JIM KELLEY ORIGINAL FACS 30/60

for those unfamiliar with the Kelly amps they come from the early boutique era, roughly contemporary with the mesa mk1 and Dumble ODS and very much in that spirit... a well kept secret even amongst guitar amp entusiasts until the recent reissues

correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the Kelly's 6V6 based as opposed to the 6L6 based power sections Smith and Dumble favored?

If I could justify yet another guitar amp purchase I would buy her.... she's probably worth owning just so you can tell people she used to belong to one of the guys in supertramp. Lets face it, you don't have to like supertramp to have fun saying ' here's mah supertramp-amp.'

its a shame, but I am probably one of the only people on EB who would be interested in making this purchase and I just can't justify it having impulse bought 4 amps last year alone...

what are you asking for her?

wow, is the market that good for the Kelly amps these days? definitely too rich for my blood! I own and have owned some extremely desirable old amps but I don't think I've ever broken the $3k mark on a purchase

maybe you should pop her on Reverb.com or talk to a serious amp dealer like Ultrasound.... anyway, best of luck with the sale in this uncertain economy

If I had 5 disposable grand, I'd buy a Kemper setup.

I hear ya.... I remember when I was purging all my old Marshall pieces, I sold everything locally in town because even though I had to deal with some real wankers before finding legit buyers it was just less hassle and I pocketed piles of cool cash.... required a lot of patience though, even the dentist and podiatrist set will try to low ball you, nitpick and guilt you out when you have desirable stuff and want market value.... its like, dude vintage superleads, this is a median price I'm asking, if you can find ones this clean inside at sam ash or somewhere they will cost twice my asking price, dumbass... if you make 10 times my salary you can afford the buy in, man up and stand your ground with the wife or piss off, I'll wait for someone who takes their sound seriously

hahaha, I am well known around here for my pissy commentary

If I had 5 disposable grand, I'd buy a Kemper setup.

I still feel a little suspicious, but yeah, me too.... and if it wasn't 100% the bees knees I would return it and but this guy's Kelly for the stable

for the asking price the fucking Kemper had better replicate my old amps 100% (not just sound to the audience but feel/response to each of my favorite guitars) once I profile them.... that's right, ONE HUNNERT PER CENT, YALL

I can tell you that while I was impressed by axe FX2 and Helix they don't hang with the real deal, fine for some purposes and some types of playing I guess.... the asking price is not so high as the Kemper though, so.... they get some slack

if I dumped 4 or 5k into a Kemper with an inbuilt power amp or an FRFR speaker system to do cab modelling I would wanna be able to profile my stable and thin the herd

I watched a few different videos on them comparing both sound and feel of the Kemper in comparison to different amps. The word is that the Kemper feel quicker than the older amp instead of the way we would think, having the digital amp lagging behind. They say you wont notice it unless you play fast and intricate, but when you feel how fast it is, you generally think you are playing the real amp.

I've not heard anyone say the tone/sound was off yet, but I heard one or two examples where I could tell the difference through my monitors. I didn't know WHAT I was hearing between the two amps, but I knew one was a tiny bit warmer. In blind sound tests, I tend to always guess wrong on the Kemper videos because I have been reinforced to think tube amps cannot be topped. When I hear a warmer, clearer tone come through, I assume it's the tubes I'm hearing and guess the real amp. I've not heard one in person yet though, only through the interwebs.

how can you get the feel of an amp from a video? I don't understand that.... I don't think you know what I'm saying by feel and response.... maybe because you've only played solid state for any extended periods, although you are covering one aspect with your talk about ther perceived 'speed' of the amp versus the kemper

NERD ALERT:

as a tube amp enthusiast and a guy who knows digital technology I don't think that the impulse having a faster response is at all counterintuitive because even in a solid state rectified tube amp the response is governed by a ton of components that supply or pass current and voltage on froms tage to stage none of which will ever be ideal (you can make a tube guitar amp 'faster' with modern hifi parts but you will also sacrifice some character to the sound, its just not done, and even then no aprts are perfect in analog) and these components have completely variable performance based on a number of factors from the amplitude, pitch and envelope of the signal they are being asked to pass along down to normal fluctuations in wall voltage, temperature etc.... sot eh impulse will be more consistent over, say a 30 minute period and it maye not behave exactly the same with the same phrase played thru it as the amp modelled just because the impulse will behave the same way to the same material every time whereas the tube amp will vary a little, particularly in attack/decay/compression character... plus the power amp pumping up the kemper or the direct recording equipment will influence the finished sound as well, but I am nerding out

I actually wouldn't expect a tube amp to be clearer, I think the 1s and 0s can do that fine at least in the limited bandwidth if an electric guitar signal.... but warmth? define that first, because no 2 people mean the same thing when they say a warm tone.... at least that's what I noticed without fail as a studio engineer

No, I cannot get a feel for it. The people in the videos talk about the feel when comparing it to tube amps.

