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Give me some tube-amp advice, please


bluesfella

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Hey now, good morning everybodyyy. What's happening?

 

Here's the deal. I'm looking around for a new amplifier. I currently have a Kustom 100W solid state amp with 2 12" Celestions in it. Needless to say, it's loud as {censored} and that's great. But after playing for almost ten years now and playing through some serious tube rigs every now and then at jams, I feel it's time for an upgrade. I just love the sound tube aps give me, especially when they're driven a little bit. The solid state can't give me that sound I'm looking for anymore.

 

[skip to this part if you want to cut to the chase]

I have several guitars and they all have medium-output pickups. Fender Strat, Les Paul-style guitar, Ibanez shred machine with Les Paul pickups in it. No extreme stuff. I mainly play blues and rock. I love the warm clean/almost dirty sound that Hendrix has when he plays subtle suff. The kind of distortion sound I'm looking for is Guns 'n Roses/Aerosmith in the 80's. In short, 70's-80's Marshall sound. I absolutely hate the modern super high gain nu-metal type distortion.

 

I don't own many pedals, but one of them is a Carl Martin Plexitone that can give me a nice distortion that I already like. So a great distortion channel on the amp itself isn't 100% necessary I guess.

 

I'm looking for a combo that's loud, but not ultra loud. I'm mainly playing in bars/clubs. No arena's yet. So I'm probably not looking for 100w, but more like 50w or even 30w. You guys tell me. I've been told they sound best when they're almost at their loudest setting. I don't have much tube amp knowledge so please enlighten me. :)

 

One last thing, I don't have thousands of dollars to spend. 800 is like max, but less would be better, lol. I'm cool with buying 2nd hand.

 

 

Thanks, guys.

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Not sure where you live at, but if you run across a Peavey Triumph combo, give it a whirl. Pretty damn awesome clean channel. Nice warm clean tones. The drive channel isn't to everyone's taste, but if you have a pedal for drive that wouldn't be an issue. The only problem is they have to have the footswitch to get to the clean channel. :facepalm: on Peavey for that. You can also put a paper clip in the right pinhole to force it to the clean, but you'll blow a fuse if you pick the wrong one. :lol:

 

I'm pretty much just throwing it out there if you run across one. It'd probably be cheap. Good luck in your search. :thu:

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The Laney VC30 sounds good and comes as a 1x12, 2x10, & 2x12. You can get a new 2x12 for around $800. They're 30 watts and are modeled after the Vox AC30. Hang onto that Kustom. I had a '70s Kustom 100 watt head and 2x12 cab with near perfect blue sparkle tuck and roll vinyl and have always regretted selling it.

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Went to the guitar store today. I played a couple of amps.

Orange 30w combo (TH-30)
Didn't like it at all. Too fuzzy, muddy. I couldn't dial in the sound I wanted. I tried really hard, but I didn't like anything this amp had to offer.

Koch 30w combo (Jupiter)
Liked this one better instantly. The clean had that warmness to it that I was looking for.

Blackstar 40w combo (HT-Club)
I like this one the best so far. There's a lot of different sounds to get from it. This amp is versatile, too. 40 watts seems perfect as well.

The guitar store guy, who clearly knew his {censored}, recommended me to get something 30-50 watts, but not more for the type of job I'm going to use it for. He told about this big 100w stack he had that he couldn't turn it past 3-4, because it would be just too loud. I cranked the amps a little bit, as far as I could do it, and I came to the conclusion indeed that I definitely shouldn't get one of these monster amps.

They also had the Laney VC30 as Steve F suggested here. I couldn't play it because the store was closing at the time I got to it. It's a very cool looking amp.


So, I know what kind of sound I don't like, and I know what I'm leaning towards a little bit. It's been a start of an interesting journey. I haven't fallen in love with any amp I tried yet.

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Went to the guitar store today. I played a couple of amps.


They also had the Laney VC30 as Steve F suggested here. I couldn't play it because the store was closing at the time I got to it. It's a very cool looking amp.



So, I know what kind of sound I don't like, and I know what I'm leaning towards a little bit. It's been a start of an interesting journey. I haven't fallen in love with any amp I tried yet.

 

 

The next time you go to the guitar store, go at least two hours before closing and do not leave before you plug into a Marshall, a Laney and/or a Budda. The Blackstar was designed by ex-Marshall employees so you should like it. You like the sound of Marshalls, let that be your mantra.

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Yeah. The funny thing is that I didn't knew that before. I guess I am a Marshall guy afterall.

I live in the Netherlands and Budda amps are pretty rare here. The store I went to was pretty big and they didn't have any of them in stock. They'd have to special order one. The Netherlands isn't much of a music country compared to the USA. People are more into techno here for some reasons I'll never understand.

I'm definitely going back to check some more aps out. They had the Egnater Rebel 30 that musicmanmu suggested as well. It's a 1000 bucks, so it's a little bit more than I hoped for, but I'm going to try it anyway.

The Peavey Classic 30 is nowhere to be found here. Jet City is pretty rare too.

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