The Harness: Difference between revisions

Harness built by Allan Holdsworth. Images courtesy of Bill DeLap.

==[[Castles Made Of Sand (Guitarist 1987)]]==

AH: Well, originally I think Rocktron licensed it for a while, the Juice Extractor, but then they discontinued it because one of the problems you had was that you actually changed the way that the load section was really responsible for the sound, so in my opinion, even though it was a great device, they never sounded as good as the ones I made myself. They discontinued it mostly because of people who don’t know how to use things like that, and through misuse, it would blow up amplifiers, because if you don’t think about what you’re doing, you just plug an amplifier into it and turn it up to ten and then all of a sudden they wonder why their amp blows up, you know.

"Would you like to take your favorite amp head and interface it with signal processors: reverb, delay, pitch shifting, EQ... anything? [for post-amp eq, time-fx, etc, preserving clarity of the power tube saturation and speaker response.] Do you love the way your amp sounds, but have to play at oppressive levels to get the sound you want? Throw a Harness on it and tame that beast. The Harness is a unique device designed for total control. (Patents Applied For.) Not only will it capture the sound of your tube amp head but also the feel. You will be able to get that fat loud tone softly or at any level, EQ it, add reverb [and extreme echo, harmonizer, etc. after the amp without interfering with the power tubes' clarity], stereo-ize it and tweeze it any way you like and then monitor it on standard guitar speaker [not full-range] enclosures and the power amp of your choice. This unit is not a speaker simulator nor power attenuator. It has no through connections. It does not have any speaker cabinet eq curves and is not intended to be connected to a mixing console or tape machine [because its output signal needs to go through a speaker curve somehow first. Do either: 1) power amp, Harness, EQ/fx processor, solid-state amplifier, guitar speaker, mic, mixer, or 2) power amp, Harness, EQ/fx processor, cabinet response simulator (e.g. MicroCAB), mixer]. The Harness takes the [high-level] speaker output of any guitar amplifier or amp head, which is being used to create a modern ['modern' connotes merely preamp distortion; I would say "saturating vintage tube *power* amp"] distorted guitar sound, capture and convert that sound into more controllable line level signals. [The Harness is a full dummy load, not a partial power attenuator meant to immediately drive a speaker.] This allows the signal to remain intact [and kept simple while going through the power tubes] and be reverbed, etc. after the amplifier's internal output stage [that is, after the saturating power tubes]. This is something which would otherwise be impossible to obtain from the normal send and return jacks found on today's conventional tube amplifiers [because an amp's fx loop is *before* the saturating power tubes, which would be like placing an echo pedal before a distortion pedal]. For example, if you were playing at a relatively loud level, which included any power amp distortion, the processor's output being returned to the amp's return jack would be undesirably distorted by the internal power section -- an inadequate solution. [yes!! that's what I've been saying everywhere!] Not only does the Harness address this shortcoming, but it also allows you to take advantage of the stereo imaging provided by most modern signal processors. Using the old send and return method forces you to throw away one half of the stereo signal; with the Harness you can make full use of the stereo imaging capabilities of your favorite signal processors. Can't a preamp do the same thing? Although it is very easy to interface a pre-amp prior to any processing, and clean sounds from pre-amps can be excellent, the use of a pre-amp to derive a "distorted" guitar sound cannot produce the unique sound of a tube amplifier head (which is using its internal power section). By comparison, a pre-amp will always sound fuzzier and less dynamic. This unit is passive. Frequency response: 10-40 kHz. Input impedance: 8 ohms. Output impedance: 130k ohms. Power handling: 100 watts Each unit is hand made by Allan Holdsworth."