Dave Grafe
From:
Hudson River Valley NY
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Posted 20 Mar 2023 8:09 am |
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A few thoughts come to mind:
(1) The Princeton Amp is not designed for clean tone when pushed, and at 40 watts only gigging with a pedal steel will definitely give you occasion to push it hard, especially if you have an inefficient speaker. The overdriven distortion that sounds great with a Telecaster is way harsh to a pedal steel.
(1a) Being a tube amp that would be the first thing to check, replacing each tube one at a time with known good ones. Just being new does not guarantee a tube is good, and some tubes (JJ's come immediately to mind) tend to come with a bit of distortion built in, not to mention a propensity for early failure.
(2) The 5th and 6th strings can easily ring behind both the bar and the nut if not well damped with the fingers of the left hand.
(3) Some chorus and short (<80ms) delay settings can boost certain frequencies to the point of oscillation, i.e. creating nasty artifacts from phase interference.
(3) A torn or creased speaker cone or damaged voice coil can generate really horrid resonant artifacts at specific frequencies. The TT is a fairly efficient speaker but as susceptible to damage as any other so cannot be ruled out. You don't have to exceed a speaker's power rating to blow it, square wave distortion will do it at a fraction of its rated wattage.
(4) Rarely but occasionally a guitar cord or its plugs will develop capacitance that affects the tone and response of the signal passing through it. Not likely but not to be ruled out.
Don't blame the guitar or pickups for what appears to me to likely be an amplifier problem, the fact that this issue manifests itself with multiple pickups and volume pedals suggests this is where your problem lies. Get your hands on a known good amp with at least double the power of your Shaw, and try it through known good speakers AND your existing TT to be certain of the culprit. Not rocket science but simple troubleshooting process. Start at one end and work your way to the other step by step, and you'll get 'er sorted. Working logically you may find more than one issue contributing to your problem, or it may just be as simple as using a bigger amp on stage.
Best of luck! |
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