efinger Messages: 18 Registered: April 2010 Location: North Carolina
Junior Member
i use alot of different effect pedals with my kustoms. Are there any precautions to take when using modern pedals with the amps? I read on the site that you could possibly break some of the internals when using certain effects.
thank you!
Stevem posted awhile back I think about something to do with a pedal maybe being too "hot" and could burn out something in the head. I know when I use mine I never turn them all the way up just because the amp gets too damned loud. Maybe he will post back on what it was he was talking about.
stevem Messages: 4733 Registered: June 2004 Location: NY
Senior Member
Yes, you can pop the first gain stage transistor in any solid state amp not just Kustom's by pumping in too hot / high a signal level in!
This is likely one of the reasons why they started building distortion circuits into SS amp even though all of them sound pretty poor, but hey go back and listen to that crappy sound on the intro to Satisfaction with that Gibson stomp box, so I guess it's a matter of what you grew up with!
The way to set up any SS amp to be safe is to have the volume of your pedal output drive the amp to be no more than let's say 25 to 50 % louder then your guitar would be if you where plugged straight into the amp.
If you have a voltmeter you hook it up across you input cable , set it for AC volts and confirm that on your most pedal boosted setting that you read no more than 1 volt.
Some mid way hot humbuckers can crank out 3/4 / .750 of a volt all on there own, and then again Some of Mr Ds Strat style humbuckers can't top .200 volt, and Kustoms where set up to get this .200 volt or less of input signal to a loud volume!
You need to watch it with modern keyboards also as the Rhodes and and other keyboards of back then output nothing like the stuff from the late 70s on up!
efinger Messages: 18 Registered: April 2010 Location: North Carolina
Junior Member
thank you sir! for the reply. So basically dont turn your pedals up too loud on SS amps. Ill keep their output below the guitar pots for now. I will try messing about with volt/amp meters with my gear, guitars, etc and see what they are putting out. Never really thought how their output would translate into different voltages. No brainer i guess. Should be interesting to mess around with and learn from. thank you for the tips.