Premier Guitar Articles
De-Modding a Marshall - Premier Guitar Article
Amplifiers have always been close to the electric guitar players’ heart. It’s often a love/hate relationship. Love, when your amp is performing as it should, never letting you down no matter how hard you push it. Performing night after night without hesitation, giving you the exact tone and feel that you ask of it. And hate, when your amplifier is doing things that you would never ask it do, often, totally on its own. From a faint crackling sound reminiscent of a distant fireplace at your grandfathers cabin on a wintry night to the blood chilling screeching that a harpooned pterodactyl might make in the troughs of death.
How to Buy a Used Amp - Premier Guitar Article July 2016
So, you “need” a new amp, huh? Maybe you’re looking for a certain sound, or your old amp is no longer reliable enough for gigging. Perhaps that mammoth stack from your high-school years—y’know, the one with the lightning bolt and pot leaf stenciled on the grille cloth?—doesn’t quite fit with your current décor. Or maybe your income has changed and you finally have enough scratch to purchase your dream amp.
8 Guitar Amp Mods for Newbies - Premier Guitar
It’s in a guitarist’s nature, I believe, that we can’t leave well enough alone. Most of us have an ideal sound (or sounds) in our heads, and we won’t rest until our vision is realized. We can have a perfectly fine guitar or amplifier, but we still have an inherent urge to tinker with it until it’s “just right” in feel or tone. On this premise—as well as the fact that many of us are on budgets that don’t allow us to buy every amp that strikes our fancy—the idea of modifying an amp we already own strikes a very appealing chord for many players.
Why and How to Replace Your Amplifier’s Output Transformer - Premier Guitar
I am often asked how upgrading an amplifier’s transformers will improve tone. It’s a simple enough question, but the answer is a little complex. First off, let’s examine what an output transformer is and why someone would inquire about replacing it. Then we’ll get to some things to consider when replacing your amp’s transformer.