Hello MARK!
On 26 Nov 97, MARK VANSICKLE wrote to Gary Smith:
 MV> tubes).  Anyway, Scott the amp guy was saying you can just take an RCA
 MV> cable and bypass the Reverb tank and get nice output distortion from the
 MV> presence of that "extra gain stage".  Is this that easy?
I wouldn't call it output distortion... it DOES drive the output stage a bit 
harder and will allow earlier breakup.  This applies only to amps with tube 
driver/recovery stages for the reverb tank.  It doesn't add another gain 
stage in series, rather, it's paralleled like an effects loop.  The reverb 
circuit is quite lossy, so there's quite a bit of gain in the driver/recovery 
circuits (usually one triode on the input side and two triodes or a full 
12AX7 on the output side).  The reverb control normally adjusts how much 
reverb is added to the mix, but with the pins shorted, adjusts how much gain 
you want from this source.
 MV>   I did my occasional deal here of just throwing a question in with a
 MV> message to somebody.  If amps aren't a forte of yours, maybe someone 
lse
 MV> will holler out.
Smith likes those tranny amps ~8-)
C-ya! Rich
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