New GM40 owner! +questions

Thanks Graham, I will try and find one in my city and try it out.

JonnyNonsense wrote:Thanks Graham, I will try and find one in my city and try it out.

No problem,make sure it's the Jim Root cab,it's a very different cab from the PPC range of Orange cabs,hope you like it & i'm not talking rubbish & sending you on a wasted journey

I'm sure you're not, and regardless, it's always good to try things out.

I am in London but not sure if it there are many Orange dealerships here

UPDATE

So I went out today and tried three different cabs with my GM40.

I tried the Hughes and Kettner TM212, The Orange Jim Root 2X12, and another Boogie 2X12 (this time a non-recto, non-oversized one). I had already written off Mesa cabs for the GM40, but I ran into a friend who was literally standing outside his music shop and he invited me in to try it, so I thought 'why not?'

I have to say of the three - shock horror - the H&K cab was the best. The Jim Root cab was pretty good and sounded absolutely amazing when I went to the Ultra channel. No surprises there I suppose; it is designed for Jim Root.  It was really hard to decide between the Jim Root and the TM212, but I felt some of the GM40's tones were still kinda bright with the Jim Root cab, whereas the GM40 cab was more balanced and sounded good on all 4 channels.

Lastly, I will add that the Mesa cab I tried today was much better than the recto cab I tried a few days ago. It did not sound as bright as the recto cab, and was much more responsive to EQ changes. But the H&K cab sounded slightly better and I couldn't hear anything from the Mesa cab that would justify spending £400 more. (Not denying that the Mesa cabs are good though)

Overall I can say that any GM40 owner should be very happy with either that H&K cab or the Orange Jim Root cab. The Jim Root cab is about 90% of the sound of the H&K, so considering that it is £100-120 cheaper, it's probably better value for money than a TM212.

Bear in mind though, I did not A/B these cabs. I used the same guitar and amp for each one, but I tried them out in different environments, with 15-120 minutes gap between. It might be the case that the crap sound I experienced from the first Mesa cab was down to the acoustics of the room. To anyone reading this thread and trying to decide on a cab, I suggest you try them all for yourself. YMMV.

Gonna order the TM212 for delivery. I have also ordered a replacement set of JJ tubes. I have a decent home recording setup, so I might do a before/after recording to demonstrate what difference (if any) the tube change makes. I also might do a comparison vid between the H&K TM212 and my Marshall 1960B cab.

I for one would be very interested in hearing your studio quality before and after recordings re your valve changes. You would absolutely have to keep every other aspect exactly the same for it to be valid in any way. That means same cabinet and location, same settings for everything on the amp, same guitar with same settings, same settings exactly on recording gear, and same programme content (what you play). The difficulty would be in making your playing style exactly compatible which is obviously impossible but you should be able to get near enough.

Keep us up to date please.

Regarding the cabinets:

JonnyNonsense wrote:Bear in mind though, I did not A/B these cabs. I used the same guitar and amp for each one, but I tried them out in different environments, with 15-120 minutes gap between.

Unfortunately there is your problem Jonny.  Unless you can A/B them with only a few seconds between, the results are just very vague without any rigourous weight behind them.  It has been shown that the ear resets and recalibrates after only a few seconds and your memory of what you heard before becomes unclear even though you think it is spot on.  i.e. you remember absolutely what isn't!  We all do this, it is something hard wired into the brain and auditory system.

For the testing of two cabinets to be reliable it must be an A/B test repeated a high number of times with only seconds between each option and it should be performed so you don't know which cabinet you are playing through at any time.  That means having them in an environment where you can't see them, they sound like they are coming from the same spot, someone is setting them up on the fly and not telling you which is playing at any time, the selection of which one is live is being made at random (based on a coin toss?).  You then guess which you think it is and all of the results are recorded and analysed by someone afterwards who understands the statistics to tell you whether there is any significant leaning in your results.

I'm afraid it just isn't valid to listen to each cabinet once with a long gap between then say which is best and why.  That said, it is all we have to make our buying decisions on but once you accept the flaws in the process you can still get some helpful suggestion as to which you genuinely prefer.  And of course the non-rigourous things like look and brand preference are just as valid to you when you buy.  People should just not make those types of criteria into the "sounds awesome dood" type of advice you see too often, it just plain 'aint. (And no, I don't mean that you have done that here. )

Of course, I'm not claiming I conducted a scientific experiment. My judgements of each cab were based on my reactions at the time e.g 'that sounds bright', rather than how they sounded next to each other. If I do the sound test before/after the tube change, I will just leave the cab miced up, and I'll use the same patches on the GM0 to ensure the settings are the same.

Spot on Jonny, and apologies if I sounded critical in any way, it wasn't intended to be.  I wasn't meaning you had missed out on doing it right or were trying to make your impressions sound more solid than they were.  I knew you just meant 'impressions'.  It's perfectly safe to change the valves over with the lid off the amp and test it in that condition.  Lessening the time between comparisons is always a good thing.

