Amps :D

So I tried a few amps the other day. I tried a Bugera G20, a Vox AC15c2, a Laney Lionheart 20w 212 and a Jet City JCA22H which was pretty nice, 5 12 ax7s and 2 EL84s, heaps of gain!

So after about an hour playing each I think the Bugera sounds best to me, second by the Jet City which is designed by soldano, a nice amp. Then the vox and finally the laney lionheart, the two heads I played through a orange ppc 212 closed back with V30s as thats pretty much the same as my cab. Looking forward to getting a head in a few weeks time now :D also tried out a Deluxe big muff and have to say it is the shit!

you're a gainiac... haha

you didn't reference them against any higher end stuff just to get a fair comparison? I would go jet city over buera if you are going to get a far east amp. Even if Uri Behringer improved his QC for the amp line he is still a total bastard and we should all carefully avoid funding his empire. All tube amps are so similar that knocking off a lot of brand name products is not so bad, but some of the stuff he does stealing Mackie designs and downgrading all the components to make them more affordable while employing virtual slave labor to increase his profit margin is just unethical. Jet City is designed by Soldano based heavily on his USA made models and then licensed out to a reputable manufacturer in China. I am sure the workers are not treated well, but Mike is a stand-up guy from the Pacific Northwest who has always had nothing but respectable business practices as far back as I remember.... and he also brought a lot of new ideas to amplification that everyone has imitated without paying him a royalty because he didn't even bother trying to patent them. He just openly shared his thoughts with the world. If anyone deserves your money its Soldano's entry level brand. Also, Mike assures everyone that he's strict on QC for the JC stuff and I've never seen a broken one... ever. Its the only cheapie that a name player uses (Joe Perry). I personally tried a JC20H 2 years ago and was quite taken with it but missed a clean channel on an amp like that so the 22H sounds like a good way to go. I told you the custom classic was nothing to write home about. The affordable voxes don't have the right voicing, they sound the way vox thinks people expect an ac30 to sound, not the way the old ones do. And let me guess, the laney was too harsh in the treble frequencies?

I've got an Hartke LH1000 and there aren't many amps I would even consider replacing it with. Now that my bass has an amazing on-board EQ, I don't even use my sansamp racks anymore.

I really want to try a SWR SM-1500. 500 more watts and more EQ control.

http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q583/lang3735/IMAG0347_zps70492920.jpg

My experience with the SWR stuff has been really negative due to poor reliability. Apart from one I owned, the bassist in my last serious band briefly had an SM series that blew up and I've seen a lot of their stuff go down on bands during their sets.... though Hartke's solid state bass gear does not sound as good or deliver as well on its wattage propaganda, its reliable as hell (I know the LH1000 well, they used to be really popular in the local puk scene, its loud, but it ain't no 1000 watts of power into even 2 ohms, sorry hartke). But again, I ain't ever seen a Hartke go down.... same goes for the ashdown bass heads. Rock solid night after night and plenty loud for anywhere us mere mortals are likely to play even against the heaviest hitting drummers.

If you really want a lot of power though, consider bi-amping with an SVT thru its matching 8x10 slaved to an Acoustic 360 with the giant folded horn cab. I played in a band where we set the bassist up that way and it was pummeling. Had a great mix of hear it and feel it bass, lots of grind in the low mids and required a team of assholes to cart into gigs. I am kidding, of course. Yes we did that, no it was not worth the back strain, especially playing clubs that were up a flight of steps in Philly. We did loosen a lot of bowels though and my rig certainly destroyed half the city's ability to hear high frequencies or distinguish words when holding a quiet conversation in a restaurant. Me? I wore Hearos for that one. When you crank up a dual showman and a plexi every night you need them. It can be fun just to feel your band's performance pounding your chest rather than actually hear it, though I feel a bit old for those sort of antics anymore.

Bugera's are pretty nice, I've only played one, and I can't remember what it was, though it was most likely a G20. I love the AC15, and personally out of those that'd be my pick, I've heard the Laney's alright, and I've never played any Jet City amps, I only know theyre built by Soldano I think, so they can't be terrible.

