Hiwatts-n-Gibsons
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 10, 2024
- Messages
- 848
Happy new preamp day.
I received my Carvin X1 Preamp this week, and while I've spent minimal time with it I can say it's easily worth the $240 with shipping I paid for it.
I bought it because, well A) GAS, and B) rationalizing said purchase with the logic it would kill 3 birds with one stone. Those being silent practice with headphones, low volume playing with it's one watt poweramp through a speaker cab, and to use it as a multichannel preamp into my single channel amp heads with a great high gain tube sound.
To be brutally unforgiving in my honeymoon phase I have not used it with any other pedal than my boost pedal, an original SansAmp. No delay, no reverb, no anything else before it, in the loop, or after it.
My test guitar is an LP Special P90 in A standard tuning.
The first hour or so I was tbt quite disappointed playing through it into headphones. But as I got it dialed in better, and added the boost pedal I am really quite happy with the headphone tones.
Next I tried it into a few different cabs.
An Orange PPC 1x12 loaded with a 200 watt Fane Studio 12L.
A Mojotone 1x15 open back loaded with a Coffee Can EV SRO15.
A Marshall JCM800 Bass 4x12 loaded with Celestion 55hz G12-65's.
The 1x12 sounded good enough, but the 1x12 with the high wattage Fane emphasized the harder and more clinical edge of the solid state poweramp. It was a very dry, direct, and hard edged sound. It was beefy enough, but uber present and a bit stiff until up at the highest levels of gain. Adding my boost pedal helped this out quite a bit, and for low volume playing it's more than solid.
The SRO loaded 1x15 otoh sounded awesome. Thick, punchy, articulate, clear. No overly strident edge to it at all, but still with a direct and somewhat unforgiving tone clean. This mostly goes away once you switch to the rhythm channel which remains articulate, but nice and thick and vocal. The lead channel is a boosted extension of that sound that ups the gain. It never loses its composure playing low string riffs in A standard, even with a buttload of gain from hitting the lead channel with a boost.
Earlier today I played it into my 55hz G12-65 loaded Marshall cab, and it found its perfect soul-mate. The 55hz Celestions sweeten up the tone, and provide a wicked chug and grind for high gain tones.
At this point I was completely happy with my purchase as it provides perfectly serviceable headphone practice and low volume playing tones. And those low volume tones can get surprisingly loud for 1 watt @ 4ohms. Technically into my 16ohm Marshall cab I should be getting 1/4 watt, and it can still get quite loud and sound good doing so. Turning it up to 4 on the master is the end of its polite around the house volume range
Then tonight I had the house to myself, and plugged it into the front end of my Hiwatt DR103 with the normal and brilliant inputs bridged, and the same Marshall 4x12. Well hell f****** yeah! This thing sounds sick as hell into the front end of an amp. With the X1 bypassed I get my Hiwatt's clean tone. With the X1's clean channel with GEQ on I get a slightly scooped pristine metal clean tone. With the rhythm channel + GEQ I get a great meaty and articulate hardrock to metal crunch tone. With the rhythm channel + lead boost + GEQ I get a punchy, thick, and cutting metal tone with that edge that yields great chug on palm mutes, and makes root 5 chords pop out from fast low string rhythms with grind like a chainsaw.
This thing is sick for everything from crushing doom tones on the neck pickup, to meaty death and roll tones ala Entombed on the middle pickup setting, and Sepultura like grind on the bridge pickup. A good boost makes those tones even better.
For reference while I'm speaking about chainsaws and Entombed I recently got a KMA Wurm 2 which is a great sounding HM-2 type pedal. The two both excel at big, bold sounding, articulate grind, with the Carvin having more of a high gain tube amp sound. Think a cranked and boosted JCM800 running 6550 tubes. Something like D.R.I. on 4 of a Kind or Thrash Zone. The Wurm 2 sounds like what it is, a wicked evil solid state square wave distortion with huge bottom and evil grinding midrange. The Carvin needs a boost pedal to reach the upper end of the Wurm 2's gain range which I honestly don't usually need, but it's nice to have there when I want it. The Wurm 2 I could use and never need a boost, whereas with the Carvin I sometimes need a boost to reach that next level of saturation to get a more vocal harmonically rich tone that sounds great for modern metal riffing, and legato playing. I also owned a Mesa Dual Rectifier for years, and the Carvin falls a little short of the gain levels my Recto could reach. As far as I can tell the Carvin at maximum gain is equal to my old Dual Rec at around 1:30-2:00 on the gain. The Carvin at max gain is equal to about 12:30-1:30 on the KMA Wurm 2.
However both my old Dual Rec and the Wurm 2 have more gain than I ever use, and hitting the Carvin with a boost gives me all the gain I could ever need.
Both sound great, are uniquely different, and yet could be used to cover the same high gain tones with the caveat the Carvin will need a boost for some of them.
