Hey Guys here is a quick overview of Razor and the drive amp
About the drive amp..
It runs just like a normal amp, with the exception of the drive colors, thats something new. Drive coloring is multiple notch filters designed in a way that changes the behavior of the amp its driving. So take the color green for example, because of the ramp on the frequency Ranges, it sends the Razor tubes into massive compression mode, henceforth all the sustain. I don't think it would work like this in th real world, but Razor does not exist in the real world, so, why not, if you have a tool that you can use, then we should use it. I don't think green could be used very effectively as a Rythym Selection for high gain, whereas Cyan and Red, Blue, etc could be. Whats important here though is understanding the Drive Color Knob, This is a mix of the filtered to non filtered signal. So to Slightly color the sound, you use a little of it, like turning the knob to 1/16th of full is usually enough to get a slight coloring without sounding like there is missing frequencies. Selections like green however, almost no amount of that will be slight, it has a drastic effect on your tone and feel. Almost to a point where tone knobs don't really do much to alter it. The amp is just completely overwhelmed. It may be good to create some vintage James Gang FUNK 49 type sounds, but I have never tried that, I'm guessing there.
So how does Razor work!
Here is the short and curly of it, well at least my thought process in the design anyways, and what it does after the fact. The drive section is almost identical to a JCM 800..With a few of my own mods...I removed some lower frequencies going into it so that we could create a clean, non-flabby distortion, we drive in the gain stages, and then directly into the tone stack, which, is almost identical to a bassman, once again some of my own mods here. I put the lower frequencies back in, we already have the distortion so these remain relatively clean, But what is important here is that now we go into a second drive stage, and then into the power amp. This second drive stage allows you to somewhat bring back the flabby sound if you want it, and it is only there for that purpose, so because we have a clean distortion at the start, and then add lower frequencies to it, we now have been given the choice. The Poweramp knob controls the second gain stage, and master is straight into a clean power amp. You can also experiment with back end gain stage distortion with Razor too. Keep the first gain down and crank the Poweramp, that will distort the second half of the head. This is kinda good for Vintage sounds. Texas Blues, etc.. However you'll also notice when you drive the back end of the amp, the tonestack now acts as a sort of distortion sculpting device as well. This is why some people were saying, man that mid knob does not function like a mid knob. Turning any one of the tones tack controls will greatly effect the amplitude of the wave, rule of thumb is bass frequencies will distort faster. As a matter of fact you shoukd be able to get pretty close to a big muff type sound with this as well. With Razor and some of the other preampus amps that have a Power Drive, or HF drive knobs, you have to always be conscious of the distortion value of the Power amp as well. Lower drive in the power amp, means cleaner tighter distortion. So front end distortion = clean and manageable..BAack end distortion can = flabby unruly distortion. However this also depends on the position of the bas and mid knobs, bass cranked = flabby back end distortion when power drive is up. Bass lower = less flabby back end distortion. But once again, that depends on whether you are driving the power amp..
Hope that helps...Tomorrow there is a change of plans we are releasing Preampus Metal C-15..That is a pretty straight forward configuration..
KM