I had thought about getting a Bugera for YouTube guitar work. Seemed pretty cheap for how much bang they were promising. I hear a lot of bad things about their quality and actual functionality though.

if you're just going to bang around the house and do a little recording the bugera stuff will probably be okay once you replace the Chinese power tubes. I don't know how they sound but the V20 seems to be a 15 watt, PCB-based knockoff of the badcat hotcat30. Not my favorite vox style boutique, but nice and versatile....

for Liam who is thinking of playing shows with his new amp? Bad idea. Never invest in an unreliable amp when you are planning to gig regularly even if you really dig the sound. That is unless its like your 3rd amp.... I have nothing but reliable amps with bulletproof, hand-made turret and terminal strip construction and I still have a collection of virtual dupes so I can have backups at gigs...

although for how cheap Bugeras are he could buy 2 of them I guess. I keep thinking about putting my HC30 clone in a combo and then building another chassis for the headbox and then getting a handwired ac30 head so I have my 2 favorite combos and head backups that can sit on top of them at shows in case one of the combos goes down. These days the HC30 and AC30HW are backups for eachother, but they are different.... and I am afraid to gig with my vintage AC30 anymore and she's retired tos tudio use. She isn't actually a dead backup to my other two 30s either....

last time I was playin' loud with friends the rig looked like this:

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but bi-amping left me with only the 62 as backup, so I need one more of each of these. A 2x12 C30 and a head version of my fawn ac30hw, right?

believe it or not I did not use my Radial ABY box for this, I daisy chained the preamps from the low gain input of the pentode channel on the C30 to the voxes high gain input on the TB channel set in hot mode. No noise (this would never work with my 62, its got ground hum with every amp unless you use an isolated ABY with a ground lit)..... sometimes modern is good.

here's what my living room usually looks like... no gear, just Thomas:

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I don't feel like I spoil myself with my guitar/amp collection when I look at the collection of awesome toys I set my boy up with. We both have outrageous setups for our hobbies. In guitar rigs or train sets the rule is the same... GO BIG OR GO HOME!

Sorry about that, was hard pressed for time. I agree he is a prick, though some stuff they have made in the past was pretty cool.

So I played the Bugera against a Blackstar HT20 head through the same cab, The Bugera didn't sound to bad in comparison, different but similar, the blackstars distortion channel just blew it out the water though. All in all a good head for the price but not as good as what its copying.

The Jet City I compared to a Peavey, 6150 or what ever its called. The Jet City was more my type of thing but gain wise very comparable to the peavey at I think 5x the price? The Jet City does do cleans but not very well, could have more head room but alwell. The gain channel is amazing though, tons of gain on tap but also doesn't get muddy.

The Vox I compared to a handwired, unfair I know but alwell and the handwired just was amazing, If I had the cash I would have bough it there and then!! Love that handwired ac15. just had everything you'd ever want from a vox really.

the laney I didn't compare to anything, was a great amp till I pushed it hard and then I felt like my head was gunna explode, too much high end and its not smooth, maybe a tube change to a 12au7 would smooth out the tone abit? but alwell.

So for the reasons you said I may go Jet City but I don't know, I think I need to play the bugera and the jet city together and compare them to decide and alll that jazz.

I bought a new guitar today, well put a deposit down. an Ibanez RG, forgot which model but was awesome for the price of £230 paying it every two weeks :) can't wait to take it home, there was also a black epi g400 pro for £130 which was tempting

yeah, well the 1st channel is the soldano channel 1 in crunch mode permanently, not clean mode, so when you couple that with the 20 watt power amp its hard to get a boe clean tone. Even the Soldano Hotrod 50+ that has a apir of 6L6es but the same channel topology as a jet city has trouble going dead clean. Its got more of a brown, tweed fender clean with channel 1 gain set low. Even a SLO100 with channel 1 set to clean has a warmer more 50s clean that I enjoy. Mike Soldano didn't try to make it steely and scooped like a twin. The tone controls have to be implemented different for that so it would preclude a shared cathode-follower tonestack. Frankly that tweedy thing with gain 1 around 1 or 2 is clean enough for me on a channel switcher. Its a GOOD rock 'n roll clean sound and I will take that over the piss poor clean channels on most affordable amps that try to do channel switching with dedicated clean, crunch and lead. YMMV though.