If I can suggest something else that might be useful, I would also try your comparison with the original valves in against a single valve change (or an output pair change)!  That way you will get an idea of how much change a single valve will make.  Most valve sound comparison claims are in that form, "I put my single 1947 Mullard ABC123 in place of my JJ one and it made it like a new amp!"  It is rarely, "I changed out the whole valve set and it sounded a bit better."  Once you have tried that and got your impressions there, then swap out the whole set.

It would be interesting to find out if the differences you perceive can be balanced out with the tone controls.  If the new valves take off a lot of the top end bite then could the tone controls have done that with the originals?

(Of course you realise, you could be about to make history and pass into Forum Folklore. )

Got the TM212 cab today, it sounds damn good in my room. Seems pretty balanced EQ wise, and holy shit it has some low end. Having to turn the resonance way down so I don't piss of the neighbours as it is almost making the floor shake! I am running the amp on 1 watt and still have the volume set at 1. Jesus, this thing is loud.

My tubes are on the way; if they get here in time for the weekend I might do some recording. I'm not sure if I can be bothered to do a really in-depth test, that sounds a little arduous, but I'll do a before/after of the whole set, minimum.

Update. Despite having the mother of all hangovers, I just took out the stock tubes and replaced all of them with JJs. To my ears there is no difference whatsoever!

I also did some recording before and after, to see if the recordings revealed any difference. This is not a scientific comparison by any means, as I didn't play exact the same every time etc. But each recording captures a crunch sound, hard rock sound, metal sound and a solo lead sound. You can switch between them in parallel, the sections of the different demos are the same in length and order. I can't hear any significant difference.

So my tube change was possibly a waste of time, but hey, at least I have some spares. I also got to test this amp out a bit more and see how it sounds recorded with the TM212 cab. I am really impressed at how good at is and how versatile it sounds! It sounds almost like I recorded with 4 different amps.

Apologies for the sloppy double tracking..

https://soundcloud.com/jonnynonsense/sets/amp-tests

Good stuff. I'm glad you are able to take your own view of what you hear, that's a rare thing and it will get you closer to your desired sound faster for far less outlay. No one seems to believe that, in the field in which we are playing, if you can't measure it you can't hear it! And the psychological pressure to hear what you want to hear is always there with all of us and absolutely apparent in some cases. I've listened to your recordings and, like you I can't hear any really significant differences to worry about. There may be some in there, the whole recording, digitising and replaying chain has its own limitations which may mask a little of the fine detail, but that's a lot less significant than the noise of the rest of a band in a bar room situation.

You are absolutely right for my money, replacing with a decent set of valves is a good step as long as you don't go silly on your choices, as it leaves you a perfectly passable set of spares to use in a pinch.

I'm amazed you describe the TM212 as having a powerful low end knowing that it has V30s in it. I have never played one myself so I shouldn't have preconceived ideas, but I have a pair of V30s in 1x12" cabs I have used and they are a bit thin and harsh with the GM36 to my ears. The H&K V30s are specially voiced for them so we must assume that that really works, either that or I am talking bollocks yet again. It has been known!

It is hard to judge the low end fairly in the environment I'm using it to be honest - it's a small bedroom, and the amp just sounds ridiculously loud, even at 1w with the volume down. It is really making the floor resonate! But it might sound totally different in a larger space next to bass and drums etc.

I running mine on top of two tm112 cabs. I have swapped one of my v30 out for the never celestion alnico creamback. It's an expensive speaker but it's tonal bliss and the two speakers compliment each other perfectly. With my tube rolling adventures I have noticed big tone difference primarily on the clean channel. It was suggested to me by tube guru to feed a short plate v1 into and long plate in v2 of the pre amp and boy was he right about that arrangement having positive results

"Tube guru"? I would assume he is some sort of practical tech guy Dave. Has he got any measured difference in the valve setups? i.e. Is there any frequency response or transient response difference that can be seen?

Here comes the lecture

Not at all Dave, I was careful how I worded the response to give you the opportunity to follow up with your (his) supporting proof, (and I take it there is no evidence?) So you are basically making massive claims for things that can only just be demonstrated as significant on a site which takes a serious view of removing the mythology surrounding guitar audio and you don't want to hear any evidence which might show it to be wrong? I do agree there is a difference between some valves but those differences are very small and that can be clearly shown if they are put on a reasonable test bed which is 100s of times more sensitive than your ears and measured. And the fact that many of these exaggerations vanish completely when they are tested under double blind listening tests isn't relevant?

Ok, I won't "lecture" but I will always put the other side so youngsters and those who aren't experienced in this are not so easily drawn into the snake oil that floats around. And it's very very expensive snake oil with too much of it going into the wallets of "gurus". Sorry you are more interested in becoming a "guru" yourself than in looking into the truth of the matter and seeking out and checking others' facts.

