Sknote Fender Tweed amp sim (seems like a Tremolux)

[cprompt]

Thanks! It is actually very simple once you realize it is per-workstation, _not_ per product

It worked great when I installed Percolate but when I authorised Deluxe1 I had to redownload Percolate, plus2 my workstation had disappeared from the webshop when I went to authorise Deluxe1. However, I can see it's still in there now so I'll put that down to teething problems in its infancy.

We are closing the first high-gain one (Mesa Dual Rectifier).

Yes, I can't wait for this. If it's as good as Deluxe1 is, it's going to be amazing. There's a lot of Dual Rectifier emulations around, but most of them are a bit meh - only a couple get close to the real thing (as far as I can tell, I don't actually own one!!!!).

To back that up, this video is the gold standard as far as ampsims are concerned:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaQ-IBYcn1Y

[guitarzan]

... there is a lot of info on Neil Young's rig online — I can dig it up later if you're interested.

Tips always extremely welcome, as this amp (and the future ones) are here to be expanded in our upcoming custom shop (e.g. new output transformers for Deluxe1).

Tube vibrato: yes, looks like the stereo mode has the two channels out of LFO phase (so going one up, one down).

A great place to start is:

http://thrasherswheat.org/sound.htm

You'll really dig his foot pedal amp controller, the "whizzer".

A cool idea might be a complete Neil Young rig package, similar in concept to Amplitube's Hendrix package, with a custom Deluxe, midi assignable Whizzer, outboard reverb, octave, echoplex, Magnatone 280, Sennheiser MD409* mic IRs, etc. You could call it the "Lazy Horse"

It might take me a while to dig up some of the more obscure Neil Young rig links since it's been years since I've been to them....decades in some cases, but you've got me interested in this again anyway, so I will try to find them and get them to you.

*edit — mic was listed as Sennheiser MD421, corrected to MD409

[quintosardo]

Yes, the whizzer is controlled by MIDI control change 11 (Expression) in Deluxe1. It is a control on second channel's input gain, that affectrs the saturation between input and output tube stages.

That is how we made the example here (from "Are You Passionate", one of my favourite _sounding_ things from Young).

Also we'll add that 6L6s re-bias option.

[guitarzan]

Cool, I should have read more about where you are already at with Deluxe1. I don't even have a DAW setup anymore to test Deluxe1, having given up on amp modeling years ago, but maybe I'll get something together as this winter's project.

[guitarzan]

I think my memory is going. I believe this is the forum post I was thinking of, and it turns out Neil Young's more recent Deluxe tone (Ragged Glory, Weld, etc.) is a '61 or '62 Deluxe with a brownface Deluxe transformer (not a brownface Princeton transformer):

https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index ... 107/page-5

Mar 10, 2017 #97
Oscar IIsaksson

"....Everyone who's researched Neil's rig have read about that magical 59 deluxe he bought decades ago and popular belief is that that's the only one he's ever used. Larry stated in the interview that Neil in fact has used 3 different deluxes through the years and that the modern Neil sound (Ragged Glory, Weld and forth...) is in fact a 61 or a 62. He also stated that it's an original 5e3 circuit, with the only difference being that it had the OT of a brownface deluxe since it was made at a time when Fender were updating the deluxe model to the brown one and some parts just got mixed up, or they used what they had over...."

The whole thread is great:

My Neil Young rig and whizzer
https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index ... r.1795107/

Feb 11, 2017 #1
Oscar Isaksson

"....To get the Neil tone I think there are a few keypoints in this rig:
1. A microphonic firebird pup in the bridge and a good P90 in the neck position of the guitar.
2. A tweed deluxe with a ceramic speaker and the combination of a 5y3 rectifier and 6L6 tubes. I have tried it with a GZ34, that would be more common sense with 6L6:s, but it gets way to stiff and clean. With a 5y3 it's sag deluxe and you get that amp about to break down, starved voltage sound.
3. A real spring reverb in front of the amp.
4. A little bit of push from the preamp of the tape echo. The amp by it self nearly gets there, but if you push it with just a hair of preamp gain from the tape echo it will send the amp in to orbit...."

Edits: the links weren't working right, seems OK now.

[someone called simon]

Ok I've finally decided to ask an irrelevant question... how do you pronounce your company name?
is it...
ESS KAY NOTE?

this is probably weird, but in my mind I think .. SKAY NOTE.

But it's Italian, right? so the e is probably sounded. though I don't know how the K works as I think there is no K in Italian.