The Peavey is a VERY similar design to the soldano SLO100 and hotrods. For a bit EVH used Soldao SLO100s with his plexis. He had his modded to be rounder and less bright overall (Warren Haynes does this too). He them went to Peavey and had them tweak the design further into their 5150 amp. Then he wanted separate treble and bass controls so it became the 5150II, then he jumped ship and made her a 3 channel amp with a dedicated fender-style clean channel (made for his brand by fender). The rest is history. So the current 6505 amps are very much soldano descendants with even more gain added to suit the metal guys who favored the original 5150 models. Its a Soldano with more features and inferior transformers and parts throughout. Though they added just enough voicing stuff to the 5150 to make it work for a lot of guys without cluttering it like a Mesa recto. Fair comparison, Peavey to Jet City though.

12au7 would probably neuter the Laney in clean mode because the gain is really low on an au7... and due to the lack of compression from thsi very linear, hifi twin-triode would probably give it a weak distortion sound coupled with a really pokey top end on note attack, maybe an AT7 or AY7.

You are making me want to add a high gain amp to the collection. I see I can get a JC22H for udner 400 USD... wow! if I want to shell out an extra 40 bucks I can get one with extra voicing switches on each channel. Tempting as all hell....

now you get the magic of a properly built Vox, eh? You should try an old one.... and a Matchless DC30.... the fawn HW amps are pretty good and all (I have 2), but they're not even the be-all-end-all in Vox style sounds. They're a nice middling version that's attractive, affordable, roadwrthy... and best of all easily replaced on the road if you're touring and yours gets dropped or something and you don't have the time to fix her!

Just buy whatever it is you like best in your price range. But don't complain if it breaks ;-) I hate saying "I told you so," but I always end up in those situations when people ask for advie they have no intention of taking because their minds were made up already. If you weren't planning on gigging I would say the Bugera is fine, but I wouldn't dip any lower than a tiny terror or jet city if ou wanna be in a band and take it rehearse every week and gig. I used to just leave my touring amps at my rehearsal space back in the day to save a little on wear and tear transporting them and keep my smaller amps at home for practicing. Every car trip is putting stress on an amp. Some are road warriors and many are not :-(

I like that Jet City clean tone when the normal channel is set low but I'm unsure if its a hugely usable tone for me when it comes to playing louder.

Grab a high gain amp then haha. most my gain comes straight from my SH-4 JB coupled with a DS-1. The JB in my strat gives me a really great sounding crunch, like having a bit of overdrive on. Really nice to play with, with the Jet City though this would be too much and unusable when playing clean unless I use the single coils in the strat, I can get around it easy enough and its not a deal breaker because that strat is more a chuck around guitar, worthless peice of junk that I bought because I needed a back up for my fucked Ibanez, I have modded it and I like it but have replaced it today with a Ibanez RG. Really happy, wanted a RG for about 6 years and got one that I pay off every two weeks, like £25 every two weeks so I'm very happy, £230 total instead of I think £500 new, can't complain? The pawn shop has a ac15c2 for £450 which is damn good price wise though.

I really like the Bugera but as you said they are potentially unreliable and I'd ideally like something I can trust not to shit on me at a gig or rehearsal. I may just spend double and get something much better quality instead because well amps are worth it. Or like you also pointed out I could just grab two for the price really. I may get a micro terror as a back up, seen people use those live as back ups and they don't sound half bad. I really need a new set of pick ups for my Epiphone, I miss playing that guitar, Claire got it for me last year for my birthday, best guitar I've owned, the build quality of it is immense too, compares to some Gibsons nicely shame epiphone put these shit pcb electronics in there.

