I'm a believer

Scoot82

At first I was skeptical about the whole tube amp thing. I thought to myself, can anyone REALLY tell the difference between a solid state and a tube. Well, I just got my Hot Rod Deluxe today (off ebay, roughly 400), and holy crap. It is like night and day in my opinion. I play a std. strat through it and I can't believe how good it sounds. anyways, back to playing...

Scoot82

I do have a question though for anyone with a similar setup or knows about it...when i have my tone knobs turn up beyond around 5, i hear some humming from the amp ( very very little). But, when i turn the tone knobs down there is ZERO hum.. Is this normal?? thanks (sorry for the ignorance)

exhausted

yeah. pretty much normal. you're going to get some hum from them no matter what.

HRDs are nice amps.

Scoot82

allrighty then, thanks

mccreadyisgod

If I remember right, the numbers on a Hot Rod are 1-12? Anyways...

When you have a tone pot at half-value, it's actually 0. No effect whatsoever. If you turn it below half, you're essentially turning the volume down in that frequency range. If you turn it above half, you're increasing the volume in that frequency range. So, from 0, you can go say to -10, or to +10. Therefore, when you increase the tone value, you're increasing gain. Increasing gain will amplify the self-noise of the amp.

Scoot82

ok, yea...that is pretty much what happens, thanks!

mccreadyisgod

Ideally, the best way to set your tone is to set all three tone knobs at half-value, and then SUBTRACT the things you DON'T want.

However, in a situation where you only have Bass and Treble controls, the only way to cut the Mids is to boost the Bass and Treble, relative to the Mids at 0. Also, some people like to drive an amp's EQ section for a certain flavor of overdrive.