amps

If you would entertain the idea of not going the tube route, Line6 makes a nice digital amp (which kicks tube meep).

my bias is toward tubes. i've got a fender blues jr. it has 5 tubes and some crunch, i really like it. but i think you may be after something bigger.

one thing you can do is listen to the players you like, find your favorite tones and then look up their gear preferences. you probably can't afford the same set up, but you can go in that direction.

most amps don't have the exact qualities the artist wants, hence pedals.

my brother has a line 6 and he likes it a lot, but i haven't explored/borrowed it yet.

I have a Vox from the Valvetronix series. Anyone who doesn't like tubes is afraid of tone :)

Fender distortion has always been an issue with guitarists. The only way I have ever found a nice distortion (I play out of a Fender M80, and have since 1987) is to use the clean channel while running a Digitech pedal board through it. Most people who use Fender amps avoid factory distortion.

Small tube amps suck.

Most amps smaller than a halfstack sound like meep above 30 watts, so I suggest finding the best clean amp you can find, with a 10" or larger speaker, and running some type of pedal through it for you distortion. You can pick up a Boss or Digitech distortion pedal for under $50, and you can set the distortion a 100 ways to suit your taste.

Twin Reverb+DigitechRP50 would knock your socks off.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention Marshalls.

Marshalls are one of the nicest amps (Celestian speakers) but only with a head and a cabinet. Small Marshall amps are one of the worst sounding hunks of meep.

Btw, no one uses the distortion channel on their amps, they use a board over clean.

It really depends what distortion you want. If you want a more "overdriven" distortion, a more classic sound, then amps alone are best. I have a 400W Peavy Deuce valve amp with twin 12" cones and the distortion on that is pretty good. But if you want heavy or nice compressed distortion, boards most definately are the way to go. And the most fun.

meep, ive just found out my amp is rare and worth a meepload of money. Ive never looked it up before, i bought it off a guy who was in a punk band in the 70s for 80.

Get an amp that sounds killer clean - marshal, vox. And dish out the bucks for electro-harmonix distorion(s). They're a little more expensive than others, but they're meeping worth it. And if you want to tweak your tone even further, get a line6 tone processor. I have the Bass Podxt Live and it's great.

A lot of people recommend clean channel + distortion pedal, which I think is very attractive, but I feel like Fender is so totally bankrupt in the distortion dept that it might be worth it to invest in an amp that has slightly worse clean than a fender but a lot better distortion. Right now I have a cheap-o boss pedal that I'm using with my crappy amp and, surprise, it sounds like meep. I'm plannign to take apart the pedal and see if I can't rebuild it better, but I'm also looking at better pedals. Danelectro made some cool ones but they are hard to find.

The AC30 is probably my favorite so far, but the problem is my friend just bought one and I can always play his, and I'm also looking for a little bit of darker sound.

dinozoa: A lot of people recommend clean channel + distortion pedal, which I think is very attractive, but I feel like Fender is so totally bankrupt in the distortion dept that it might be worth it to invest in an amp that has slightly worse clean than a fender but a lot better distortion.

If all you are playing is loud punk/grunge, then fine. But you're sacrificing versitility. Is it really that important that you use the amp's distortion?

What style of music are you playing?

I like the modern indie sound, the kind of half-grunge, half-old timey distortion. A good example fo the sound I like is Wolf Parade, if you've heard them. But really I want my own kind of sound.

And also, I'm not like strictly against having a great clean channel. But there're amps with almost as good clean channels as the fenders but with much better distortion. If somebody sends me $1000 by mail I could get a Bogner, which is the best of both worlds.

ok, I'm heading to the guitar stores in SF with a fistful of unearned money (my gramma died and left me money for a guitar amp.) I may buy something today. I want an amp so bad.

Sorry, I cannot suggest a decent amp for your sound, because if it's not GRINDCORE then it's meep!

Dino, you seem to be conflicted about what you want, while also having no knowledge about tone, etc. Just play around on some amps and buy something. In the end it doesn't matter anyway.

After a short lived career working in a music store fixing amps, I thought that Genz-Benz offered a beautifully made product with a really full, rich sound. On the other hand I don't play anything but the radio so I really don't know meep about tone and all that. good luck.

How long have you been playing the radio? I can't imagine the amount of coordination needed to play that.

Man, I kind of know about tone, and I kind of know what I want, but it's ok to say that I'm extremely open minded about what amp to get except it has to have a drive channel.

That said, the best amps I played were the Mesa/Boogies. The F30 was better than the Marshall JCM2k, which is about twice as expensive. Guitar Center SF doesn't really have much except Fenders, Marshalls, and Mesa/Boogies (it also has really low end Line6s, the Voxs which I already decided not to get, and an assortment of weird Soldanos, Peaveys, and Crates.)

