Name:    Steve Kennedy
Email:   steve@pacair.com  
Subject: Overdriving Revisited
Thread:  22
Time:    Sat, 17 Feb 2001 02:07:41 GMT

The "older" Music Man series before the RD & RP amps had no "designed in" overdrive capabilities. The original 65 and HD-130 amps employed a simpler preamp design using 307 op amps. These preamps were designed to be high headroom and clean with distortion avoided.


The newer RD/RP series amps used a similar topology but a more sophisticated design featuring additional separate gain stages designed for distortion generation. These distortion generation stages are switchable in the RD series.


There isn't much you can do with the older models except run the Master volume control up full, then drive the amp and input gain controls until the output tubes and/or the phase splitter tube (on the oldest models from 1974-76 or so). These amps are capable of a nice output stage overdrive but only at loud volumes. Any preamp distortion you can generate with the preamp on these models pretty much sucks.


Steve