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Although I own and love using a THD Univalve (yes, I have 2 foot lockers full of tubes), I am also a fan of the Yamaha DG-Stomp, UD-Stomp, and Magicstomp. I recently was able to acquire a DG-1000 preamp that was used by Allan Holdsworth. Pretty cool! Because of this acquisition, I began casting about for a power amp that the DG-1000 could drive. I settled on the Crate Powerblock because of its ability to be used as a power amp in addition to its use as "regular" guitar amp, its light weight, stereo capabilities, MOSFET circuitry and low cost.
The combination of the DG-1000 and the Powerblock ended up sounding really quite good through my 1X12 cab loaded with an old Celestion G12H100. So good, in fact, that I started thinking it was sounding almost as good as the Univalve. I decided to do a set of clips of the DG to demonstrate its range of tones. I also ended up doing some "solo" Powerblock and Univalve clips as a comparison. In all cases, I used my Carvin HF2 (Fatboy). Take a listen and see what you think!
Crate Powerblock - The PB all by itself. First clip is just the guitar straight into the amp, second with the amp fully cranked. Second clip adds a Radial Tonebone for more gain. Not bad!
PowerblockDG-1000/Crate Powerblock - The DG has 8 amp models, so I did one clip per model. Pretty much left the EQ settings at mid-point and cranked the gain. Most of the clips have some sort of reverb/chorus/ambience added, but there was no EQ or compression adjustments in the recording.
Lead 1THD Univalve - Finally, here are a few clips of the Univalve in action. I ran it through the same cabinet as the clips above, and loaded the amp with some nice old tubes (RCA 12AX7, Mullard 12AT7 and Mullard EL34)
Univalve ChordsCopyright 2008 Bill Vencil