For YEARS I’ve used ‘90’s VHT Pitbull 45 1-12 combos for dates needing wide variety of sounds. I CAN (and have) had WHATEVER I WANT. Tweeds, Brown & Black, VOX- Marshall, Matchless, Bogner, Mesa (ugh)… NOTHING is as versatile.
Hey All, Ignazio Vagnone here from Jensen Speakers. A big big THANKS to Kristian and Steven, for a GREAT video. One of the best, most informative I've seen. Awesome job both of you guys! Myth-busting at its best :) I feel the need to share with you all our comments about the FryettePower Station PS-2A or PS-100, if you're into the attenuation/loading state of mind. We have purchased one Power Station PS-2A, nearly two years ago, and it has been the best investment we ever did. For the nature of our job, developing speakers, we have to play with loads of different amps, modern and vintage ones, and the PS-2A is ALWAYS in the picture. Attenuation and reamping? You got'em. Adding an effect loop to a vintage amp? There you go. Boosting a low power amp? Of course. Loading down an amp to go in your DAW (to test the Jensen IRs) It does that great. Powering a pedal-based system with preamps and effects? Oh yes, baby. From our vintage Princeton, Bandmaster and Hiwatt, to the Marshalls, Supro and Mesas of this world that we use as our primary references when we test and listen to new speakers, the Power Station is transparent, versatile and reliable. A fantastic piece of gear, that we'd heartily recommend to anyone in this game. Happy playing! Ignazio
To all reading this comment: Ignazio Vagnone is one of the most knowledgeable and passionate resources in the business. He's got great ears and decades of hard won experience working with amps and speakers. It's truly humbling to receive such a ringing endorsement from such a valuable resource. Thank You! ♥🔥
@@FryetteAmps oh wow :) Steven, thank you! It’s me being humbled, you’re a legend! I’ve been saying this to everyone, since I have the PS2A. I kinda wonder how I did without it for so long! Nothing magic, just a very well thought out and executed product, pretty rare stuff in this era of hype! Cheers, and keep on rocking!
@@FryetteAmps Please, allow me to repost the comment I just posted. Steve Fryette designed my favorite amp, the Sig:X. My favorite channel on that was its middle channel, based on his Deliverance amp, and I will forever be grateful that he designed a Synergy preamp module such that I was able sell that truly-iconic amp to my brother and downsize in accordance with my physical limitations (That process will be complete when Synergy releases their forthcoming SYN-20IR head.); I still hold out hope for a Sound City Synergy module. I honestly do not care how this come across: I consider it borderline miraculous that someone not only produced an amp which does exactly what I want, but then reproduced it in a more-manageable and more-affordable form.
the great thing abot Mr. Fryette is not only his undoubtedly incredible knowledge about amplifiers, but his ability to put it into an easily understandable vocabulary. you don't need a degree in electrical engineering to follow his technical explanations. what a great dude!
I dont think people relize how big of a contributory to this industry through the 80s and 90s Steven Fryette was and still is, if you like this video check out the Tone talk episode ep. 3 with him and Dave Freidman
Yamaha G100-112 and G100-212 (1x12" or 2x12" speakers). Truly FANTASTIC combo amps, made people seriously rethink the "solid state is crap" bias. Had an excellent onboard Accutronics spring reverb, too, and Yamaha's speaker coils were wound with beefy square section wire for max surface contact etc - great and bulletproof! 👍🏻👍🏻
Steve is a mad man. I love his amplifiers, the Deliverance 120 and the Pitbull Ultra Lead are two of my all time favorite amps. I wish I never had to sell my Ultra Lead, I miss it all the time. Great interview with Steve, thank you.
I just LOVE interviews like this - masters of their craft and passionate about the subject! I especially liked that Steven talked technical details in an easy-to-understand way, and was honest about the science, without a bend towards marketing. Thank you both!
Thanks for the in-depth interview. I really like to hear engineers talking with passion :) Some speaker questions for the follow-up (ignore the crappy ones, I'm tired): - Is there a perfect volume to run the speakers at if they are specifically designed to go with a certain amp or just a min/max volume? - How come we rarely see mixed speaker size setups on guitar amps (like with bass cabs) and what speaker sizes/combinations are your favorite? - Why not put the eq into the cab rather than the amp? Bonus question: why not both? Extra bonus question: why are attenuators not put into cabs? - Do ribbon speakers make any sense in guitar cabs (even if only for the tonal aspects, because they don't generate the same kind of load)? - How much influence does the actual speaker impedance have on the amp when comparing differently paired speakers that are wired to the same impedance? Looking forward to seeing the second interview - thanks again pals
@@KohleAudioKult Really? Come on. Stop the madness. Why dont they put EQs and Attenuators in the Cab? Really? That is a good question. I need to become a YT content creator. I can just film myself taking a dump and have better content than this reply to several really really really really stupid questions. Ribbon Speakers in Guitar cabs......................wow.
