![]() So turn up the FX send knob until the effect misbehaves - distorts, etc - then back it off just far enough to stop the misbehaviour. Setting this is simple: any time you deal with audio electronics, you get the lowest noise by using the strongest signal possible without distortion, a principle called "gain staging". So the "FX send" knob controls how strong a signal is fed to the external effect. The signal then goes through your external effect, comes back into the "FX return" jack, is buffered, fed to the effects return control, and is then fed to the Dean Markley power amp. ![]() It's time to get some musicians earplugs to protect your hearing: īasically the signal from the Dean Markley preamp either goes straight to the power amp, or (when you elect to use the FX loop) a fraction of it (controlled via the effects send potentiometer) gets routed out to the "FX send" jack. No wonder it was levelling buildings and slaying small animals with sheer sonic impact! So the CD-30 actually puts out at least 40 watts clean, and very likely one and a half times that - 60 watts - when overdriven hard. More realistically, you'd probably a 50% increase with good transformers and power supply components. In a mathematically perfect world of perfect power supplies and no losses, you'd actually get double the power or 100% more at full overdrive. You get substantially more power when the output tubes are overdriven. The other thing I forgot to mention earlier is that, while there is no industry standard for measuring guitar amp output power, usually the stated power is what you get with the amp still clean. I've been doing that at home with the SCXD for a long time now, to get good tone and low volume at the same time. It seems ridiculous and inefficient to generate too much (very expensive!) audio power and then throw away some of it as heat just to keep volume levels manageable, but it does work. Perch, as though you may have found a genuine pearl by stepping a little off the beaten path in your amp choice.Ĭlick to expand.There is always the speaker attenuator option. While I'm not an engineer, I think rather like one, and I'm much more impressed by the hardware inside the box than the advertising in the magazines. The same tactic might still work: after all you seem pretty impressed by how loud this "30 watt" amp is, compared to other brands of "30 W" amps out there. He figured this would keep his customers happy and encourage them to tell their friends what a good deal one of his engines was. Watt deliberately understated his engines ability (and oversized the unit he came up with, the horsepower), hoping to impress farmers who found that, say, a five-horsepower Watt engine could actually do the work of six or seven horses. During the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution, steam-engine inventor and manufacturer James Watt did the same thing a one-horsepower Watt steam engine actually did more work than one typical farm horse could do. Perhaps Dean Markley also wanted to offer more value than Fenders bean-counting approach to amp design. While I don't have the schematics and other information to prove it, it would seem likely that the CD-30/CD-40 was actually a CD-60 running at a slightly lower voltage to turn down its power just a tiny bit. I'll bet this was partly done so most of the same components could be used in the CD-60 and CD-30/CD-40. ![]() Here we have tubes capable of 60 watts being asked to deliver only 30 or 40 watts instead. It would appear that the Dean Markley CD-30 amp designer took the opposite approach, using hugely powerful tubes (which in turn require hugely capable transformers) and using them in an amp rated conservatively, and well below their capabilities. Remember, Leonidas was an accountant before he began manufacturing amps or guitars. Traditionally Fender amps use the smallest and cheapest possible components (tubes, transformers) and push them beyond the manufacturers stated maximum limits in the attempt to squeeze out a little more power at the lowest possible cost. In the Dean Markley CD-60, a single pair of 6L6GC tubes generate 60 watts. The reasons I believe the amps output power is underrated are circumstantial and historical: firstly the original 1980's CD-30 was subsequently re-branded and sold as the CD-40 (rated at 40 watts), and secondly a pair of 6L6GC tubes typically generate about 55 watts according to Wikipedia. The schematic I've seen does not include DC voltages or enough information about the transformers to make an estimate of the amps actual power. The only thing I'm eminent at is sleeping-in improbably late on weekends.
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