Tech21 Trademark 30 (with clips! and pics!)(for Bob)

Ok, so by now most of you have heard the story - the Nomad's kind of fucked at the moment, and pending eventual un-fucking, I figured I'd better grab something to practice/jam with. Enter: Tech-21 Trademark-30.



Thar she blows, in the corner formerly occupied by my Nomad (which I'm now using as a chair of sorts, since mine's down at our kitchen table. )


30 second review synopsis before we get into some clips (I'll post a full one eventually, I swear ) - a tube amp it ain't, but dial it in right and you'd be hard pressed to complain. For a while I thought it was causing a bit more "ear fatigue" than the Nomad did, and maybe it is - I'll do some lengthy A/B'ing when I get her up and running again. However, I think what it was is this thing's way louder than you'd expect it to be. Also, it doesn't handle medium gain settings as well as the Nomad (understandably) especially if you start muting. However, the lower gain preamp sets with the gain pretty high seem to help it a bit.

Features: preamp - three types, three flavors, and three speaker types - "Tweed" (think Bassman), "Brittish" (Think Marshall), and "California" (Think Recto), then "clean," "high gain," and "hot" - three increasing gain ranges for the gain knob - and then flat, UK, and US, which is, well, flat, bright and scooped, and dark and bassy. Gain, then active bass, mid, and treble (+-12dB in eaqch direction), Level, and Reverb - an Acoustonics or something studio-grade built in reverb tank.

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ANYWAY... MP3's are 192kbps so the media player might not work and you might have to download them. Here we have a clip I recorded with Bob in mind - I worked this out on my acoustic one night, and finished recording the demo below then sort of broke into it, and thought it sounded cool enough to start off my clip-story with it. This is the "British" preamp voicing, in "clean," with the gain up maybe 3/4 and the EQ relatively flat, with the speaker set to "flat" and a bit of verb. Just the amp and a SM57 here - theonly post-processing I did was boosting the volume to CD levels.

Media Player

Click here to download.

Then, once you get done rolling in the isles, something a little heavier. Excuse the shitty bass playing and whatnot, I suck.

Media Player

Click here to download.

Rhythm is Cali, hi-gain with the gain near halfway, and I forget which speaker - this was recorded sunday. Lead is British, I think clean with the gain pretty high, and again I forget which speaker. EQ was probably flat-ish, too - when you can boost or cut 12dB in eithewr direction, it sort of pays off to be conservative. This is probably the first time Chris will actually like my rhythm tone. Mix is kind of rough, so sorry.



So, now that we've established the Trademark 30 IS, in fact, :