Jump to content

best or favorite practice amp?


quackystrat

Recommended Posts

  • Members

 

I have a fender VCXD and i liked it, but recently started getting tired of the fender sound

also have a fender mustang 1 and 3, about the same as the VCXD

 

my favorite that i have right now, although im in germany and its back home. is the buger V22, great tube tone, awesome clean and great overdrive,

 

but i started looking for a good sounding little bit smaller tube amp, needs good clean and overdrive and if its versatile enough for more gain then thats awesome.

 

 

the top on my list is H&K tubemeister 18 i know it ould be loud but it also has that attenuater to 5 or even 1 watts. and sounds really good.

 

any other suggestions?  i play classic rock and blues.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 56
  • Created
  • Last Reply
  • Members

For "practice" I like the Vox Pathfinder. I have the 10, but the 15 is even better. The Valvetronix series is nice, too.

 

I played with an Orange Micro Terror last week, and I really liked it, even through the tiny speaker it's "meant" to go into. Very nice overdrive, and you csn get sparkly cleans, too.

 

I am also a big fan of multi effects units. A Pod X3 Live does everything I want, and a Zoom G7.ut is pretty nice as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

The new Randall RD low watt heads are great , I have the RD1 , The Star Nova is great but the word got out now sell for more than a big Marshall it really is state of the art for small amps, but when they went up so much i could not resist the profit LOL, The Vox Lil Night Train is good but not very loud so I am going to try one of those new White AC4c1 combos that are said to be wired similar to the small Night Train. The liitle Bad Cat Cougar 5W combos are great too when they go on sale! The smaller Marshall  and Fenders lack a little sweetness & sparkle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

i should mention that i would prefer a tube amp.

i already have the mustang I and III, i prefer the III when its turned up its very nice, but i one doesnt do it for me much anymore.

 

right now im in germany and have the VCXD with me as well as a Peavey Vypyr VIP2 i tend to use the Peavey more. better overdrive.

 

i was also notcing the albion amp TCT35C but there is not much on these amps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

 


quackystrat wrote:

 

 

I have a fender VCXD and i liked it, but recently started getting tired of the fender sound

 

also have a fender mustang 1 and 3, about the same as the VCXD

 

 

 

my favorite that i have right now, although im in germany and its back home. is the buger V22, great tube tone, awesome clean and great overdrive,

 

 

 

but i started looking for a good sounding little bit smaller tube amp, needs good clean and overdrive and if its versatile enough for more gain then thats awesome.

 

 

 

 

 

the top on my list is H&K tubemeister 18 i know it ould be loud but it also has that attenuater to 5 or even 1 watts. and sounds really good.

 

 

 

any other suggestions?  i play classic rock and blues.

 

 

Dude, this is a no brainier.  Get a Bugera V5 and be done with it.  Superb amp.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I've had every amp mentioned so far in this thread and prefer my Roland Cube over them all.  Get the 40X though, it's still small but packs a punch.  

Second choice goes to the pathfinder 15R, the valvetronics sound quite inferior to it, don't know why.

Mustang 1 should be thrown in the bin.  Mustang II's and up are good but not the I.

Bugera 5 sounds nothing like your V22, I love my V22, it won't sound like that.

Anyway, tone is subjective, I've stated my preference.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 


kayd_mon wrote:

 

For "practice" I like the Vox Pathfinder. I have the 10, but the 15 is even better. The Valvetronix series is nice, too.

 

 

 

I played with an Orange Micro Terror last week, and I really liked it, even through the tiny speaker it's "meant" to go into. Very nice overdrive, and you csn get sparkly cleans, too.

 

 

 

I am also a big fan of multi effects units. A Pod X3 Live does everything I want, and a Zoom G7.ut is pretty nice as well.

 

I have a vox pathfinder 15R.  It's really a good amp, and unlike a lot of vox it takes most pedals well.  Unfortunately it's out of production, but well worth picking one up for $50-75 used. 

OP, don't worry about it not being a tube amp, it isn't a modeler and does sound that good.  Leslie Feist has been using a pair in concert for a couple of years now. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 


Buttcrust wrote:

 

 

I really do like the GDEC 3-30. I did obtain all of the presently available Hal Leonard play along books with the included SD card. Much fun indeed. 

 

Seconded on the GDEC III-30.  Having the backing bands/tracks loaded right there and associated with your presets is a godsend.

I haven't gotten any of those Hal Leonard deals; are they actually usuable or kind of gimmicky.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

My "favorite" practice amp isn't really what I would call a practice amp.

Actually I have 2 favorites.

For a proper amp I love my Ampeg GVT15.  I can dial up tones I truly enjoy at very low volumes but if need be it would also work just fine jamming with others.  

My other favoirte practice amp is my computer.  Plugeed straight into my Audio Interface Scuffham Amps S-Gear virtual amp provides fantastic tones and between Main Stage, Garage Band, Logic, Capo, and a handul of plugins I can noodle on my own, jam along with backing tracks, or create entire compositions.  The sound is pumped through either my Behringer B3030A Studio Monitors (yup, I said Behringer and they sound great) or my AKG Q701 Headphones.

 

I've been thinking of adding a pair of Emotiva Stealh monitors.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

My practice amp used to be my audio interface -> computer -> monitors also (big Reaper / Amplitube / vst collection fan for many years) but 2 things made me switch. 

One is the unreliability of trying to accomplish real-time processing on a win 7 laptop.  Even with dozens of hours looking into all the process that create DPC spikes using tools like LatencyMon and DPC Latency Checker, I would still get an occasional interruption, which just kills me even if it is just a few milliseconds once every week or two. Unacceptable.

The second is I had my perfectly fine desktop machine fail a Windows update a few months ago, and despite being a tech geek myself, I could not save it.  I had to do a full re-install.  I back up all my data so I can reconstruct it, but it just takes so long to do that when you have so many applications to re-install that have been meticulously tweaked over years of work. Anyway, I decided if my laptop were to fail with all the hundreds of backing tracks, amp sw, custom presets, vsts, reaper projects, recordings, etc. that it would be very painful to recover, so I decided to off-load as much as I could from the computer to dedicated HW. 

Now I have all my backing tracks and music copied to my android devices (I have some great "slow downer" apps to learn complicated solos, which I rarely use, but still nice to know I can). For my amp I use a Kemper Profiler, and I can feed in the output of my android so I can jam along. Now the only thing I use the laptop for is to record, and if I lost just that one capability I would still be pissed, but I can reconstruct it in between jam sessions on my practice amp. 

I do miss the all-in-one solution of a computer. It is a great idea, and one that I embraced for years, but it's just not as reliable as I would like.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...