Hey Sebastian, here my quick 2-cents about your questions! - Perfect Volume for a given speaker? Not really. Give it enough power to start breathing, and don't overload it to the point it loses control and turns into pure noise. Anything in between will be good and fairly constant. - While there is not a specific tech reason to avoid those mixed configurations, it's good to keep in mind that speaker sizes quite often have different sensitivity values and different dispersion patterns, so they can be tricky to balance porperly. - EQ in a cab? If it's an active powered cab, there's no problem. If it's a passive cab, it's simply impossible, unless we're talking about passive filtering. - Attenuator in a cab? Technically possible, quite unpractical. If I have it in a separate box I can use it with any amp and any cab. - Ribbon speakers are simply WAY too fragile and WAY too low in efficiency to be used in any sort of musical instruments amplification. - It's very common that the same speaker model may sound different in its 4, 8 or 16Ohm versions. As a very broad reference, the higher the impedance, the slightly brighter and maybe even slightly more efficient the speaker is. So, in pure theory a cab with 4 16Ohm speakers may sound brighter than an equal cab loaded with 4 of the 4Ohm version of the same speaker, even if the cabs are wired the same total load. Hop this helps! Cheers!
Glenn Fricker needs to watch this video. (I'm sure he will) Not because he's been terribly wrong about anything, but because I think he's relatively on point but needs a bit of refinement in his understanding about tubes and speakers, etc... I think it will benefit his efforts in helping people understand tone and avoid wasting money.
I think Glenn is 100% on point to be frank. He is totally right that the moment you add any sort of distortion to the sound, the minute differences these components make disappear. Add on top of that the mixing and mastering process and there is literally no difference in the EQ graph when switching tubes.
He's basically willing to put everything to the test. You can measure all variables and see the amount of difference, if any, it makes in the sound. His point is to get the most improvement for the least amount of money and to not spend hundreds or thousands on something that's been marketed to hell, but in practice will barely move the needle. After you're done with the hard lifting you can start worrying about the little details to perfect your tone, but it won't yield good results if you're tweaking a shit guitar sound.
@@plumbummusic2051 100%. That's where I agree with him. My only gripe is that he's going just a bit too far and negating things that do have an effect, albeit comparatively small. They're still worth talking about though.
@@RX120D like his claim that all HB pickups essentially sound the same. There's no reason a HB can't vary in tonality, lower to upper-harmonic strength, string pull effect and output as much as a SC. FI, A 2H Wilde L90 sounds wildly different than a DiMarzio SD under the same load.
@@GCKelloch Yeah, pickups absolutely do sound different. Glenn's schtick is that guitarists tend to spend money on things like pickups when they should really be spending money on cabs/speakers. He's 100% on point that all things being equal, the speaker has the greatest effect on in-the-room guitar sounds.
Absolutely love the fryeete power station and the p50e. loved his explanation on the balancing of all the components of an amp as well. I'm a big believer in not judging an amp until i've heard it on the cab the designers used to test it. ie, matching cabs. there are a few amps out there that are really solid no matter what cab you use, but really awesome on their own cab!
I’ve only heard a Fryette live once I believe, Aaron Turner (Sumac). I still remember how good that tone was, really present and dynamic, every nuance, every subtle touch of the strings came through.
Great interview, Steve is a legend. The Yamaha with the parametric was a G-100. It was my first half stack in the 90’s , weighed as much as a tube SVT.
Great interview. The speaker rabbit hole is deep and wide. It has made the greatest difference I’ve heard, alone in a room. A pair of black plates with the speakers, a pair of Jensen C10R finally melded. The feel, the sound, and the fuzzy goodness finally bloomed. A well working amp makes a hell of a difference. Got to start somewhere, unless old limp along amp just sounds great.
As a long time VHT/Fryette user, I can 1000% say that the cabinets and speakers made for Steve's amps (the P50 loaded Fat Bottom personally for me) are an extremely important ingredient of the Fryette sound. They make a huge difference. If you just throw a Pitbull on a typical V30 loaded cab you're missing out.
Best freaking amps on the planet. And I had and still have Mesa's Marshalls, Fenders, Dr Z, Swart. Vox. I have a Sig X and it's a master of all trades and Jack on none.
