18Watt.com

At the Dallas Guitar show I played the Orange Tiny Terror and loved it. That sound has been running through my head ever since. What do you think it is about that amp that I love so much? Does anyone have any suggestions for other amps like it?

I'm wondering if it's just because it's the first one I've heard actually cranked. Just a thought (by the way, I'm married--thus limited).

You're not the first who likes it. IMO it kinda rips like a Soldano. There is a schematic available - an extra gain stage compared to the lite 2b and post PI MV. B+ could be around 340 judging from the 120 ohm shared cathode resistor. I might have to build one.

We wound up using a Tiny Terror on our recording session back in February. My guitarist had planned to use the Lite IIb I built for him, but the combo cabinet wouldn't fit in the iso-box. So we had to put a small 2x12 cab in the iso-box and used the Tiny Terror that the recording studio owned outside the box. VERY nice tone--quite a bit like the Lite IIb. Actually, our recordist heard the Lite IIb before we tried to put it in the iso-box and suggested the Tiny Terror as a reasonable facsimile. Now that Lite IIb has been rebuilt as a separate head and cab, so the next time we record (if ever) that little 18 watter is going "on record"!!

I finally got to use my MUTANT18 for a good recording session, but unfortunately I had to have it turned down so low it was barely kickin' yet. Still sounds pretty good, but it's like playing a whole different amp. It did exhibit some pretty darn good clean tones with my strat.

I'll post some tunes soon, I just did the analog to digital conversion last night and need to do some editing and such. We got a very nice mix from Jim K (JK here) who out did himself with his graciousness an hospitality. Jim let us use his studio, a bunch of his gear, and acted as our recording engineer Thanks bro

I'm glad to hear it worked out, and look forward to hearing the final result. And yes we should pursue some even lower powered heads for that application.

Dart has a solid rock / blues band, and we were trying to make a reasonable demo tape with five guys playing live in a room the size of a child's bedroom in one take. Musicians had no headphones, running vocals through the monitors. I was folded up in the corner trying to monitor with headphones with two small soundcraft mixers into a VHS hifi camera.

I think we learned a bit about the need for iso boxes / even lower powered amps / headphone monitors.

Regards,

Jim

what do you use for an iso box. do the randall iso cabs work well?

Iso, or isolation box lets you stick your amp into a relatively sound proof chamber and crank it up to whatever level you need and not blow you ears apart. Pro studios have whole rooms for this. Or do the bathroom trick!

I read somewhere (as all meaningless hearsay begins...) that you really need a room at least the size of a large walk-in closet for an iso-room for an amp, at least if it's going to be sealed, which it need be for isolation.

Obviously, you don't *need* it to be that big to work, but anything smaller than that will start to affect the response of the speaker... *supposedly*

So I haven't heard good things about the over-the-counter iso boxes and I believe them for this reason, it's really like using a double-closed cab (closed back and closed front) which naturally would affect the sound.

This may all sound kind of ludicrous, but I used to record in a 15x20 foot room (I'm guessing) and everything, not just amps, but voices, acoustic guitars, etc., sounded just a little better with the door open.

I use an Iso box at my church. This lets me keep my amp (less speaker) near me, but keeps the soundman happy. We also use in ear monitors, with individual mixing stations.

My experience is that, with the mic properly placed it is very close to the sound of a normally mic'd amp. Depending on the volume and size of the box, you can have the low end be a little big sounding. That's the biggest issue - you can overpower the box. But you don't have to. This lets me run anything from 5 watts to 50 watts and have control.

I've seen the Randall boxes and they look like they'll work well. However, I just built my own for < $60 for all parts except the speaker. I've tried an all birch cabinet, but I actually prefer using MDF for everything except the baffle, which is Birch. Since we're hiding the cabinet under the stage I didn't worry about double boxing it, but if you really want it quiet, you should build an iso box for the iso box. If you have a spare closet, that will work for the second box.

if they asked me to play my guitar threw monitors especially in ear i'd just stop playing. My amp faces me mic'd an works pretty well in a church that 100 + yrs old. The stage was designed to self amplify which makes it a little harder. We had to have a delay processor and sound deading panels installed.

I wouldn't use in ears if I couldn't do the monitor mix for them myself. I do prefer to not use all this stuff, but it keeps the peace and really isn't a big hardship. Since we have room mics we can mix in, it doesn't feel so disconnected. It is like hafway between studio and live.