I may even try oing second hand from Thomann or somewhere that gives a good comprehensive long warranty with it. I'd like a Marshall head but getting one in my price range and wattage is very hard

Looks like my living room most the time haha

that's a cheap ac15c1, get it.... it'll do for a while

I gotta tell ya, if I had to go out and buy my 1st tube amp today I would dump a pile of cash into 1 SERIOUS amp.. either an 80s Marshall, 90s Laney, ceriatone 18 watt, 36 watt or handwired 800 clone, silverface fender, 2nd hand vox handwired or if I HAD to have switchable channels I would try to score a ceriatone silver jubilee 2550 handwired clone, a jet city of some kind, a mesa dual caliber in my wattage from the 90s or just maybe a 22 caliber with a master volume on the clean channel... or maybe I would break out the credit card or apply for financing to get a Soldano Hotrod 50+ or tone king imperial... just overpay in interest over the course of a year

as for a JC22H for me? I am hovering... its not on budget this week, but they are so cheap I might buy one in February to dick around with.... it looks really fun to me and the not-so-clean channel and uber-gain channel would be a nice contrast to most of my stuff! I'll bet she would sound muscley as hell through my sealed frontloader with the modern G12Ms.

Very cheap, ir was the C2 which I wanted, so I may get the money together and grab it and then buy a 5 watt bugera T5 head for my cab too just because really, they're £75 rather than £200 at the moment. But yea, if I save that money up and get that I'll have a brilliant amp for not too much cash.

Silverface fenders aren't too badly priced these days, see if I can find a twin reverb in my range. A second hand vox hardwired are still like £700-£800 here which sucks. I'll try finding those clones and see how much they cost

What is your range. I would seriously recommend Laney, if you're after a combo, there more upmarket stuff is quite good. It's not quite an AC30HW, but it's not bad.

that's like $1200 to $1400 in our money, right? I paid approximately $800 for my HW, but there was trade going on so the store probably made a full $1200 in the end, which was where it was marked on the sticker I think....

If he wants a full 30 watts he could get the Laney 30 watter from the 90s. Very AC30ish with a marshally gain channel too. Made in the UK I think. They are affordable secondhand and I think they sound better than the custom classics after a speaker change. They're similar to your 15 watt Laney combo.

be careful with silverface twins. If its got a master volume its probably a full 100 watts with an ultralinear output stage and it will not sound the way you expect it to. Also, Twins are LOUD. SOOOO LOUD. You basically can't play a small gig with a twin, its too loud. In order to get a nice full clean tone you have to turn her up loud enough to make the soundman angry. If you're going to look at silverface amps consider a silverface bassman (not a bassman50 or 100, a straight bassman), a Bandmaster or Bandmaster Reverb head or a deluxe reverb. Stay away from 6L6 based silverface fenders with master volumes. Those amps are the ones that give silverface a bad reputation. Many are ultralinear (hifi style power amps, unflattering for guitar) , have gobs of snubber caps stifling the sparkley top end and harshing up the mids, and have other circuit revisions from 60s spec that just did not work out. Some of the changes were cost-cutting measures, some were attempts to add marshallish features, other make no sense at all. None of the changes play well together. That said, even the most bastardized silverface verions still sound pretty decent though. Heads up, the only amps that survived the 70s virtually unchanged were the deluxe reverb, Princeton reverb, Princeton, champ and vibrochamp. The bandmaster and bassman heads with 'drip edge' metal trim around the front grille are identical to their mid 60s cousins too but are generally a few hundred cheaper than blackface ones.

I don't know why everyone is so obsessed with the twin. Its not fender's best circuit and its deafeningly loud at 3 where its starting to sound really good... I toured with a dual showman (non reverb twin in a head) and it was stupid loud, but I needed huge clean volume because we played a lot of theaters and 300+ seat clubs. Large audiences in decently big rooms but not always with a quality sound system (or soundman) to mic up a small amp. It was a bit much at small clubs and I ditched it when we started doing smaller venues regularly. That amp and my buddies Showman were used extensively for overdriven rhythms on UYB's record and let me tell you that even with 2 tubes pulled to lower headroom and work into a 16ohm TV cab that the SPL in the tracking room were pummeling.

EDIT: I think we wound up knocking the showmans down 2dB with a hotplate because they were overloading the close mics on the cab. LOUD... the 2 plexis were louder at full power, but the fenders were less compressed and even set quieter the punchy transient response is like a jackhammer. Especially as you wail away on chords.