The Watering Hole

I had almost forgotten that I had this amp, just sitting in the corner of my son's bedroom.

So I had it out this afternoon for a session and realised again just how good it really is. Some of the internal patches are very good but better still on the clean channel it takes pedals really well.  Just tried it with the RAH pedal and boosted the input to the RAH by using an excellent little booster pedal "mooer PURE boost" and it makes for some lovely thick juicy sounds.

Nice, through the stock 10" speaker?  Have you edited any of the sounds?  I have the first version, with sounds that can't be edited, and that sounds great through a 12"...

Mooers are cute little pedals... Chinese clones, all in tiny 1590A boxes. They get the controls in there by using 9mm pots with built-in tiny plastic knobs... not the easiest pedals to adjust on the fly, but pretty genius.  The Pure Boost is a clone of the xotic RC boost.

I go back and forth between my Hot Rod Deluxe and the Super Champ X-2. I play each one about half of the time. Of course the HRD is my all time favorite amp (on the clean channel only with stomps in front).

I bought the SCX2 because I wanted an all in one lightweight grab and go amp. The SCX2 is about 65%-75% of the way to the tone my HRD gets me. The SCX2 has a sharp ice picky response so I have to focus more on my picking technique (Which is good) Of course I mitigated that ice pick tone with the Eminence Lil Buddy hemp cone 10" speaker which helped a little with it.

Now I did edit it with the Fuze application, you really can't do all that much with Fuze, especially on the clean channel, all you can do there tone wise is adjust a software "mid" control which helped a tiny amount. On the second channel you can do a bit more, I use only the super sonic model, but I changed the mid settings and the gain 2 settings tone wise and I changed the cabinet several times, once from the SS 2-12 to one of the 4-12 settings, then to the twin 2-12 cab models. I only use a little touch of reverb on both channels. No other effects interest me these days. So now I have a lightweight grab and go amp guitar in one hand amp with a little gallon freezer plastic baggie of stuff which fits inside the amp back in the other hand, one trip in, one trip out. For recording it is pretty good however, as I posted here a ways back. I have not brought it out to my studio space since then, but if I ever have the inspiration to record again I will surely use the SCX2, as it records beautifully.

I don't use stomps in front of the SCX2 as all I really need is reverb and clean/overdrive channels, which the SCX2 does fairly well. Not up to the HRD with stomps in tone, but passable.

charger — Sep 02, 2013Nice, through the stock 10" speaker?  Have you edited any of the sounds?  I have the first version, with sounds that can't be edited, and that sounds great through a 12"...

Mooers are cute little pedals... Chinese clones, all in tiny 1590A boxes. They get the controls in there by using 9mm pots with built-in tiny plastic knobs... not the easiest pedals to adjust on the fly, but pretty genius.  The Pure Boost is a clone of the xotic RC boost.

Yeah, I have used the software to edit the sounds and that works quite well.  The main thing I did was to back off the compressor and also turn off the noise gate as for some reason that is on by default on all patches.  I hate noise gates with a passion, complete tone and performance suckers.

Sounds OK with the 10" speaker at room rattling volume, but then I haven't tried it hooked up to a 12 inch.  

Also just rediscovering multi micing technique using 3 mics.   SM58 dead centre on the speaker and then two room mics and blend everything together in various ways at mix down makes for some mighty fine "big" guitar sounds without resorting to any plugins.  I will restring later this week and post some examples of this.

I love the pure boost, does a really great job of pushing the RAH pedal (wouldn't use it just into the input of the SC X2 as of course it's a digital front end so slamming that with a booster probably wouldn't do the electronics much good).  But as I said earlier, the RAH pedal into the clean channel works really well.

I remember trying this before but then never did it again, but I just tried again today and the results are fantastic.

I run the JetCity JCA22H into the hotplate on load and then the line out of the hotplate into the front of the SuperChampX2.

The results are really good.  Great sounding tube amp at the front (JCA22H) and then further bass & treble control via the clean channel of the SuperChampX2.  Also then of course have access to the reverbs & delays on the superchamp.

This is my new favourite way of playing (and recording with multiple mics)