a giant thread about... AMPS!

yes, the projection of 4 speaker coupled with 20 watts class A will piss off most neighbors

Though so, 212 it is for me then, would be nice to have a house in the country with no neighbours though! set up a full stack and rock out haha. Was very tempted to go the 412 route though but I live in a flat and already have a phsyco neighbour who threatens to kill us etc. The joys of flats huh? I don't even live in a shitty area, our flat is 18 months old and the town we live in is rated the 38th nicest place to live in the UK, shes just a lunatic!

we call them apartments... I currently live in a townhouse so I share thick walls with 2 neighbors and even the firewalls don't block more than 5 to 15 watts through two efficient 12s, EDIT: but I can always release the fury with friends when we get together to play as a band... playing loud alone is like drinking alone anyway

I know you guys do, most people do in Europe too, think its just a English, well British thing to call them flats. I think we call villas apartments quite often..

When we used to live at my mums despite her having a town house I could really piss the neighbours off with my line 6 at 7 on the volume. I never liked playing that thing that loud I find the louder it gets the worse it sounds with those little line 6 spiders

rule of thumbs, tube? louder is better, especially in class AB fixed bias.... solid state, even modelling amps? low is best

I agree, the louder a tube amp gets the sweeter it sounds! especially when you are pushing the power section, nothing beats power amp distortion in my opinion! way better than the transistor/diode distortion from stomp boxes. I think some solid state rack power amps sound amazing when you are running a tube preamp into them! but thats as good as it gets really.

What tubes do you like best for break up? I prefer EL84s and EL34s best

depends what I am doing... I feel like you just asked me what my favorite guitar is.... do you prefer your son or daughter? aww, c'mon you must love one best! you don't? depends, right?

Didn't think of it like that haha

all great amps can sound great, even bad ones can sound great, its context.... that's why I like to own 2 or more amps

Okay...

Any opinions, or experience,etc. on victory, bugera, Engl, and Hampstead amps.

Also can you guys fill me in on Soldano. What do you think of them history, who uses them,etc.

Soldano invented modern high gain in the late 80s.... pretty much ALL modern high gain channel switchers copy his ideas rather than Mesa's. Even the Mesa Triple Rec and all of its 90s cousins from Mesa copies the SLO100 preamp with a bunch of extra modes and controls in the Mesa tradition, but the topology is pure soldano....

The soldano sound is like a tweed twin on crack. The hotrods lean a little more towards 80s marshall and the SLO100 is on the Hifi side like SUnn and Hiwatt. Some of his other designs are more fender and he also has a 2 channel amp that's supposed to be like a 70s twin and a 70s marshall in one head/combo. I have yet to try one of those. In short, Soldano amps are killer, but they are expensive and hard to come by. They can also sound a little 80s depending on the model and your application, but the 80-ness is a wonderful thing sometimes.

Even the cheapest Soldanos are killer. I particularly like the hotrod 50+ and keep thinking about buying one.... if all PCB amps were built to the standard of Soldano I would have nothing against PCB. Soldano does it right.

Bugera in my opinion are top notch (DV247 have a Bugera T5 head for £75 new and unused at the moment) I love Bugera, excellent quality on the newer stuff but when they first came out their amps were shit! they sounded great but would just die, thats no longer the case now. I'm very tempted by the Bugera G20 head, I have a 212 cab on the way from Thomann so just need to get a head next. The few times I have played a Bugera I have always been shocked as to how they sound so good for so little.

I can't comment on Victory or Hampstead but ENGL are alright if you are a metal guy, I like one of their power amps, can't remember its name now though but it sounded awesome when I finally managed to try one out at a shop but I cannot afford one haha

top notch? no shit