Harmony Central

[SuperSwede]

OMG what have they done with the good old HC site??? I'm a user review section addict but the new site is impossible to navigate!

[Zip]

http://www.harmonycentral.com/message/26590542#26590542

[FrankenFretter***]

A fair bit of outcry. I've heard that they're jumping ship over there, and some of them may end up here. I wonder why they had to mess up the site like that?

[SuperSwede]

Well I cant say I blame them, worst web design ever.

[Tibernius]

Well I cant say I blame them, worst web design ever.

I've seen some very, very badly designed websites, but that is definitely the hardest website I've seen to navigate.
And even better, my bookmarks to the reviews there no longer work.

[markb]

Ugh!

[kiteman]

Ugh! is right.

[Duff]

Evidently about the big sponsors making more and faster money. I can't see how! What a S**t site. Used to offer some decent info if you took it with a grain of salt, but this new thing is foolish, pitiful and ridiculous, not to mention an insult and an abomination.

They took a great site and destroyed it in order to give us garbage that has almost zero value and will have even less value as people stop using it.

My seaches showed up only individual hits on guitars and not the old full listing of reviews with a summary at the top and MF pricing and te Mfg link to their website.

Am I missing something or is this really F**k*d up?

[Eric***]

Yeah, it's weird -- I requested my password to be reset, but they never emailed it to me. I kind of gave up after that point. I might eventually figure out how to navigate the reviews, but right now it's pretty annoying.

In other news, I'm about to take my Tech 21 TM60 out of the house for the first time and let the world hear it. Wish me luck!

[FrankenFretter***]

Yeah, it's weird -- I requested my password to be reset, but they never emailed it to me. I kind of gave up after that point. I might eventually figure out how to navigate the reviews, but right now it's pretty annoying.

In other news, I'm about to take my Tech 21 TM60 out of the house for the first time and let the world hear it. Wish me luck!

Good luck, Eric!

[sunvalleylaw]

Bummer about the reviews. I shopped the classifieds once in a while too. But I did not care for that discussion forum.

[Duff]

How'd your real world test of the TM60 turn out?

My son, 19, came by today with his SWR Workingpro 15 he, much to my delight, collected from his old band he had been letting "use" it, along with other things. This, however, probably being the most valuable single item. I was VERY glad he got it. One of the band members called me up and tried to squash the move and I let him have it bluntly, telling him that the RICH and CHEAP parents of some of the band members should buy the band a decent PA of suitable durability and power, instead of relying on the assumed kindness of me, a retired and limitted income dude that originally bought the great equipment for myself and later my son, giving some of my best stuff to my son as I got new stuff, like my MIJ 80' vintage white Fender Jazz bass. I play a new Squire Jazz bass with modded Fender Noisless J Bass pickups, which are, as few are aware, incredibly awesome and fabulous sounding pups for a J bass.

He was grooving on his Epi Thunderbird Goth bass thru his little Vox T-20 I think it is; an old style NOS bass amp with the vintage grill cloth, and playing along with his friend from college in Pittsburg. His friend played my son's hot rodded Epi Studio ebony black "beauty" with duncan covered pups thru my new Peavey Classic 30, playing "Smoke on the Water" and a variety of other jams at rather high volume, sounding great. They got into the groove and my son smiled. I was touched, needlesstosay. Passion rekindled.

He said he is really going to get a smile on his face when he plugs into the SWR. I hope he puts his talent to profitable use and auditions for a few bands in Pittsburg, a major party town.

I am SO glad he got that amp back from them before they sold it or something. I think they were using it as sound reinforcement as a PA or something in their Screamo band. They still, unfortunately, are "using" my
80's Peavey TNT115 bass amp with the awesome black widow speaker in it, and my son's hard earned year old MikroKorg synthesizer keyboard, vocorder. "Using" is a pretty good word here, considering that the parents of a lot of the members of the band have BIG money and I'm retired and just trying to provide my talented son with some good sh&t like I never had as a youngster. I believe in good stuff.

Glad you got a great amp and hope it served you well, Eric.

[Eric***]

How'd your real world test of the TM60 turn out?

Went pretty well. I was having trouble on channel 2, as it had a tendency to get really muddy with the EQ at noon. That, along with the mid control, was something I didn't have a ton of time to mess with in the practice beforehand. Also, I couldn't get a lot of volume on the clean channel, as I was trying to keep the mids down and the clearance replacement pups I have in the guitar are 'vintage' (read: low output).

However, I spent some time with it later and think I found a way to get it to cut through better by turning up the highs with the EQ. It takes time to find the sweet spots with each guitar and amp, but I'm starting to get a feel for it. There are a lot of nice tones in this amp.

[Duff]

Back in the old days some of my friends recommended using at least a 100 watt or close amp, such as an 80 watt for playing decent size clubs to make it thru the mix.

Amps were mostly tube amps back then, so to have a margin of available power a 200 or larger solid state will probably be a good idea to have some clean headroom and some reserve power, to make it in a good sized club.

Sounds like a lot of watts, but it isn't really.

As you said, mess with the pickup height on the low outputers, try to tweak the EQ. Tweaking the EQ might take your sound in the opposite direction from which you want to go, however.

Another option would be to put a strong booster in front of the amp to increase the signal going to the preamp. Whether these are detrimental to the preamp is questionable. On tube preamps I think it is more important that you don't turn up the level too high or it can have a negative effect on the tube preamp. Solid state may or may not be more forgiving.

Plus if others in your band have heavy equipment, and a slammer drummer, you are already going to have a challenge to cut thru the mix, expecially if they are insistent in having the "who is the loudest" power struggle.

Hey, the amp quest is never over. An extension cab of the right ohms would probably help a lot if it will use an extension speaker without muting the internal speaker or possibly improve things even if it does mute the internal speaker. They can probably be had cheaply and even can be hand built to unproven outcome, but plans can be downloaded for basic designs.

Good luck.

Maybe try some cheap GFS hot pups, like the Little Killer Bridge pup if you have a strat type, or the calibrated set. I have a strat with all 15 to 16 ohm Seymour Duncan humbucking single coil sized pups that really drive the preamp. So much so that the preamp on some amps goes into distortion very early in the sweep of the knob, causing less than beautiful distortion; power tube distortion being the best distortion, in my opinion, on my type amps. Or to economize, just get one super high output pup and put it in the bridge or somewhere for when you want that ability to hit the amp hard.

Hope this helps.

[duhvoodooman***]

I've never been a big user of the HC site, but I do go there from time to time for the gear reviews. Maybe I just got lucky, but I went to the main page, clicked on the "Products & Reviews" link, and it takes you to a page where you fill in a filter field (by category or brand) and then select from the filtered list. Got me right to where I wanted to be. Didn't look as good as it used to, but the info I was looking for was there....

[oldguy]

Yeah, but it's phony. My review of my Wilburn is now credited to J-buoy, although it's my words. I've checked, and it seems like they've kept reviews, but they're hard to tell who actually wrote 'em. Here's the link.

http://www.harmonycentral.com/products/115084

[Robert****]

Yeah, but it's phony. My review of my Wilburn is now credited to J-buoy, although it's my words. I've checked, and it seems like they've kept reviews, but they're hard to tell who actually wrote 'em. Here's the link.

http://www.harmonycentral.com/products/115084

Well, Versatare's summary was hilarious! haha!