Tag: gear

New switches for the MIG-100

Apparently my MIG-100 was all original. The plastic standby switch finally broke a few weeks ago, and I took it to Matt Weed of Atomium Amplification to replace both (the power switch was three-way for some reason). Here is what Matt has to say about them in his post.

Sovtek Mig-100, all original except for the new power/standby toggle switches I installed (the plastic originals are awful and break all the time). Not exactly a Marshall 2203 but very close. The distinctive sound of these amps mostly comes from the circuit tweaks Sovtek made to get more reliable operation from Russian military tetrodes – 2.2k screen resistors, for example, to limit screen dissipation. The B+ is 520V!

I love this amp, it’s loud, sounds great, and takes pedals well. Easily my favorite amp.

Sovtek Mig100

 

Remember how I played a Sovtek Mig100 in Berlin over the summer? I’ve been on the hunt for one at a good price ever since. I finally tracked one down.

Though I haven’t had a chance to really crank it, it’s extremely loud, clean, and warm sounding. Not brittle at all. It’s missing the back grate that protects the tubes, but I think I can make one fairly easily. The plastic jacks and switches are still there, so maybe soon I’ll get Matt Weed to replace them with metal ones. Or maybe I’ll wait until something breaks…

Now I have to decide which amp to sell – my Laney GH100L or two-channel Dual Rectifier.

Gear for Catharsis shows

Last weekend Catharsis played a few shows in Europe. We made arrangements to borrow amps, so here’s a rundown of what I used. Originally I was planning to bring a small pedalboard with a tuner, overdrive, and distortion pedal, but that was too much to fit in my backpack. I took my distortion pedal and a Snark clip-on tuner instead.

BLITZ – Oslo, Norway: Sunn Model T reissue

sunn model-t

I was excited to see this on stage when we got to the venue. I used the clean channel (channel 1) and it didn’t sound so good. The distortion was a little too gritty. Thinking back, I should have tried cleaning up the dirty channel and using my distortion pedal as a boost. Lesson learned.

 

LUTAKKO Fest – Jyväskylä, Finland: Engle E656

engle e656

I was intimidated by this amp. Too many knobs, switches, and options for my liking. But we had almost an hour to set up and line-check so I took my time and explored the amp. I ended up using channel 3, which is a high-gain channel, but I turned the gain as low as possible, using my pedal as a boost. The cleans weren’t very clean, but it was okay. This amp sounded way better than the Sunn.

 

Cyklopen – Stockholm, Sweden: Marshall JMP 100

Would you believe I forgot take a picture of this classic amp? Sound-wise, meh… It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t what I expected. It sounded good, but I think my issues were with the room; concrete floor, metal walls and ceiling. There was a weird boomy mid-range to everything, and I had trouble controlling feedback.

EDIT: Someone posted surprisingly good video footage so you can hear (and see) it in action.

 

Köpi – Berlin, Germany: Sovtek Mig 100

sovtek mig 100

This amp ruled! It sounded great, and was plenty loud. No uncontrollable squeally feedback. I was so impressed, I’m seriously considering buying one (after selling one of my current amps, of course).