Hey all my band is playing in the talent show at my school, and after the sound check, I noticed I wasn't getting the gain the jcm was famous for. I have never used an 800 before Was I on the wrong channel? Should I roll off the mids or something? I think I was on the top boost channel, but the gain was up all the way. BTW, this was into a mesa 4- 12" cabinet/

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Amps:

Mesa .50 caliber head

Hughes and Kettner 4X12

Guitars:

Fender Mex sunburst with JB

Electra DX with humbuckers

Effects: Holy grail, metal zone, small clone

JCM 800s aren't UBER-METAL DEATH AMPS FROM THE PLANET SATAN. They sound best (IMO) when the pre-amp is being punished by a booster, such as a Boss SD1 or EQ.

Good luck.

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Gear

thank you talent. yeah I have heard of hardcore guys putting metal zones and the like in front of them. Btw, I am only looking for a good hard rock tone. I'm either doing something wrong, or a pre amp tube is dying or something like that.

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Amps:

Mesa .50 caliber head

Hughes and Kettner 4X12

Guitars:

Fender Mex sunburst with JB

Electra DX with humbuckers

Effects: Holy grail, metal zone, small clone

I really wouldn't use a metal zone, do you have any OD pedals? If not, you could buy one and return it, I suppose.

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Gear

Keep your mids, they'll had some grind. You need some OD to warm up those tubes and give them a hot signal.

Also I have my talent show Friday I'm just playing by myself, hope it goes alright, it worked fine last year.

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Sam
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were you practicing at a lower volume? because i notice i don't get the sound i really really really want out of my 800 unless its turned up.

i would try turning the master volume pretty much all the way up and setting the gain to about 3-4 or so. that should give you a really nice, natural distortion. just use an od or eq pedal if u need any more gain. or obviously just turn the gain up a little more. i think it starts to sound more artificial the more preamp gain there is though......

oh, and don't be afraid of the mids

it should also give every kid in the hall permenant ear damage not to mention that there will be no definition in your sound. just a wall of horrid gain.

get an OD. play about with the settings. for hard rock i like the boss SD-1 (its cheap for a start) i put the tone about half way, and then from there if you move it in each direction slowly you will find the "sweet spot" then play with the drive until you have the distortion you want.

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well the issue is that we only have crappy dist pedals, no overdrive pedals at all. If we had a tubescreamer that would be ideal for my tone, but I'll live. I mean even without an od, the tone is still better than playing out of a peavey centurion all purpose head into a bass cab!

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Amps:

Mesa .50 caliber head

Hughes and Kettner 4X12

Guitars:

Fender Mex sunburst with JB

Electra DX with humbuckers

Effects: Holy grail, metal zone, small clone

Good luck getting that thing tuned just right.

I bought one around Christmas and had it for almost a month then returned it. I never got the sound I was looking for out of it.

I listen to Clutch and I was told by them that the guitarist doesn't use any pedals except a wah and I never got the distortion or overdrive that he has and he plays a JCM 800. So I returned it....very disapointed.

Maybe I should of tried some pedals with it...but I only had a few. I like my Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier way better. I was planning on selling it if I liked the JCM 800 but that didn't happen. Now I'm looking at the JCM 2000 DSL or if I can find one and try one out the 100 super lead plexi.

yeah its just one of those things. Maybe i just suck at eq-ing amps. Look at angus young. He got the tone that defined hard rock out of these, using the amps natural distortion. I'm sure that some of the hair metal acts in the 80's didn't use overdrive pedals to boost it either. So I don't get it.

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Amps:

Mesa .50 caliber head

Hughes and Kettner 4X12

Guitars:

Fender Mex sunburst with JB

Electra DX with humbuckers

Effects: Holy grail, metal zone, small clone

Angus used JMPs.

As for the hair metal acts, they probably used pretty powerful pickups as well.

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-You are now breathing manually.
Gear

What type of guitar are you using? If possible, you could try raising your pickups a little closer to the strings (a hair closer makes a world of difference with your guitar's volume/hottness).

Otherwise

The danelectro eq pedal can be had for $20-$30 new. Put in a new duracell/energizer battery, leave the eq flat accross the middle and jack up the volume.

Boss sd1 is about $40 and very good choice as well.

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i used to have a 50 watter JCM800 through an oversized mesa 4x12. I dimed the mids, usually ran treble around 4, bass around 5 or six, dimed the preamp gain and rain the MV at around 4-5. Top 3 of my favorite tones I've ever had.

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You could try the KISS / Gilby Clarke setting - gain all the way up, bass/mid/treble at noon...

Cheers, Dominik

P.S.: Which "crappy" dist. pedals do you have? Probably one of them is usable as booster, with gain all the way down and level all the way up...