@@realtruenorth My only problem with the Sig:X was its size and weight, and Synergy has addressed that nicely (at the cost of Steve's rectifier and phase-inverter circuits, sadly).
@@Robstafarian it's worth it for the Fryette iron and circuits like you said,, those massive transformers and KT88 tubes. I'm getting the new Ultralead as soon as they come out.
love the spec talk. Was a motorhead in my teens and quickly learned about the consequences of outspec'ing the factory design of the cars & trucks I owned. Steven's analogies were spot on.
Yeah, this is what I needed. Steve is great at explaining /why/ things are done the way they are. I'm an electronics professional for more than 20 years and learnt a lot from this interview.
I really want to own a 2502 from fryette some time in the future, big fan. I didn't know Steven Fryette was this knowledgeable about amplification, but it totally makes sense in hindsight. Learned a lot. Very impressed with his knowledge and understanding.
Great interview Kristian! And greetings from Down Under. I used to play prog metal in a band with Virgil Donati, and know Steve's amps well..but you asked a question which you hardly ever hear people talk about - "why no parametric mids on a guitar amp". Interesting answer. Thank you 🙏
That was very good. As always, Steven was appealingly generous and sharp - really a treasure on this material. And this channel continues to grow and to treat high-quality guests with respect and good humor. Thanks for your efforts.
About a year after I started playing in 1978 there were these two brothers who were a little older than me that had a band - one was a drummer and the other a guitar player who had the Yamaha solid state G-100 head and 2 cab's. From what I remember that thing actually sounded pretty good for straight up rock power chords. Legend Frank Marino (Mahogany Rush) only uses Acoustic solid state amps when he plays live. I saw them twice in the late 70's and he got great tone.
I bought a VHT Pitbull 45 2x10 back in 98, added a 50 ST head a year later. Had both a decade. Ive used the 2:50:2 power amp as well with a fractal, and still use a power station. always been great stuff.
They definitely have something special in a world of very similar sounding amps. Can’t tell if you’re gonna like them or not, but it’s worth to check them out (Pittbull especially)
Whao, so much knowledge in that video. I had to rewind a few times to try to understand what he meant (I still didn't get everything! ). In the 2010's I was also interested by the Pitbull head but the range of price was also too high for me, I went to a dual rectifier instead. Once in a reharshall me and my band were auditionning a guitar player who came with his VHT Pitbull, I found it really articulate but in terms of sound and agressiveness I was not disaapointed by the dual rec. Anyway, thanx a lot for this very very intructive video this guy has so much knowledge to share, that s really impressive, I ll have to watch it again.
Wow, I haven't seen Stevie in years! VHT used to be located down the street from DW Drums and Anderson Guitarworks in Newbury Park, California. My buddy Joe Ness had a Pitbull back in the day.
Great conversation. I would add that to the player, there isn’t a right or wrong. For instance, regarding conversion of power tubes… maybe the amp wasn’t designed for it, however it may create the sound the player is looking for.
I love these sort of nerdy deep dives into how things work. As for a speaker question, I would love to hear his thoughts on Impulse Responses and how they work.
The Pitbull is probably my favorite module at the moment (I currently have 6) as it's very easy to get a great sound from clean to distortion and everywhere in between. I'm leaning towards getting the Deliverance next because of how the 2 gain knobs function
Steve Fryette designed my favorite amp, the Sig:X. My favorite channel on that was its middle channel, based on his Deliverance amp, and I will forever be grateful that he designed a Synergy preamp module such that I was able sell that truly-iconic amp to my brother and downsize in accordance with my physical limitations (That process will be complete when Synergy releases their forthcoming SYN-20IR head.). I still hold out hope for a Sound City Synergy module. I honestly do not care how this come across: I consider it borderline miraculous that someone not only produced an amp which does exactly what I want, but then reproduced it in a more-manageable and more-affordable form.
Old Sound City 120's rock with a Rat II pedal and a Trainwreck PPiMV Type-I is pretty vital. Funny, the 50W Sound City's sound great if you just cascade Ch1 INTO Ch2. Aka MkI Mesa Boogie style.
The power tube section was extremely interesting, slayed all the myths in my head. So if you want to customize the sound of your amp, maybe your better off with a pedal then? Or go and mod it fully with someone who knows their shit.
EQ pedal in the FX loop and/or in the front is a pretty standard way to modify your amp tone without having to mod the amp. Check out " LambChopper678" YT channel, he has plenty of videos on that subject : www.youtube.com/@LambChopper678/videos
