Still screwed.
Amp tech couldn’t fix the Session. Apparently some godforsaken moron tried electrical taping the broken transistor to the circuit board and it shorted. And these transistors haven’t been made in 20 years, so a replacement is out of the question.
Aye carumba.
But, when life gives you lemons then of course you make lemonade. And when I say ‘lemonade’, I actually mean ‘large spring reverb unit’. Probably easier than making lemonade anyways. Never tried and doubtful I will. Thanks for asking though.
SO! Back in the previous Session post you may or may not recall / care the amp having a multitude of connection options: this wild array of jacks and outputs is going to save my reverb bacon. To wit, the exact problem with the Session was the power amp section was banjo’ed. Everything else fine….I’m sure you’ve all worked it out at home but let’s pretend this is a Hollywood blockbuster and I have to spell out everything for the audience.
If we can connect the Session to an external power amp, then it will work a treat!
Well done everybody: that’s absolutely right. Ok, some quick amp ‘mapping’ (I could find a diagram but they’re all complicated and – quite frankly – really dull)…you plug a guitar into the ‘pre amp’ section where the main tonal characteristics are found.
So the guitar signal gets its sound from there, then it moves to the ‘power amp’ section which literally amplifies it through a speaker. BUT, on some amps there is a little section between the pre and power stages…the effects loop. The Session has one.
This is simply a pair of jacks on the back of an amp, designed to run effects pedals through – some effects work better after the pre amp. The output (send) moves the signal from the pre amp, then the input (return) feeds it into the power amp.
Are you bored yet? Of course you are! Tough, we’re continuing.
What we need to do in this case is have that output pre amp signal move into the input of another power amp section. Enter the Crate Powerblock:
Teeny tiny weird amp head
This is a compact, light and exceedingly loud amp head. I picked it up at Scayles on the cheap as a ‘handy to have’. It’s not bad just been run by itself, bit dry though. It does have an effects loop though, so here’s how the signal runs:
Guitar > Session Input > Session FX Loop Send > Powerblock FX Loop Return > Speaker
And would you believe it…it actually works. And how. Man it’s loud. I can’t take it over 9 o clock on the volume (the amp is still controlled by the Session, the Powerblock controls have no effect). It certainly doesn’t rasp or fart anymore, and you know me – I love those sparkly cleans. Luckily the Powerblock has a headphone out, so I can get sparkling clean in the privacy of my own head.
Ramshackle and potentially dangerous.
Now, by not using the Session power amp the speaker is redundant. And it needs to stay that way – any attempt to use it will go via the power section: rasp, fart, boom. But if I just disconnect the speaker then – blammo – the Session will literally explode as there is no output for the voltage…and that’s how we get blown up output transformers. But, the miracle of multiple connection options means if you plug a jack into the ‘Ext Speaker’ out on the Session it mutes the speaker. There’s actually a special term for that kind of switching, but don’t try and kid on that you’re interested in finding out.
It’s a pretty good speaker, as far as I can tell.
So I’ve done that and disconnected / removed the speaker to make the whole thing a bit lighter. The speaker wasn’t actually adding that much weight so it’s still pretty heavy. I’m still pretty scrawny and don’t drive: moving amps around is like watching Bambi on the ice. That’s the one with the deer, right?
Just like that
Lately I’ve been learning about something called decoupage. A large gist of this is decorating wooden boxes, and some of these boxes come in an ideal ‘rack mount’ size…I plan to procure one, enclose the Session amp (the circuit board / spring pan aren’t all that big) in there and basically have a rack mounted amp / reverb unit I guess. Might go full decoupage and decorate it. I’ve come this far; it would be churlish to stop now.
Right, that’s plenty. Ok, so here are some samples – ran these out the Powerblock headphone socket so they’re perhaps a bit ‘peaked’. Whatever. That splashy drip is excellent, right? And, because it’s an actual spring pan, if you kick it you get that excellent reverb ‘crash’ sound of the springs bashing about. However I have already fucked the amp up plenty so will probably not start beating the shit out of it.
See, I learn stuff.
experimentsinterror 