Balance Control

Believe it or not, some of the best sounding guitar amplifiers (from "back in the day") didn't have channel switching. What is even stranger to many young players is that these amps actually had 2 completely separate channels, each with there own sound character. It was fairly typical for one channel to have a bright sound and the other a dark sound. Somewhere along the way guitarists started jumping the two channels together (also known as daisy chaining) to get a blend of the two sounds. In addition, they found that this technique also gave a bit of a boost to the amp as the two pre-amp signals were added together to drive the power amp a little harder.

Taking this idea a step further, DST came up with the concept of the BALANCE control on our U34-CL amplifier line. The balance control replaces the old daisy chain jumper cord with a continuously variable pot. The beauty of this is that it allows the player to set each of the amps two channels for the exact sound they want then easily adjust the amount of each sound from song to song. Simply tweak the balance control to move from the L channel to the C channel and get the exact mix of clean well defined notes with overdriven edge. The balance control also allows you to change tones without having to completely reset each channels apparent loudness. The U34's master volume control lets you keep your favorite mix and globally change the output level after the balance control. As a further bonus we use two completely separate signal chains with individually voiced tone stacks to expand the flexibility of the amp.

Simpler than daisy chaining, more flexible than channel switching, the BALANCE control takes one of the most used tricks of classic amplifiers and does it one better.

Have a question or want more details? Contact Bob Dettorre, VP Engineering, DST Engineering
bob@dst-engineering.com

DST Engineering Balance control - Copyright (c) 2002