New SL2x module YouTube video…

From the desk of Bruce…

Hi Everyone,
Winter’s almost over. It has been a brutal one here in Michigan. Fortunately, we’ve survived the worst snow and cold in many years. We’ve had many inquiries about the “Amp Building Classes”. Sadly there is just not enough time now or in the near future to offer them. We are just soooo busy building amps and designing all the new stuff that there is no time for fun things, like the classes. Our hope is to be able to start back up later this year but, who knows? Please watch egnater.com for any future announcements.
The Tourmaster models and Rebel have been doing great. The Rebel has been one of the hottest guitar amps in the country. Kind of a dream come true for a little company like ours. Watch for the new Rebel 30 and Renegade models scheduled to be out in June 2009. Lot’s of other cool stuff later this year also. The Modular line has been growing like crazy. We’ve been quietly working on some new designs in the modular line that we are very, very excited about. We hope you will be, too. Can’t tell you about them yet…or we’ll have to kill you…just kidding. That’s about it for now. Check out egnateramps.com also for lot’s of info and demos.
In case I’ve never said, thanks for your support for all these years. If you are already part of the Egnater family, WELCOME! If you aren’t yet, I sincerely hope you can become a member soon.

Bruce

M4 review and demo

a letter from our newest most favorite user…

Bruce, Jeff,

I received my amp last night around 6:30 after anxiously awaiting the UPS
man. I am experiencing a few problems already!

1) The amp seems to have distorted my perception of time. I started
playing after dinner at around 8 o’clock and was going to play for an hour
or so. After about an hour I came back upstairs, the family was in bed and
it was after midnight. How’d that happen?

2) I have the 3 modules and it pisses me off to have to leave one out.

Seriously though guys this thing sounds awesome. I feel like I’ve finally
put enough time in to actually have a little bit of my own tone coming
from my hands and your amp makes me sound better than I ever have before.

Really inspirational, thanks.
Scott Miller,
(Nascar Crew Chief for Jeff Burton and Richard Childress Racing)

TECH NOTE #102 “sound dispersion”

TECH NOTE  #102
Sound dispersion
November 2008

Ever wonder why your 4×12 cabinet sounds better when you stand off to the side? Did you wonder why the pros mic a speaker from the edge instead of in the center? Ever have people in the audience tell you your guitar tone is really shrill but it sounds great to you onstage? This is a result of the directionality of loudspeakers. Speakers inherently do not project all frequencies equally. As the frequency increases, the dispersion decreases. In non technical terms, this means the higher you play on your guitar, the more directional your sound will be. By nature, speakers tend to be somewhat non-directional at lower frequencies. This means you can stand off to the side of your cabinet and you will hear basically the same bass and lower mids as your audience is hearing right in front of your speakers. On the other hand, and this is where the trouble starts, higher frequencies tend to “beam” from the center of the speaker. While you are standing off axis from your cabinet (not directly in front of it) you are hearing an even balance of lows, mids and highs and feeling pretty pumped about your awesome tone. Unfortunately, unbeknown to you, the listeners directly in front of your cabinets are being killed by the high end that is “beaming” from the center of the speakers. FYI, contrary to what one might deduce, having four speakers in a 2 by 2 arrangement, as in a 4×12 cabinet compounds the problem and makes the beaming even worse. Next time you play take a moment to walk from side to side and squat down in front of your speakers. You will be amazed at the difference between listening off axis (to the side) and listening on axis (directly in front). Have you ever seen a band in a small place where you are hearing the stage volume and wonder why the guitars sound so bright? Doesn’t that guitar player hear that obnoxious high end? That knucklehead must be deaf!?!? More likely he is standing close to his cabinets and all that high end is just blowing past his/her legs so he/she doesn’t even hear it.

      OK..so now I’ve pointed out how we’ve all been playing for years believing everyone in the crowd thinks our tone is as awesome as we think……or is it? Great, so what can you do about it? The key is to place your speakers so you are hearing the same thing as everyone else. If you can get the cabinets far enough behind you, you probably will pretty much hear everything just fine. If that is not possible, try placing the cabinets pointing across the stage sideways instead of forward at the audience. At least then you will only be killing your other band members instead of the audience. Chances are you often want to kill the drummer or bass player anyway, right? The best thing you can do is to tilt your cabinets so that they are pointed at your head. I guarantee you will set your controls way different from what you normally do. 

       There are a number of companies who are now offering a cool new solution to the beaming problem. A few companies make a disc that you install in front of the speakers to help disperse the high end. These discs have met with some success though they do introduce some phasing issues. Also, because there is a solid piece in front of the speaker, if one places a microphone in front of the disc (which happens quite often at shows), it can sound weird because the disc is blocking the sound into the mic. The one that we find works best is called the “Tone Bra” by Music Products Group. The discs are made of special foam that attenuates the beaming highs instead of blocking them. 

       I’m always surprised whenever this subject is discussed and most guitar players make the statement “I hate the way my guitar sounds when I stand in front of my speakers”. The answer is not to simply stand off to the side so it only sounds good to you. Remember why we play music? It is for others to enjoy. We should always make a conscious effort to think about what the audience is hearing, too.

