Stereo Amplifier User's Guide TGA-3

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TGA-3 100 Watt Guitar Ampliﬁer User’s Guide

INTRODUCTION

Congratulations! You’ve just purchased one of the ﬁnest, best-sounding and most versatile amps on this planet!

Please be patient and read this manual before you power-up, and you will be richly rewarded.

OVERVIEW

The Demeter TGA-3 was designed by James Demeter as literally three amps in one. Therefore, a basic explanation

of the front panel controls and rear panel jacks is necessary to enable you to unlock the great potential of this

professional tool.

Looking at the front control panel, there are four colors of knobs: yellow, green, red, and blue. The blue knobs

are controls which are common to all channels: stereo effect returns and the presence control. We’ll talk more

about these later on.

The yellow knobs control the “clean” channel, reminiscent of a vintage Fender Deluxe or Bassman. This channel is

capable of delivering plenty of squeaky-clean volume for country or traditional Jazz styles. It also has a great

blues “bite” to it when you turn up the gain, similar to a Tweed Fender Deluxe with everything on “10.”

The green and red overdrive channels give you every possible combination of distortion, feedback and sustain.

From smooth to hard, from Vintage British Crunch to “ modded” super distortion, this amp has it all and more.

Rear Panel

Before you turn on the amp, let’s take a look at the rear panel, where you will make the proper connections to

your system.

Speakers

No tube amp should be powered up without making sure that the speakers are connected. If you have a TGA-3-

100 combo amp the speaker will come connected, but it is always a good idea to check anyway. A tube amp can

burn up its output transformer (an expensive repair) if operated without being connected to a speaker.

Impedance

Always observe proper impedance matching. The Demeter TGA-3-100 has 3 speaker output jacks: for 4, 8 and

16 ohm cabinets. If you don’t know what the impedance of your speaker cabinet is, you should ﬁnd out! If your

cabinet or speaker is not marked (most are), you can try the following:

Connect an ohmmeter between the terminals or to the input jack of the cabinet, and set the meter’s range for

at least 20 ohms full-scale. The reading will usually be a bit less than the actual impedance (6 or 7 ohms for an

8- ohm speaker, 3 or 3.5 ohms for a 4- ohm speaker, 13 to 15 ohms for a 16 ohm speaker). Impedance matching

is necessary to get optimum volume and tone, and to avoid undue stress on your amp.

Note: most Marshall-type cabinets will have an impedance of 16 ohms, but some may be wired for 4 ohms.

15730 Stagg Street | Van Nuys, CA 91406 | 818-994-7658 | http://www.demeteramps.com/

Summary of content (6 pages)

PAGE 1
5730 Stagg Street | Van Nuys, CA 91406 | 818-994-7658 | http://www.demeteramps.com/ TGA-3 100 Watt Guitar Ampliﬁer User’s Guide INTRODUCTION Congratulations! You’ve just purchased one of the ﬁnest, best-sounding and most versatile amps on this planet! Please be patient and read this manual before you power-up, and you will be richly rewarded. OVERVIEW The Demeter TGA-3 was designed by James Demeter as literally three amps in one.
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15730 Stagg Street | Van Nuys, CA 91406 | 818-994-7658 | http://www.demeteramps.com/ TGA-3 100 Watt Guitar Ampliﬁer User’s Guide Speaker Combining A word about speaker combining: as mentioned earlier, there are 3 speaker outputs on the rear panel, labeled 4, 8, and 16 (ohms). When connecting one speaker cabinet to the amp, you can choose one of the three jacks for proper impedance matching.
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15730 Stagg Street | Van Nuys, CA 91406 | 818-994-7658 | http://www.demeteramps.com/ TGA-3 100 Watt Guitar Ampliﬁer User’s Guide Tube Type Switch (Autobiasing) Returning to the rear panel, to the left of the speaker jacks, you will notice a switch labeled tube type. This switch has t wo positions for three different kinds of output tubes. The Demeter has a state of the art feature known as auto-biasing, which allows you to get even more variation of sound by changing the output tubes (the big ones).
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15730 Stagg Street | Van Nuys, CA 91406 | 818-994-7658 | http://www.demeteramps.com/ TGA-3 100 Watt Guitar Ampliﬁer User’s Guide Effects Loop Controls The front panel controls for the effects loop are: FX send/submaster (yellow for channel 1 and red for channels 2 and 3), the stereo FX loop returns (blue). The input and output level controls and switches of your effects unit(s) must also be set properly. If your effect has a gain or level switch, it is best to set it to high, line level, or +4dB.
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15730 Stagg Street | Van Nuys, CA 91406 | 818-994-7658 | http://www.demeteramps.com/ TGA-3 100 Watt Guitar Ampliﬁer User’s Guide Front Panel (Yellow Channel Tones) The front panel is color coordinated with the FS-1. The clean channel 1 (yellow) is on the bottom row, with a channel gain and master volume, and treble, middle and bass controls. Channel 1 has the sound of a Fender amp, but with more gain control.
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15730 Stagg Street | Van Nuys, CA 91406 | 818-994-7658 | http://www.demeteramps.com/ TGA-3 100 Watt Guitar Ampliﬁer User’s Guide Gain Switch The red channel also has an FX send/submaster. To the right of this control and the dark switch is the gain switch, marked hot and hotter. On the ‘hot’ setting, this cuts the gain and feedback down 12dB, for a more tightly-controlled sound. If it’s out-of-control you want, set it to ‘hotter’ for more feedback and harmonic sustain.