Cheap Little Tube Amps

The ac4 should do ya then

Na, he more of a racist prick to tell you the truth! he can't do any scales either but he can some how play the odd bit of Megadeth which is beyond me...

I don't really know how he acquires half the Gibsons he has, he just gets given them :S But alwell, I'd love to own a Gibson one day haha, I think Gibsons are overrated though for what they are. Good guitars yes but these new Burstbucker pros sound shite! The StewMac Golden Age pick ups sound a billion times better and cost £40 a pick up!

I don't really know how he acquires half the Gibsons he has, he just gets given them :S But alwell, I'd love to own a Gibson one day haha, I think Gibsons are overrated though for what they are. Good guitars yes but these new Burstbucker pros sound shite! The StewMac Golden Age pick ups sound a billion times better and cost £40 a pick up!

some people, like me, just have guitars stick to them, I dunno

you'll get a gibby.... one day you will have the cash or run into a deal and it will be a good one.... usually Gibson IS overrated, but when you get a good one, wow.... good gibsons are not about how much you spend or what model you get, they are about a magic combination of neck and body that is random chance coupled with a neck profile that feels good in your hand (and that's very individualized and can take time since Gibson still hand carves the finer details of each neck even on cheaper ones)

I hate the burstbucker pro bridge.... neck's okay.... the burstbucker 2 and 3 are a bit better, but there are better PAF clones for less money and way better ones if you really wanna spend.... or you can go a different route entirely, the thing that makes certain vintage PAFs interesting to your ear, the mismatched coils, can be applied with other humbucker components and ideas to make some unheard of, unique pickups....

Haha, I just don't get whose giving him these Gibsons :S like he has a shit ton of guitars, mainly gibson and a few others. like huh?

I love my Epiphone which claims it is hand crafted in China, I have played a Gibson Les Paul STD once which was nowhere near as heavy or resonant as my Epi and didn't feel right to me, but one day I want to save up for one and then just sit in a guitar store and try a ton of them! just find my perfect one, you know haha. I'd love to get a Epi Les Paul Ultra 3 aswell, those are cool guitars!

I would love to try Bareknuckle pickups one day, I love Duncans, tried EMGs which just sounded terrible to my ear. Those StewMac pick ups sound awesome though, maple spacer, either Alnico 2 or Alnico 5, the polepiece spacing on the original PAFs etc. I love all the endless possibilities with pick ups that there are, just looking through the Seymour Duncan site shows how many variations there is of single coils and humbuckes they make, quite impressive!

Damn its late, but since you woje me up Liam I thought I'd at least reply. I've played a few bare knuckles, and they're just so overated. The cleans sound like crap, and the metal tones, are nothing special. I think I've played mules, painkillers, and cobras. The misha mansoor pickups might be OK

Really? that sucks ass! I'd say alot of pick ups are more hype than anything these days though mind you. Seems some of the cheaper pickups tend to out do some of the pricey ones

I rather liked the mules I tried, but I only tried them briefly and they were in a really nice guitar...

truth be told I am really happy with the much maligned 70s Gibson 't-top' humbuckers.... I find them to be punchy and clear from clean to mean... the current Gibson 490R is not a bad humbucker either

70s and 80s maxon made pickups like the PU2, Ibanez super70 and Greco Dry Z sound shockingly good for a Japanese copy.... they're PAFish in design and materials with different grades of alnico and such.... some of them are even still affordable

I have been quite taken with Duncan's 59/Custom Hybrid lately and have them in 2 of my guitars at the bridge right now... they are a weird mutt of classic Gibson, 80s hot rod and almost p90ish tones with the great upper midrange harmonic zing of an overwound single coil.... but they are on the hot side for me at about 12kohms DCR

I highly recommend the TV jones stuff too, especially the Powertron/ His attempt to make Filtertron size pickup with some PAF tone resulted in a humbucker with a lot of the 60s guild HB1 flavor. My 1st 'grown up' guitar was a 1 pickup guild starfire thinline singlecut and the neck humbucker was just phenomenal. The powertrons remind me of that tone and that's a huge compliment

Yeah, For a bright sound TV Jones -tron things just sound great, but they aren't very versatile. Personally I really like Lollar pickups.

You can always roll treble off bot you can never add it back in if its not there in the 1st place. I reel like a lot of people get so obsessed with having a smooth guitar sound that they wind up getting loat in the mix.

For the same price there is the Vox Lil'night Train. Had anyone experience with this one ?

I'd imagine Jim will have a lot to say about it as he's pretty much the vox god haha. but anyway heres a video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWU8mjQrzWA

I'd aslo suggest taking a look at a Marshall DSL5 if you're into Marshalls at all but they are €458 on Thomann.de

Ok thanks for the replies. The Vox sounds cool; such as the Marshall.

I'll maybe refine my criterias a little bit. What (cheap) tube head can you recommend ? My budget would be 250/300 euros max.

I was thinking about building a cab myself or convert my actual combo (Orange crush 12) into a cab. These little tube amps sounds great; and it is more than enough for me at least now. And it would be for playing at home.

The ac4 is great, but I was more thinking about an Orange micro terror or even a Hiwatt T10.

The Blackstar HT5 is a great tube head, 5 watts but I think it is out of your budget, its £300 not sure how much it is in Europe. The Marshall DSL15H is also out of your price range which sucks. The micro terror isn;t really a tube head but rather a hybrid. It has a tube preamp section with a solid state power section, still sound good mind you. The ac4 is a brilliant little amp. Bugera make the G5 which is basically a copy of the blackstar ht5 head and also sounds pretty good. It costs 266 Euros http://www.thomann.de/gb/bugera_g5_infinium.htm

I'm not actually familiar with the lil nite train. I don't like the 15 watter as much as an ac15 or tiny terror but i do like the 50 watt vox lunchbox.

Pretty much all single ended el84 amps sound the same once they are fully distorted. Its a good sound. The better quality the amp and speakers the more i like it. Even a lot of champ type amps are pretty close to their el84 cousins.

Ok thanks. The blackstar is a little bit too expensive, such as the marshall. And the micro terror sounds really great from what I heard in a shop ones. I've heard that bugera has a "bad" reputation. Have you tried or hear somlething about the Yamaha THR5?

Bugera was pretty bad when they came out about 6 years ago but these days they are actually pretty good and no less reliable than any other amps really. They sound great for the price and now have a 3 year warrenty. I like them anyway haha. The yamaha is meant to be a pretty solid head from what I've read online. I was thinking about one not so long ago before deciding I want more power than that. Yamaha tend to make great stuff in general though. Have a look at some reviews and videos but those do seem pretty good

a lot of the cheap Chinese 5 watt tube amps are all jobbed out to the same factories by competing companies anyway, just pick the one that is a good deal

you could also fire up your soldering iron and hand build a high quality 5F1 champ kit for right around your budget....