Anyway, I'm going to shop around a bit, but I'll be surprised if I play anything better than the M/BF30.

dent: How long have you been playing the radio? I can't imagine the amount of coordination needed to play that.

Yeah, I just never had the patience, i tried to play bass a couple times but could never stick it out...my brother's been playing drums for 22 years now, I just have a big CD collection.

Ok I have another question, and this is for real veteran amp owners.

I kind of have a choice between a 30W amp and a 50W amp that is only slightly more expensive and has a lot of cool features. They both sound basically the same, and my issue here is, is 50W too much? I'm not planning on playing big shows or anything, really mostly practicing in my room and jamming with my friends occasionally, so I want to be able to get tube distortion without alienating everyone who lives close to me. In guitar center and other stores it's kind of hard to figure out how loud I'm playing, so this isn't something I can figure out by playing amps.

tube or solid state?

if tube - 50w is more than enough for home practice, and depending on who you're jamming with, it could work for that as well.

if solid - home practice > yes. Jamming with a band > LOL NO

yeah these are tube amps, and I'm worried it'll be way too much to practice with, to the point where I can't overdrive the power tubes.

back in the day i knew some guys in punk bands. they would go into the studio with their Marshall stacks and then they would have to keep their volumes turned down. in reading interviews with keith richards, he would stress that in the studio smaller is better. he uses small vintage/custom tube amps and is able to turn them way up and over drive them. i would think the same idea applies for home or garage use. if you can't have a bigger deal for live stuff, you could also mic what you have and go thru a p.a. or something.

I play through a Marshall JCM2000 60W head. They have a master volume which allows you to turn the level & gains way up but control the overall volume while still getting the amount of overdrive you want. I love the amp. Great clean channel and wicked overdrive. In my opinion you should have at least 60w if you want to keep up with drums without a p.a.. You should check around for used equipment (i.e. craigslist.com). Could save you a boatload and get you a higher end amp for your budget. If you're going tubes they need to be replaced every couple years or so depending upon how much you play.

... and to being up pedals again -

electro harmonix makes tube distortions. not digital tube simulation distortion, but a pedal that literally has a tube(s) in it. They kick all kinds of meep and would give you the volume control you're looking for. You can check out sound samples on musiciansfriend.com. alternately, get a small wittle tube amp for home, and the 60w+ for band.

Ok, point noted re: 50-60w is probably too much to play at home with. I'm not going to spend money on both a home amp and band amp, I'm not exactly playing anything but the smallest venues, ie in my living room with my friends/occasionally at parties with people that are noisy.

I'm fairly familiar with tube-based distortion pedals. The bottom line is distortion pedals don't sound good with crappy amps, which is what I have now. So to even consider a distortion pedal, I need to upgrade my amp. Anyway, at this point I'm going to play a few more at Rocker guitars in SF, which is kind of boutique and expensive, and unless they have anything very spicy there, I'm probably going to get one of the Mesa/Boogies, either the F30 or the Lone Star Special.

BTW, I played a bunch of marshalls, and surprisingly they were among the worst. I played the JCM2k triple lead in a full stack, and it sounded soulless. Probably the best amps I've played so far are the Vox AC30 and the Mesa/Boogies. My big beef with the AC30 is that it always sounds like an AC30, whereas you can get a bit more difference in character from the Mesa/Boogies.

I don't know if anybody still cares about this-

I ended up checking out a boutique store in SF, and they had a couple of amps that were really good, the Marshall JM2k DSL played through a bogner stack and a Soldano 50w combo, but the best amp, the one that really blew me away, was the Fat Cat Hot Cat 30, which not only looked the best, but had the purest, creamiest overdrive of any amp I've plugged into. It's not as versatile as the Marshall, and it isn't as quiet as the Soldano, but it definitely had an incredible vibe coming from it. It gave me an acid flashback to what guitars are supposed to sound like. I bought it.

Even when I turn the volume down so the neighbors don't complain, the sound is great. I can't get the clean to break up except when I crank the volume to the max, and it sounds really good.

If there's a downside to this amp, besides its already mentioned lack of versatility and noisiness, both of which aren't really huge issues, because it makes almost anything sound good, it's that the dials do really weird stuff. The Treble and Bass dials are like normal equalizers, except when you turn one all the way up, it kills the other, so you have the option of getting all treble or all bass. There's another dial, Edge, which I can't tell what it does except sometimes it makes things sound really beautiful, and other times it doesn't seem to be doing anything.

So, I read the user manual section on the dials, and they kind of admit that none of the dials do what you can expect them to do, so I guess this is pretty serious, and whether it's a downside or upside depends on how much fun/frustration you have trying to get certain sounds.

I don't know if anybody still MY meep IS RIPPING