Originally Posted By: Gordon Scott
We're going round in circles a bit here and I'm not sure it's really helping.

When you look at suggestions from Mario, Ray and Dave, some of what they're suggesting is doing just that. Adding a little, subtle, distortion. Valves, tape, transformers, cabinets and older compressors create a small amount of distortion provided they're used gently. Over-drive anything and it'll sound rough. The important thing is moderation, particularly where there is more than one note being played as then you get multiplication products that usually sound awful (to my ears ... some metal fans may well disagree, though it's worth noting that "power chords" keep that effect to more moderate levels).

I agree, you and I are still not communicating as tightly as we could.

Let me try this. You keep mentioning valves and tubes and now tape, transformers and other (what I consider) older technology.

You do realize that I don't have tubes, etc. in my signal chain?
Do they even build bass amps with tubes anymore?

And when I say "tubes" I mean vacuum tubes as in the 1960 vintage TV sets.

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