Your next amp

[Uncle E]

I haven't played one, but I've heard the results of playing through one and they sound pretty good - not sure it's easy to tell it isn't an amp, particularly for bass.

Run a compressor before them to get a more amp-like feel. Aside from that, the sound is excellent, especially the British and Liverpool pedals. The new ones that allow you to bypass the speaker emulation are really cool, too.

[Uncle E]

I use it with the band, during rehearsals I can't turn it up higher than 2, otherwise I drown the drums.

Like Hink, I personally consider this to be a negative.

[robogone]

I haven't played one, but I've heard the results of playing through one and they sound pretty good - not sure it's easy to tell it isn't an amp, particularly for bass.

Run a compressor before them to get a more amp-like feel. Aside from that, the sound is excellent, especially the British and Liverpool pedals. The new ones that allow you to bypass the speaker emulation are really cool, too.

Interesting - what is it that the compressor adds?

I was certainly thinking of the bass DI, but wasn't sure which guitar DI. There's a tube amp emulator that doesn't specify the original amp - have you used that?

I'm really interested in getting these at some point, but just haven't got round to spending the time in my local Sam Ash to see if I can get to play through one.

[Uncle E]

It's on my "if I had the money right now" list, as I like the idea of it - I've heard a few of those non-valve amps with a valve somewhere in them and they're variable quality.

I recently did a gig with a Peavey Vypyr 60, which is a hybrid amp with a solid state front end, DSP for amp modeling, and a tube back end. It's far better than other digital amps I've played but it still feels strange compared to my tube amps. I may mess around with the output tubes to see if it livens up with 6V6's or EL84's.

[Uncle E]

I found this demo ok, the sound is not bad:

That chorused, clean Led Zeppelin was pretty cool. Everything else sounds really sterile and over-processed.

[Uncle E]

When dealing with ultra-high gain for metal, personally I prefer a warmer, dirtier distorted sound versus the wellknown fuzzy rectifier one I always find when watching demos of Mesa amps.

You've got to try the Jet City JCA20, which are $224 for the head and $269 for the combo. It nails the exact tone you're describing. The Ibanez and Blackheart tube amps are also in your price range but they won't get you the high gain tones you're looking for, not even with a TS7 in front of them.

[Uncle E]

Interesting - what is it that the compressor adds?

Tubes and the transformers in tube amps compress, and that's something most emulators (be they analog or digital, hardware or software) often miss.

[davidka]

When dealing with ultra-high gain for metal, personally I prefer a warmer, dirtier distorted sound versus the wellknown fuzzy rectifier one I always find when watching demos of Mesa amps.

You've got to try the Jet City JCA20, which are $224 for the head and $269 for the combo. It nails the exact tone you're describing. The Ibanez and Blackheart tube amps are also in your price range but they won't get you the high gain tones you're looking for, not even with a TS7 in front of them.

The 20W head would be great, the 20W combo would be much greater. In my country there isn't any Jet City amps running around, so I'll need some luck finding them. But if tonewise they are future proof, I'll invest more in the first amp project

[bluelife]

@Hink
Sure you are right (I refer to your long post), but go to a shop and try it.
I had a MesBoogie too once:)

We started the band just for fun, so I wasn't looking to invest a 1000 or anything in an amp, that's why I chose the Fender.
All the Tubeamps available upto 300 were only 5 Watt which wouldn't be enough for gigs.

@Uncle E - yes, but it's the only video I found where you can actually listen to some of the patches. The compression could come from YouTube.

cheers

Richard

[robogone]

@Uncle E - yes, but it's the only video I found where you can actually listen to some of the patches. The compression could come from YouTube

There's quite a few around, and some on the Vox site, but I just get the feeling that what I'm hearing on the videos is not what I'd hear if it was played through a PA or decent sized cab.

[bluelife]

No, it's not, you could go to a shop and try it, cu

[robogone]

No, it's not, you could go to a shop and try it, cu

That's probably what I'll do. Just have to find some time to go somewhere and try one.

It's still good to get opinion from someone who owns one, I just don't trust what I hear in videos on the web.

[Dean Aka Nekro]

When dealing with ultra-high gain for metal, personally I prefer a warmer, dirtier distorted sound versus the wellknown fuzzy rectifier one I always find when watching demos of Mesa amps.

You've got to try the Jet City JCA20, which are $224 for the head and $269 for the combo. It nails the exact tone you're describing. The Ibanez and Blackheart tube amps are also in your price range but they won't get you the high gain tones you're looking for, not even with a TS7 in front of them.

You put a Maxon OD808 infront of a MK IV and then say it doesn't do it for ya?
You must be mad

[Hink]

@Hink
Sure you are right (I refer to your long post), but go to a shop and try it.
I had a MesBoogie too once:)

We started the band just for fun, so I wasn't looking to invest a 1000 or anything in an amp, that's why I chose the Fender.
All the Tubeamps available upto 300 were only 5 Watt which wouldn't be enough for gigs.

@Uncle E - yes, but it's the only video I found where you can actually listen to some of the patches. The compression could come from YouTube.

cheers

Richard

Hi Richard, I probably wont be trying it but I'll take your word for it. While I agree 5 watts is a little light I want to point out that judging volume by wattage is very misleading. For instance the difference between a 50 watt and 100 watt head is only slightly noticed...it is not twice as loud and a 5 watt amp would be perceived as half as loud as a 50 watt amp.

Now tubes compress basically and they do so much better than solidstate amps do which is why a tube amp with the same rating sounds much louder than a solid state amp. So that 5 watt amp might a lot louder than you think. The advantage to this and why I said 'being on two drowns out the drummer' wasn't really a good thing in my opinion is because how tube amps clip at higher volumes where solidstate doesn't.

So instead of the same sound louder like you would get by cranking up the frontman a tube amp is going to noticeably sound better, not just louder. FWIW for many years I believed that I liked pumping my 'tone' up louder without changing it was better. My main rig then was a celestion loaded 4x12 wired at 4 ohms and split for stereo. Driving that was my Marshall 9000 tube pre-amp and a CS-400 (400 watt) solidstate power amp. In hindsight my insisting this was the best way was a matter of economics and not reality...a tube power amp was just too expensive

sorry for my long posts

[bluelife]

Hi Hink, thanks for the info, but I knew that already:) I've been playing for 30 years:)
I bought the cheapo Fender because we wanted just to play Rockabilly at the beginning = just clean; now we've decided to do other stuff too, like Creep and Under The Bridge, so I bought the Tonelab for the distortion.
The band is just for fun, so I didn't want to spend too much, but needed a bit of volume,

cheers then

Richard