I have a PS-100 that I bought a few weeks ago mainly to act as an attenuator for my Mesa Boogie Mark VII. A few days ago I noticed some fizzy-sounding distortion when playing with the PS-100 on Operate, through the “skinny clean” channel (Channel 1, Clean) of the Mark VII, on the 25 watt setting, at fairly high gain and volume. If I put the PS-100 on Bypass, it’s very loud, but also perfectly clean.
I also noticed that to make the PS-100 truly “transparent”, I have to put both Presence and Depth all the way up, with both set to Flat.
Is all of this normal? I have to say I’m a bit disappointed, if so. I was hoping to use the PS-100 as a foot-switchable Master Volume for live gigs, but the degradation in sound quality is not really something I can ignore in that setting.
Scratch what I said about the “fuzzy” distortion, on further listening the Mark VII is in fact where that’s coming from.
About transparency: in order to get the same sound as I flip between “bypass” and “operate”, it seems I have to set the PS-100 to “warm” and “bright”, with the depth and presence pots turned up all the way, or close to it. Is this to be expected? I thought “flat”, with those pots at noon, would be the truly “transparent” settings.
Transparency is really a marketing term—we don’t use it because it cannot really be defined.
I could go into details and rant—if fact I did and just deleted it.
The reason for those switches is to compensate for human hearing and volume level. We give you the tools to get it sounding great, which is exactly what you have done! So great job on that. The actual settings are irrelevant as long as it sounds good to you.
I thought “flat”, with those pots at noon, would be the truly “transparent” settings.
The “flat” setting is just a really badly labeled setting. People see “flat” and think “transparent, neutral”, but what it actually does is makes the loadbox a resistive load, which behaves less like a real speaker. “Flat” often sounds/feels flat - if you use flat as a derogatory term.
It’s usually the other two positions on the two switches that make the loadbox in the Fryette behave more like a real cab. You just need to find what settings sounds/feels closest to your real cab.
Similarly with the presence/depth it’s best to start with them all the way down and adjust them to taste. The cab used and the volume you play at will determine how you might prefer them.
If you only want a footswitchable master volume, the Fryette is pretty overkill. You could just add a JHS Little Amp Box into your fx loop, set it to your desired volume level and use the fx loop on/off from the Mesa footswitch to toggle between two volume levels.
I actually use the Fryette as a footswitchable master volume, an attenuator, AND a power amp (for a multiple effects unit with amp sims), so I’m using pretty much all of its features at this point. Obviously, the volume setting makes a big difference. At living room levels, I have presence and depth all the way up (going through 2 cabs, one C90 and one EVM), but at higher volumes I back off on both.