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Post by cetanu on Jun 1, 2021 15:37:40 GMT -7
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Post by Jaguarguy (Mike) on Jun 1, 2021 19:51:24 GMT -7
Welcome to the Forum - a lot of good people and information here. Have you seen any of Adam's videos? He uses the guitar straight into the amp - usually without pedals.
I know that Doc used a high-gain setting on the SLO as a reference for some of the amp's voicing if that helps you any.
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Post by adam on Jun 2, 2021 5:46:38 GMT -7
cetanu - if you could give me a couple examples of songs/artist, I could maybe give some feedback on that part. I do have a Splawn Quickrod and had used a Splawn modded plexi with Kt88's so maybe I can comment to that. You are probably thinking Nitro, but I hear sort of the same DNA in Nitro clips. Quickrod - I have used it in about 10 years until I got the Z Air Brake. I used to use it in large clubs an outdoor events, clubs with a plexiglass shield in front of it. Bottom line, you need to get the master to about 9:30 to get rid of lows to fill in, otherwise it's kind of thin and fizzy. At that point, it's really too loud except for outdoors. The tone is sort of in a Michael Shenker meets Dokken, and the tone controls just kind of shape that tone rather than make other types of sounds. It sounds great at what it does at that level though. I have an early one and the clean channel is pretty much unusable (I know he tried to improve that along the way). The KT88 one was a beast and sounded great, but same issue with volume. I liked that one better though. The Splawn's are really stiff and unforgiving which has that give and take thing of you if you don't play something cleanly, it sounds pretty terrible. Plus side being you have a lot of control over the sound with your hands The CAZ is not as stiff and a bit more forgiving. It still retains that articulation though. The big bonus on the CAZ is it sounds great at any volume. I'd say the CAZ in general is a little smoother sounding for lack of a better word. Maybe also, the loop in the quickrod really screwed up the sound and I never used it. To get around it, I used that Larry Carleton idea of mixing the cab, running that into a mixer and a delay/chorus effect wet into a couple powered pa speakers, and those would also DI to front of house. Sometimes I'd leave the pa speakers at home have it coming back through the wedges, but that never really sounded good, but at least I could tell when the delay was on or off. No problem with the loop on the CAZ.
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Post by frankie on Jun 3, 2021 13:25:20 GMT -7
Anybody in here who had a chance to compare the CAZ-45 to a Fryette Deliverance or some other touch responsive and open sounding high gain amps? Preferably for high gain applications and some down-tuned guitars. I'm interested in that amp but where I live there's no way to test it before buying and pricewise ($3000-ish) it's right up there with well renowned high gain amp brands like Fryette, Splawn, Diezel et cetera. In fact, most of the comparable European amps (e.g. a Diezel Big MaX) cost a few hundred dollars less and I could get something like a used Larry Dino for about the same price and this next purchase is probably the last amp I will ever buy so I'm hesitant.
I mean there are some good demos but nothing is really the kind of high-gain/genre I actually play and I'm really not into pedals so I want to get all my clean and dirt sounds from that amp and my instrument and for lack of a better word I want to be 'challenged' by the amp. The Fryette amps I had (Deliverance/Pittbull) did this very very well. They were the good kind of stiff, dry and unforgiving and if I haven't stumbled upon the CAZ-45 I would've probably already bought the Pittbull that's currently listed in my area so I'm open for some opinions from you guys.
I own a Pittbull UL. The CAZ is as responsive if not more responsive than the Pitbull. There is a similar feeling of being directly connected to the strings and the notes seem to come directly from your fingers with both amps. The CAZ will be a slight bit more forgiving if you set it with the level up and push the front end. They are equally as articulate and open, you play a complex chord and hear every note, no problem. I would say the Pitbull is "stiffer" whereas the CAZ is more "immediate" if that makes sense. the CAZ also has slightly more gain if you really wind it up. The CAZ also has a better gain range, that more easily tweakable, and a multitude of sweet spots through low to medium to high. The Pittbull kind of only does the hard rock to metal area, it doesn't really have the edge of breakup to classic rock sound available, at least how I have tried to dial it in. I have a similar taste to you, with "dry" "open" "unforgiving" "immediate" "responsive" being things I look for in amps. I do not like the overly compressed or "clipped" sound that some high gain heads do with there is a sort of fizz that occurs when you push the gain. I played this amp extensively through the entire prototyping and was there to the last component tweaked doing blind tests on it and I wouldn't have gave my thumbs up on it to Z unless it really got there, and it really got there. Oh and the LP here was permanently tuned down to drop C# whenever we would test the amp.
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Post by adam on Jun 3, 2021 16:03:39 GMT -7
frankie - cool. I'm kind of always surprised by how when playing pretty high gain, just back off the pick attack and there's a clean element there. I've never played anything that could be that saturated and then not, just with your hands. Particularly on single note lines. I really tend to play it play it way gained up, but yes there's a million shades of gain in there as you've mentioned before. Might also add that it doesn't really favor a LP or Strat or Tele, they all sound great and very different. I also really like it with my Luke guitar and I kind of don't like that guitar in any other amp.
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Post by cetanu on Jun 4, 2021 7:37:23 GMT -7
I'd posted a lengthy reply but then I read through your comments again (I owned an early Quick Rod at some point and could relate to most of the experiences with it and the comments regarding the Pittbull sounded very familiar as well) and then I watched some AMA on IG where the CAZ-45 was being worked at and Dr. Z seems like a knowledgeable guy even though high gain/metal may not be his métier.
I don't like fizzy distortion (e.g. don't like Mesa Rectifiers at all, not even that old 2-Channel Dual Rectifier I had), I don't like overly compressed high gain sounds (ENGL Powerball comes to mind) and I very much like it when the amp is challenging me but also versatile. I don't think I necessarily need all that Quick Rod/Pittbull 'stiffness' so I think I'll just give it a shot. It's probably the first time I actually buy a brandnew amp for that amount of money and it's not the wisest decision I've ever made but if everything you both stated rings true for me as well I won't regret it. Regardless, eventually I've to test it myself to make sure of that and I still have a Framus Cobra and a Pearce G2r to compare it to. I already made a deposit the distributor in the Netherlands is just waiting for the amp to arrive.
My 1*12/2*12 cabs are loaded with Eminence P50e (the VHT/Fryette model) and early 90's EVM12L as well as Eminence EM12N speakers, any experiences with those speakers in combination with the CAZ or other recommedations?
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Post by Chilly Gibbons (Todd T.) on Jun 4, 2021 7:52:30 GMT -7
Well, as usual I have nothing to contribute to the discussion as I don’t own any of the mentioned amps. Just wanted to say thanks and that I learned a lot because of this thread. To start, I had never heard of Larry Amps, researching that led me to Wizard Amps, then to Fortin and so on. While all of which sit squarely in the “cannot afford” category, it is nice to at least know about them. This also led me to some new styles/artists of metal that I was unfamiliar with. Very nice to see the diversity.
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