I'll post a pic later.
I received my Carvin X1 Preamp this week, and while I've spent minimal time with it I can say it's easily worth the $240 with shipping I paid for it.
I bought it because, well A) GAS, and B) rationalizing said purchase with the logic it would kill 3 birds with one stone. Those being silent practice with headphones, low volume playing with it's one watt poweramp through a speaker cab, and to use it as a multichannel preamp into my single channel amp heads with a great high gain tube sound.
To be brutally unforgiving in my honeymoon phase I have not used it with any other pedal than my boost pedal, an original SansAmp. No delay, no reverb, no anything else before it, in the loop, or after it.
My test guitar is an LP Special P90 in A standard tuning.
The first hour or so I was tbt quite disappointed playing through it into headphones. But as I got it dialed in better, and added the boost pedal I am really quite happy with the headphone tones.
Next I tried it into a few different cabs.
An Orange PPC 1x12 loaded with a 200 watt Fane Studio 12L.
A Mojotone 1x15 open back loaded with a Coffee Can EV SRO15.
A Marshall JCM800 Bass 4x12 loaded with Celestion 55hz G12-65's.
The 1x12 sounded good enough, but the 1x12 with the high wattage Fane emphasized the harder and more clinical edge of the solid state poweramp. It was a very dry, direct, and hard edged sound. It was beefy enough, but uber present and a bit stiff until up at the highest levels of gain. Adding my boost pedal helped this out quite a bit, and for low volume playing it's more than solid.
The SRO loaded 1x15 otoh sounded awesome. Thick, punchy, articulate, clear. No overly strident edge to it at all, but still with a direct and somewhat unforgiving tone clean. This mostly goes away once you switch to the rhythm channel which remains articulate, but nice and thick and vocal. The lead channel is a boosted extension of that sound that ups the gain. It never loses its composure playing low string riffs in A standard, even with a buttload of gain from hitting the lead channel with a boost.
Earlier today I played it into my 55hz G12-65 loaded Marshall cab, and it found its perfect soul-mate. The 55hz Celestions sweeten up the tone, and provide a wicked chug and grind for high gain tones.
At this point I was completely happy with my purchase as it provides perfectly serviceable headphone practice and low volume playing tones. And those low volume tones can get surprisingly loud for 1 watt @ 4ohms. Technically into my 16ohm Marshall cab I should be getting 1/4 watt, and it can still get quite loud and sound good doing so. Turning it up to 4 on the master is the end of its polite around the house volume range
Then tonight I had the house to myself, and plugged it into the front end of my Hiwatt DR103 with the normal and brilliant inputs bridged, and the same Marshall 4x12. Well hell f****** yeah! This thing sounds sick as hell into the front end of an amp. With the X1 bypassed I get my Hiwatt's clean tone. With the X1's clean channel with GEQ on I get a slightly scooped pristine metal clean tone. With the rhythm channel + GEQ I get a great meaty and articulate hardrock to metal crunch tone. With the rhythm channel + lead boost + GEQ I get a punchy, thick, and cutting metal tone with that edge that yields great chug on palm mutes, and makes root 5 chords pop out from fast low string rhythms with grind like a chainsaw.
This thing is sick for everything from crushing doom tones on the neck pickup, to meaty death and roll tones ala Entombed on the middle pickup setting, and Sepultura like grind on the bridge pickup. A good boost makes those tones even better.
For reference while I'm speaking about chainsaws and Entombed I recently got a KMA Wurm 2 which is a great sounding HM-2 type pedal. The two both excel at big, bold sounding, articulate grind, with the Carvin having more of a high gain tube amp sound. Think a cranked and boosted JCM800 running 6550 tubes. Something like D.R.I. on 4 of a Kind or Thrash Zone. The Wurm 2 sounds like what it is, a wicked evil solid state square wave distortion with huge bottom and evil grinding midrange. The Carvin needs a boost pedal to reach the upper end of the Wurm 2's gain range which I honestly don't usually need, but it's nice to have there when I want it. The Wurm 2 I could use and never need a boost, whereas with the Carvin I sometimes need a boost to reach that next level of saturation to get a more vocal harmonically rich tone that sounds great for modern metal riffing, and legato playing. I also owned a Mesa Dual Rectifier for years, and the Carvin falls a little short of the gain levels my Recto could reach. As far as I can tell the Carvin at maximum gain is equal to my old Dual Rec at around 1:30-2:00 on the gain. The Carvin at max gain is equal to about 12:30-1:30 on the KMA Wurm 2.
However both my old Dual Rec and the Wurm 2 have more gain than I ever use, and hitting the Carvin with a boost gives me all the gain I could ever need.
Both sound great, are uniquely different, and yet could be used to cover the same high gain tones with the caveat the Carvin will need a boost for some of them.
I'll post a pic later.
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