Farting distortion / Blanket like tone with pedals

ChrisCox1994

I'm having a slight problem with my Cornford Hurricane, every time I try and boost it, even with low gain with my SL drive I hear a muffled kind of distortion where it sounds as if theres a blanket over the notes and only a muffled low end thump comes out, doesnt happen with my Badger 30 and only really happens on the neck pickup.

I've plugged into an external cab, still happens, so its not the speaker, I've cut all the bass and boosted highs and mids to no avail as well.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? 

I read something on another forum about "blocking distortion" but don't really understand what it is / how I can solve it...

I asked a while ago on the Cornford forum and got the reply "dont use pedals" haha...

ICBM

ChrisCox1994 said:

I asked a while ago on the Cornford forum and got the reply "dont use pedals" haha…

They've got that backwards. It's don't use Cornfords.

I haven't tried a lot of pedals with Cornfords but the ones I have didn't sound good at all with anything in front - the amps are very congested-sounding to me, have too much gain early in the circuit and are quite muddy. Cutting the bass or boosting the highs on the amp will make no difference because the tone stack comes after where the problem is.

ChrisCox1994

haha! I have an irrational love for it though as it was my first "proper" amp but since getting the suhr it just doesnt compare. I'm probably fighting a losing battle...

I've got an ecc81 valve lying around, if i put that in v1 gain stage would that do anything? or just make the amp quieter/less gainy? ICBM 

ICBM

Be careful - V1 has an excessively large plate resistor value on the first stage (part of the problem) which could end up dissipating too much power and burning out - you would need to make some measurements to be sure it would be safe. V2 is worse, it has the same value on both stages! It is a very oddly designed amp.

Really, what you need to do is mod the amp to lower all those resistor values, remove the various tone-strangling resistors and caps it has… and then it might have a fighting chance of sounding good and not farting out with pedals.

hotpickups

So this is what people mean when saying if an amp is good with pedals in front. The hurricane I had I used it on its own with no pedals but loved its lead tone.

Cabicular

Different amps are voiced differently it's the opposite of one of those kids games where you put the shape in the correct hole. If you have one that has a natural banana shaped EQ then it will sound best with an apple shaped pedal like a tube screamer
What was I talking about again?

timmysoft

Cabicular;991316" said:

Different amps are voiced differently it's the opposite of one of those kids games where you put the shape in the correct hole. If you have one that has a natural banana shaped EQ then it will sound best with an apple shaped pedal like a tube screamer
What was I talking about again?

I love putting my banana shape into her Apple