On that happy note……………

Be the one who makes the shovels, not the one who digs the ditches (Ed Kreske)

Thanks,
-Bruce Egnater

TECH NOTE #101 “watts vs. volume, and other stuff…”

TECH NOTE  #101
WATTS vs VOLUME and other stuff…..
November 2008

There is some confusion about the relationship between watts and volume (loudness).  There is much discussion about how this many dB is twice as loud as that many and that many dB is double the power and blah blah…… lot’s of techie rambling but no real world explanations.  Let’s say you have a guitar amp with a knob to adjust the power (watts).  Now say this amp is 20 watts at its maximum power setting and 1 watt at the lowest knob position.  It would be reasonable to assume that 20 watts should be loud enough to play with the band and 1 watt would be whisper volume.  Anyone who has had the opportunity to test this theory has found quite the contrary. 20 watts through a reasonably efficient speaker is quite loud.  1 watt through the same speaker is also quite loud.  What’s up with that?  Have you ever seen the specs for a 12” speaker?  A typical guitar speaker will produce about 95 to 100dB at 1 meter (about 3.3ft) with 1 watt of input power.  Now put 2 or 4 of that same speaker in a cabinet and the output is even higher. What this is saying is that even with a mere 1 watt of power, that speaker will put out the volume about equal to a person yelling.  Obviously not “TV watching” volume.  To obtain that whisper volume, you might need as little as 1/10 of a watt but…….at that low a volume, most guitar speakers start to sound terrible.  In addition, there is a phenomenon that occurs with human hearing that is documented by Fletcher and Munson (two really smart guys) that graphs the way we hear things at different volumes. Look it up on the internet.  The Fletcher/Munson curves show how our ears, at lower volumes, are less responsive to low and high frequencies. That means the quieter you play, the more we tend to want to boost the bass and treble to compensate for our own hearing. Ever seen the “loudness” contour switch on a home stereo?  That is what the switch does.  It boosts the treble and bass to make it sound better quiet. On a guitar amp you often find knobs for boosting the low and high end in the power amp section.  Typically these controls are called Presence for the high end boost and Resonance or Depth or Density (Egnater) for the low end.  At low volumes you typically turn those controls up but the louder you play, the more you find you need to turn them down. Fletcher/Munson again.

     Because we make guitar amps with variable power (Rebel) and switchable power (Tourmaster and Modular), we get inquires about this all the time.  Often players will use one of our amps and it appears that the power cut feature doesn’t do much.  Please allow me to explain.

Let’s say you are playing an amp at home or in a music store at relatively low volume.  Recall what was said earlier about how little power it really takes to get a fairly loud volume.  If you’re playing quiet, you might be using even less than 1 watt to obtain the loudness you’re at. If you have a chance, try this on a Rebel. Play fairly quiet and turn the WATTS knob from 20 watts to 1 watt. What do you hear?  Very little change!  Why? Because at that volume you probably are not even using up 1 watt let alone 20 watts. Sort of like driving a car at 5MPH.  It doesn’t matter if the engine is a 100HP or 500HP, you are still only going 5MPH and using very little HP to maintain that speed.  Same with your amp.  To cruise along at low volume requires very little power (watts). Having the extra horsepower (watts) doesn’t make the amp louder when you play at low to medium volume. 

      Now try this with your Rebel.  Set the power to 20 watts, turn the master full up and turn up the gain knob until you start to hear some distortion. It will be loud. While you’re playing turn the WATTS knob down.  You will clearly hear and feel the way less power creates a spongier, lower volume tone. Some players are saying the knob isn’t really cutting the power but is reducing the headroom.  Call it what you will, the result of reducing power is more of a “feel thing” than a volume thing.  Ultimately the idea is to set it to where you like the sound and be happy…..play your guitar. 

While we’re on the subject of the Rebel, there has been some talk about how when panning from the 6V6 tubes to the EL84 tubes, the tone difference is not what some expected.  It is believed that by simply changing power tubes you can make a Fender (6L6 power tubes) sound like a Marshall (EL34 power tubes) or a Vox (EL84 power tubes).  What you are hearing in the Rebel when you go from 6V6 to EL84 is the real difference in the sound of those two types of tubes.  It may not be quite as dramatic as many believe but that is the reality of it. The tonal difference between various types of tubes is more subtle than many believe.  A few people have even been disappointed when using the TUBE MIX features because their expectations of what should happen were really not based in fact.  What you are hearing in the Rebel is “the truth” about power tubes.

  Enough rambling for now.  I hope this is interesting and informative stuff.  If you are already a member of the Egnater family….WELCOME!! If you haven’t joined us yet, we look forward to having you.

Bruce Egnater

dUg Pinnick weighs in…

Some Demo Videos of the Egnater Rebel…

Egnater Rebel Light Overdrive

Egnater Rebel Clean w/ effects in the loop

Egnater Rebel Hi Gain

the latest news…

So, we have so much going on at Egnater right now, we thought it would be appropriate to set up a news page for updates. Between the Tourmaster, The Rebel, The ********, The **, The *********, The Amp Building Seminars, and the possibility of us actually building a new **** ***,  there’s just too much to share.

Of course, some things will have to be revealed in their due time…