied. I like the sound of both though, and in the mix, I couldn't hear that much of difference.

With different cans, I'm sure it would sound different as my Grados are a little bass shy, but the mid range is super clear.

 

[Tassieviking]

I often wonder what the difference between a Noble, Nobelium and a Neptunium would be if the tests were all done with the same tube used in all the tests, not the same brand and type but the very same tube used in all the pedals in the same test.

 

[mikeswals]

Thanks! I have the Nep and yeah it’s very clean. I want “clean”, not clean. Finally sounds like the ticket.

For me being a Mesa guy (400, Strategy, D350) my Finally with the 12AU7 approximates a sound more similar to my old Walkabout cooking along. I use mine mostly alone on ampless iem gigs, or sometimes with the D350.
The Finally responds extremely well to tube rolling too.

 

[smeet]

Hmm, I just heard the grand slampegg, seems to sound pretty great. Anybody have experiences/opinions/comparisons of GS to Finally v3?

So many flavors…

 

[Sushi Box FX]

So many flavors…

Sorry not sorry.

 

[smeet]

Sorry not sorry.

Could I get a builder's opinion on how the two pedals compare in sound and feel?

 

[Sushi Box FX]

Could I get a builder's opinion on how the two pedals compare in sound and feel?

Absolutely.

I will start by saying that Grand Slampegg is one of my favorite preamps ever. When I'm just playing for fun (which is unfortunately rare), the two preamps that get more use by me than the rest combined are Grand Slampegg and Venus Z. If I'm playing a passive bass and/or want a warm, vintage tone, I'm most likely to grab Grand Slampegg. It's all clean so it won't breakup by itself, but the 6SL7 tube takes pedals very well and can be pushed into a very unique drive with a boost or overdrive in front, if you're looking to put some hair on it.

This is not to downplay the greatness of Finally, but they were designed for a different purpose. Grand Slampegg was designed to get the beautiful B-15N clean vintage warmth that we all love. Finally was designed for two specific purposes; first, to be a very simple but very good sounding preamp/D.I., kind of a pedal-for-people-that-don't-like-pedals; second, to be an excellent starting point for people that do like pedals but already have other tone-shaping options on their board and want a great sounding tube preamp/D.I. to go to front of house but don't need it to have a bunch of extra features they won't need or use.

 

[FenrirofOld]

Grand Slampegg I really need to snag, I've wanted to mess around with that flavor of sound for awhile.

My Underground Accelerator with EQ off never gets turned off, it adds the perfect layer to the rest of my chain. Still want to convert that to a Finally V3 with the HPF. Yeah flavors...I ain't mad about it.

 

[FronTowardEnemy]

I would like to share that I have been gigging so much that I haven’t had a lot of time to frequent TB as much as I would like to, however my finally. V3 has been so great that GAS has subsided for now. Question is for how long?

I’m a Sushi Box Fan!

 

[tidbits]

I'd been using a 12AY7 in my Finally V2 lately (just a step up in gain from the stock 12AU7). A couple weeks ago at practice, I was messing around and wanted to see if it would have enough signal to drive the power stage of my head (Quilter BB802) on its own, so I stuck it into the effects return to bypass the preamp. I set the input gain on the head pretty low most of the time (just at 9 o'clock), but even with the Finally at max level the output was a fair bit quieter than going into head's preamp, and wouldn't really be a viable way for me to run it. I even double checked the internal trimpots of the pedal to make sure they weren't attenuating the outputs.

Around the same time I stumbled onto the 12DW7/JJ ECC832 - you get one high gain triode from the 12AX7/ECC83 and one low gain triode from the 12AU7/ECC82 in the same tube. JJ also makes the ECC823, which is the same triodes in reverse configuration.

One the things I've picked by hanging around this thread is that for designs like the Finally, Space Heater, Underground Accelerator, etc. is that one half of the tube controls amplification via the input gain, while the other controls the output level. Thankfully I'm not the first person in this thread to stumble across the 12DW7/ECC832 - and I managed to find a couple people asking about it, and even found this handy reply from the Sushi Master answering a question about hypothetically using a 12DW7 in a Handwired Underground Accelerator:

HWUA goes into the second tube stage (pins 6, 7, and 8) first, so with 12DW7 it would be like having a 12AX7 for the first stage and a 12AU7 for the second stage. ECC823 would be the opposite.

What I never turned up was the results of someone trying it out. So based on what I wanted (generally clean tube roundness with more output signal on tap) I ordered a JJ ECC823. I tried it out at practice last night, and it went great! I was able to easily dial in the gain for some nice clean tube saturation, and I had PLENTY of signal with the level at 3 o'clock for the power amp to run without the additional gain stage from the head's preamp.

So I can say this fairly confidently - if you're running a 12AU7 and you like what you have, but need more overall output - try out an ECC823.
And maybe more hypothetically - if you've got a 12AX7 and you like the general breakup you're getting, but you're finding the level knob touchy - try the ECC832/12DW7.

It's a relatively inexpensive experiment - both of these tubes can be found new for less than $25 in the US.

 

[havnjero]

i’ve had a 12DW7 in my finally v1 for years and have never wanted for more output gain. it does work well.
i sometimes swap it out for a 12au7, but only once in a while.
i run pretty clean, but don’t have to push a power amp.

 

[BrotherRay]

I played through both a finally and Noble recently.

The finally sounds better. the Noble, as well as having a completely inadequate (for my needs) DC power delivery, boost only Treb and bass that's not gonna work for me, it's bloody massive and to my ears is massively over hyped and even more so over priced! But i totally get that for many this will be their holy grail for their needs.

A difficult task, but can you define "better"? For some a little grind might be better, for some the clean size the Noble or Neptunium adds would be better.

I'm not really looking for dirt, or maybe barely just a little, but the dimensionality the Noble seems to create is what I'm after. It seems like the Neptunium would be what I'm looking for, but I also like unadvisable amounts of low end, and the adjustable 12db/octave LPF seems safer, I could adjust it to save my cabs. I know it's only 6db/ octave, but a LPF at 90 hz kind of freaks me out. If Neptunium gives more of the "3d ness" than the Finally, then that's what I'd do.

 

[tidbits]

I know it's only 6db/ octave, but a LPF at 90 hz kind of freaks me out.

Honestly, that gentle slope is part of why it sounds so good. Flip that switch, max the bass knob, and grin.

It’s so gentle that down at 45hz you’ll still net at least +6db vs Flat and no HPF. Boosted, but not excessive.