Having good gear is important, but so is knowing how to use and maintain it. This weekend I was messing around with my modest arsenal of stomp boxes which now includes a Barber Tonepress, Hughes & Ketter Tubeman, Line6 Echo Park, modified Vox Wah-Wah reissue, and an old Boss TW-1. I actually plan to use all of these on the 29th with my Mesa/Boogie Studio.22, but there seems to be a problem with the SEND/RETURN effects loop.

The amp made this awful alien noise with Echo Park in the loop. It was quiet in bypass mode, so I tried reducing the gain on the amp. That made the noise went away, but the amp sounded weak with the gain rolled down to 2. I tried boosting the signal with the compressor by cranking the output. The sound was one of the best I’ve heard from the amp — warm, clear and punchy; but I don’t want to leave the compressor on all the time (or do I?) Maybe just using it for solo boosts is the way to go.

However using my compressor as a clean boost with an underpowered preamp would not be a proper solution to the alien amp infestation. So I repleaced each preamp tube with a JAN 6072A tube I picked up in Akihabara. This is the newest tube I have acquired, but actually the oldest because it’s NOS, and very quiet apparently. It killed the noise when I stuck in the V3 socket, but now the amp won’t break up the way I like when I play double stops. I could use the Tubeman to make up for the lost bite, but I really have to replace those shitty old EH tubes.

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