I think a recording of how you (the company owner) pronounces it would be helpful here

[quintosardo]

It is simple. Think English, then read three separate parts:

- "S"
- "K"
- "Note" (which is one of those nice words with the same spelling and meaning in both Italian and English, like Studio)

Actually a few years ago we've been discussing about this at AES in NY, the choice was between this and "S" + "Keynote", which the great Tony Maimone from Studio G suggested to discard.

[cprompt]

Thank goodness I've been getting it right all these years!!!! So if the K was originally part of "Keynote" where does the S come from?

[cprompt]

I think a recording of how you (the company owner) pronounces it would be helpful here

I knew I'd heard it somewhere, I just found it, from the man himself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9ICiAoFIq8

[someone called simon]

thanks for indulging that little diversion

[guitarzan]

I've been looking around, and it seems like the best info still online about Neil Young's rig is the gearpage thread I linked to already by the guy who built his own Neil Young rig, whizzer and all, and the 1992 Guitar Player Mag interview of Larry Cragg (Neil Young's guitar tech):
http://thrasherswheat.org/friends/amps.htm

The main things are:
1. He uses more than just the Deluxe amp:

"I have fans pumping a lot of air into the back of the Deluxe, since we rebiased the amp to use 6L6s. We have the speaker there, plus the extension speaker output, which has been significantly padded down with a volume knob. The signal then goes into Magnatone 280 stereo vibrato — the Lonnie Mack amp — with two 12s."

"Neil has his own private P.A. and a Yamaha mixer. He has a separate microphone that's not connected to the house for each amp, and he can mix these to any level he wants. He mainly hears Deluxe, a lot of Baldwin, and very little Magnatone. Out front and on record, you can hear mostly Deluxe and Magnatone."

2. The Whizzer does a lot:

"Here are Neil's Whizzer settings: For the highest volume, we have both the tone and the main volume on 12 and the second volume knob is at about 9.9. When it's really compressed and breathing and screaming, that's whats going on. You can hear it on "Cortez". If we push it past 9.9 the sound goes away. The next button down moves his volume to 10, which just cleans it up. It's still broken up but its less garbled. The third button sets his volume on 6 with that other volume still at 9.9 and the tone just down a little. The fourth preset moves one volume to 3, the other volume to 0, and backs the tone off a bit, its really bright and clean, almost country sounding."

3. FX - The same foot-switch assembly that changes Whizzer presets also switches his effects. Though he does use quite a few different effects in specific songs (an octave down pedal seems to be used quite often, for example), the main ones that are almost always on are his Fender outboard reverb unit and the Echoplex:

"The first thing the signal always sees is the input of a Fender reverb unit. The reverb pan is not in the unit; its usually underneath the stage. This one happens to be more susceptible to vibration than other pans, but it has the tone he likes. He can tell when I try to substitute another reverb pan. It's really important to have the old style, funny shaped 6V6. Of course, that first 12AX7 is extremely important, and the reverb is rarely off."

"....The next button is for the main effect, the Echoplex, which remains on a lot. He'll leave the Echoplex on and hit the loop button on and off to activate other stuff. We use sizzling hot cable — not guitar cable, but hard RF stuff — and we don't lose anything in the loop. From there the signal goes into the Deluxe."

Note that even though the Deluxe is the main amp, the guitar pickup is mostly interacting with the Fender tube reverb unit, as Larry Cragg emphasized by pointing out the importance of the unit's 12AX7 input tube. The Echoplex is also serving dual purpose as a "clean" (tube) gain boost into the Deluxe as well as providing delay. Also note that the reverb (first in fx chain) is placed before the echo (last in fx chain) — weird.

[guitarzan]

Here is a YouTube video by Oscar Isaksson demonstrating the Neil Young rig he built:

https://youtu.be/oj1s9HTkSmM

That was the rig outlined in this thread:

My Neil Young rig and whizzer
https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index ... r.1795107/

Sounds like he's got it right to me.

Here he is demonstrating what some of the different amp settings on the Whizzer sound like:

https://youtu.be/Pqmj7JGZ05I

[tristan-]

I see a Dumble is planned from another forum?

[quintosardo]

Yes

[guitarzan]

Rick Davis, the guy who built the Whizzers that Neil Young currently uses, has a site where he shares some insight into their design:

http://www.rdlx.com/neil_young.htm
EDIT:

The above site appears to be permanently dead ...

... so here is the last known good link from the Wayback Machine.

Thanks for the update! So that's:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190916114 ... _young.htm