New member - GM36, Port City OS 1x12, Nova Drive and H9 rig and question

Hello everyone. I just picked up a GM36 and have been messing around with it but found this site and hoping to get up to speed on the nuances of this cool ass amp quickly.

A little bit about me: Been playing for about 30 years, started off playing surf rock (Ventures/Shadows) but quickly moved on to VH, Satch, Vai, Johnson, Malmsteen. Although I still play a lot of that stuff, I'm usually playing in a Top 40 cover, blues or country bands..... I like to play different styles. My first amp was a 70's Silverface Fender Twin and since then I've gone through every major amp designer along with a number of boutique builders.

My favorite rig was an Egnater M4 dual channel preamp into a TCE D-Two, M- One and a Lexicon MPX1 > parallel mixed by a Rane SM26 mixer > Randall RT2/50 power amp. Awesome rig but a back breaker. My 2nd favorite rig was a Chandler Tube driver rack into a Budda SuperDrive 18 head with a Chandler SDE-2 Stereo delay and Peavey Valverb Rack reverb unit and an ISP Decimator pro rack in the loop. Not quite as heavy but still a lot of gear to haul around. I think that gives you an idea of what kind of sound I'm going for and the expectations I've got.

Now that I'm in my 40's and I'm not playing out as much but when I do I'd like to have a light rig so after serious thought, I decided to sell everything and start from scratch. At this point, I've have a GM36 with the footboard into a Port City OS 1x12 cab loaded with a Celestion Neo Century Vintage speaker. I've changed out the tubes for a set of JJ pre and power amp tubes. Guitar-wise I'm primarily using a Ernie Ball 20th Anniversary Silhouette with 2 humbuckers.

Although the sounds are good with the GM36, I can't say they're great. Since I'm only practicing at home and playing out live (no studio work) the effects are good enough but I think I'm going to end up picking up a few pedals that I've had in the past that I think might work well with this rig, Eventide H9 and TCE NovaDrive.

In the past I've used the h9 for it's compressor, eq, phaser, wah and fuzz algos before the preamp and sometimes the unique delays, mods and reverb in the loop and plan on doing the same with the GM36. There's a patch on the H9 compressor that allows you to tweak the eq to make a Les Paul sound like a Strat and vice versa. Super useful when you don't want to bring more than 1 guitar. The NovaDrive has one of the best analog overdrive and distortion tones I've heard from a dirt pedal and I'm excited about getting a clean glassy distortion that the 3 dirt channels on the GM36 just can't do. And both pedals are midi. Hoping to pick up both pedals in the next week or so.

Just curious if anyone else is using the NovaDrive with this amp and what your thoughts are.

I see a few folks have an H9 and I'm curious as to how you have it wired up. I plan on using 1 channel before the NovaDrive/preamp and the other channel in the loop of the GM36 and using the internal switching system to decide where the H9 is being used in the signal path. Has anyone experienced pops or volume fluctuations using this signal path?

Hi Datriani, good to see you here. First name's not "Ko" is it? (See what I did there? Ko Datriani? Keyboard shift right? You must get that a lot I guess. )

I can't help you myself I'm afraid, I run an even more simple rig than you do. I can see what you are getting at but the nuances of this will be beyond me completely. That said I am sure there must be a couple of H9 or NovaDrive users out there who can swap info with you.

I can say that I agree with your liking of decent guitar modelling, in less demanding situations at least. I have just got my hands on a Line6 Variax JTV59 which does this really well. For example, it's Rickenbacker isn't a real RB of course, but it's close enough to give me a good Tom Petty and early Beatles. It offers me a decent acoustic sound, much better than any acoustic pedal I've heard, for strumming numbers. And it does a really good Spanky Strat neck+middle tone too. I still use the LP for standard numbers of course but the Line6 fills in every other need including occasional slide. Not so good in a studio but, just as you say, very useful to cut down on the number of guitars you carry around to gigs. And having the LTV's ability to instantly retune to alternatives at the turn of a switch, it's a boon for Open-D, Open-G and ZZTop Drop-top slide in different numbers. These system's are never perfect but often interesting enough in their own right to be likeable.

Hi Bordonbert. I've looked at the Variax stuff in the past and it definitely looked pretty interesting and versatile. I'll probably try it at some point.

I ended up going the Roland GR-55 route which was perfect when the keyboardist for the band I was in at the time quit in the middle of a gig. I worked out the guitar and keys parts and switched and/or blended between the Switchblade's internal sounds and the GR-55. The Switchblade had a parallel FX loop so I just ran the synth signal into the loop of amp and used the GR-55 to midi control the amp presets. A compact but powerful set up.

What kind of rig are you running?