If you think I am out of order in the way I respond to posts like yours, (i.e. I question them with factual info which can be scrutinised and checked out), you could always have a word with Hwystar who started the site and still runs it behind the scenes and tell him you are unhappy with me.

If you're saying that people can't hear differences in tubes of the same type in any given amp without some sort of computer graph providing you with visual proof of sound well that's flat out bullshit. If when I take a crap Chinese tube out of v1 and replace it with a 10m and you can't hear the difference then there is nothing I can say to convince you. You either hear it or you don't

Dave, I know you don't want to get into a protracted discussion about this stuff as you don't believe in the objective method anyway and just as you said, "You either [understand] it or you don't".  I appreciate your position, I have met it often enough.  My only aim with all of this is to offer some protection and future for the younger, less experienced, less well off and more easily hoodwinked guitarists that there is more to knowledge about this sort of stuff than following the guru led "common knowledge" of the guitar world which has been around since the first amps were produced and is now totally debunked.  Your ears are the worst instrument for objective comparison you could come up with.  Shepard Tone  To suggest that you can believe what you hear without any objective backup is ridiculous.  Without technical corroboration to what you hear no value can be applied to that position.  It's the difference between engineering and bodging.  It could be said to hold for you but certainly not for anyone else, hence the problem with recommending it as "...big tone difference primarily on the clean channel".  You didn't even try to describe what the difference in tone was, only that it was "big".  That's not helpful to anyone.  And your refusal to have what you claim criticised in a civilised and rational manner is not acceptable here.  If I am wrong in my approach please show me where I am wrong and I will learn and grow.

What you think of as big and important might be absolutely irrelevant or even invisible to others but by the time they have found out they have shelled out their cash for no gain.  All down to your glowing recommendation.

Irocdave12 wrote:If you're saying that people can't hear differences in tubes of the same type in any given amp without some sort of computer graph providing you with visual proof of sound well that's flat out bullshit.

Not at all.  What I am saying is the reverse, that if you think you can hear a difference, as test equipment is much more sensitive than your ear and the workings of a valve in an audio circuit are well understood, you should be able to measure it.  If you can't then "that's flat out bullshit" and you didn't hear it at all.

Irocdave12 wrote:If when I take a crap Chinese tube out of v1 and replace it with a 10m and you can't hear the difference then there is nothing I can say to convince you.

I use JJs myself.  They are affordable, easy to get, and I can hear a slight difference when I replace the stock Chinese with them.  I don't detect too much that I would guarantee is different with other brands over the JJ. All this is subtle at best.  However, the difference is important enough to me to have made the change once I needed new valves.  When I post about it I try to be careful to say that I may prefer it but there is not a lot of difference and others may even prefer the originals.  I do know of others who actually prefer the Chinese stock valves and hold onto them, it suits their taste and needs better.  Most are too wary of saying that in an open forum!  I wonder why?  After all, why should it be called a "crap" Chinese tube?  Have you come across the problem of DC Coupled Cathode Followers exceeding the maximum grid/cathode voltage of the valve at warm up and destroying some good quality types? Some cheaper Russian and Chinese versions are actually recommended by gurus as being the most sturdy in that role.  I wonder....

Irocdave12 wrote:You either hear it or you don't

There is a third alternative to that.  You think you hear it when it actually isn't there!  That is why we need rigourous engineered testing to prove claims and show that what you hear is really what you think it is.

I swear my amp is actually sounding slightly different now - but it could be my imagination.

Haven't gigged the GM40 yet but I played it at proper band volume for the first time a few days ago. Sounded awesome. My only complaint is that I get feedback very easily with the GM40, moreso than with other gear I've got. Might be able to sort it by tweaking the noise gate though (although I feel that this can noticeably reduce the guitar's attack).

Got my first gigs with the GM40 on the weekend

Played 2 gigs with the GM40 this weekend. Was really happy with the sound and overall experience from the amp. After the first gig, I shit you not, 3 people told me how good my guitar sounded!

Turning the noise gate up seemed to make a lot of difference with regards to feedback. Can't wait to gig with this amp again!

I can also report that the GM40 sounds absolutely excellent through a Peavey Cab (not an EVH cab - the older ones).

That has been my experience.
After playing in a number of live situations, I think this amp sounds great in a live band situation - it really cuts through without being overly loud.

Agreed. I think H&K really build their amps around live situations, they cut through really well live.

Went over to Holland this week to play a small outdoor festival. As I couldn't bring a cab, I just used the RedBox straight into the desk. I have a radio transmitter so I went out front to hear how everything sounded a couple of times. The GM40 sounded excellent! I used a load of different sounds, and they all came through really well. Sustain for eternity on singing lead notes. Can't get over how good this amp is.