This one is a two parter, and they go into some good detail. I've seen others, but this one is easy to remember who did it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INJ_H5PiuTE

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

well, feel is hard to describe, its how an amp repsonds to your dynamics, picking techniques, touch just the finer points... and by resposne that covers compression artifacts, overdrive characteristics (and I don't just mean overt drive like a pedal, I eman something else as most tube amps are creating subtle harmonic distortion even when you think they are set clean, most speaker designs for guitar add some THD too even at 1 watt).... I am having trouble talking about this as its hard to explain. An amp with great feel is like an extension of your guitar.... an amp with poor feel is like plugging into your dad's stereo, the instrument ends at the output jack and you can't play the amp and speaker, it has no feel

on a side note, those guys drive me nuts, total sales people who spout things like 'great feel' because they've read people on forums say similar things and decided to use those words to sell ya stuff... or at least that's my impression of them, at least Rob can play some (though he's really heavy handed when he does anything non metal), the Capt is a truly terribly musician

feel is ahrd to define but hard to miss when you put 2 amps next to eachother.... all 5 of my ac30 type amps have different feel... same basic type of sound but they feel way different so apart from the subtle tone differences from amp to amp I play them differently, I just do different stuff even with the same notes through say the '62 and the reissues and even different still through the arbiter that's way stiffer and aggressive

I am just talking apples to apples here, start comparing Hiwatts to Voxes or something like that and the sound might be similar at times but the feel is way off, the hiwatt is firm, Hifi, bold, the vox is buttery, fast but sometimes spongey, hard to explain

maybe get some very different amps against eachother and just try playing some licks into them one after another enxt time you hit a guitar store..... maybe do a solid state modelling amp, a good Marshall (plexi or 800 reissue?), a blackface fender RI, an ac30 and a modern amp like a mesa or a blackstar....g et the frequency response and levels of gain/vol close on all of em and then have at its and feel the magic

by the way, I am so sick of carrying tube amps around, I really want a modeler to come along that can replace my babies.... I am just suspicious as I've been let down so many times by newfangled gadgets... and for the cost I really expect perfection from the Kemper once I profile my amps right

its scary puttiing what amounts to a little computer in place of your ancient tube amps that sue tried and true technology that predates even my dad's birth

exactly, proven technology refinedfor high performance and reliability... even something like a Dynakit is so reliable and sounds great but is still accurate enough to use to power passive studio monitors.... and if it happens to go down and its not a tube its easy to diagnose and repair

you look at old tube amps and an amazing quantity of them are going strong with minimal service, many for 60+ years.... I've owned and used a few field-coil equipped Gibson guitar combos with the leather covering that were still performing well on all original parts, even the filter caps... you look at transistor technology and the track record is not so good, my Oberheim SEM analog synth module really needs service and its only about 40 years old... parts tolerances are better than ever these days but a lot of these surface mount and miniature parts designed for PCB use since the 70s are just not as durable as the older stuff from PTP, turret, terminal and tag designs... even in high end pro audio, you look at Neve modules that are PCB, but all discreet parts, super well designed, they still seem to need a lot of service compared to old tube gear and when theya ren't working they REALLY DON'T WORK

I am curious to see what a lot of the 1st and 2nd gen digital studio technology does now that its aging in... I know you used to see a lot of malfunctioning Eventide 910s, but I wonder if stuff like the Yamaha SPX90 and the Lexicon PCMs that are so fulla ICs, miniature resistors and caps will still be running as they reach 50... will the original PODs be working right in 2040? how much 'cutting edge' music technology will be happily making music as it rounds another century, because I suspect those old tube amps will be playing fine... plus it will all still sound relevant, whereas the high tech stuff is constantly coming Obsolete. Already I would assume that no one cares if a 1st gen POD is failing. Although in studio processors some early stuff has a 'sound' and never goes out of style... in guitar gear it seems like modern technology just doesn't become timeless like the old tube tech.

ah, Jim Kelley Amps, I started looking into those once I learned Steve Farris of Mr. Mister used them. Just not sure what model yet. Once I find out that's going on his Equipboard.