Getting a new AMP tonight.. need suggestions

[Ron's Brother]

I have 1100 bucks; no more. I will consider new or used.

a few things. I will be playing mostly blues and alt rock (think wilco). no metal of any kind, ever. I don't need a super loud amp but I do gig monthly so it needs to be able to fill small bars. It also needs to be able to get over a drummer during practices. somewhere over 15 less then 100 watts is where I am guessing i'd liek to be. I was using a Marshall MG solid state then tried the spider IV head with a Marshall 4X12 but I was not happy with either.

I won't need mega distortion, but I would like to have two channels if possible and reverb. although I would like two channels, it is not mandatory. i would like to also avoid something that is way way heavy.

Suggest away!

[ott0bot]

Personally, I'd look for a used late 60's - mid 70's Fender Deluxe Reverb. I own a 73 princeton reverb, and I found that to be perfect for practices and recording, but needed a little more power when playing live. The Deluxe is just a bit more juice and works perfect live, buts it great at home too. I'm lucky enought to have a band memeber with 2, so he loans his out to me sometimes. Best sounding tone and reverb I've ever heard, and perfectly suited for your type of music.

Also, I'm a huge fan of the older Ampeg combo amps. Traynors are pretty rad too and great for the money. I used to play through a Mark III, and that had great tone and verb as well.

[Ron's Brother]

Personally, I'd look for a used late 60's - mid 70's Fender Deluxe Reverb. I own a 73 princeton reverb, and I found that to be perfect for practices and recording, but needed a little more power when playing live. The Deluxe is just a bit more juice and works perfect live, buts it great at home too. I'm lucky enought to have a band memeber with 2, so he loans his out to me sometimes. Best sounding tone and reverb I've ever heard, and perfectly suited for your type of music.

Also, I'm a huge fan of the older Ampeg combo amps. Traynors are pretty rad too and great for the money. I used to play through a Mark III, and that had great tone and verb as well.

how is the weight? is it about as heavy as a twin? I've been looking at maybe getting the princeton or deluxe. The twin was just way to heavy. i've used a buddies twin at practice and like it. I just didn't want to bring it to gigs all the time.

[Nate Dort]

Ampeg VT-22. Way heavy though.

Those Peavey Delta Blues and Classic 30s are decent for the money too.

I've got a Laney VC30 2x10 that I love the sound of. Avoid the 2x12 version as the stock speakers are crap.

Oh, I forgot about old MusicMan combos. Those things are fun too.

[CedarSound]

Personally, I'd look for a used late 60's - mid 70's Fender Deluxe Reverb.

+1

The guitarist in my last band has a 77 Deluxe Reverb. It's my favorite amp ever.. I believe it's had a few mods along the way.

Heavier than a lot of modern amps, but nowhere near a twin..those things will hurt your back if you gig a lot...sound great though.

I own the 1 X 12 version of the Laney VC 30. I also like it. The stock speaker is kinda spikey, but since I put a Warehouse speaker in it, it is sounding niice... Kinda between a Vox and a Fender.

[darjama]

+1 for a laney vc30, one guy I played with had one and put a weber alnico blue dog in there, which sounded amazing. he had to do some major surgery (moving where the tubes sat in the chassis) to make it fit though.

EL84 tubes and a good 12" "blue" style alnico speaker, what more could you ask for?

[daveg62]

I'd look used if i were you.
Maybe a suhr badger, or a bogner shiva if you're lucky to find one at that price.
Mesa tremoverb or Lonestar might be worth looking at.

Great site to search here:
http://instrument.jaxed.com/cgi-bin/music.cgi

[ott0bot]

Personally, I'd look for a used late 60's - mid 70's Fender Deluxe Reverb. I own a 73 princeton reverb, and I found that to be perfect for practices and recording, but needed a little more power when playing live. The Deluxe is just a bit more juice and works perfect live, buts it great at home too. I'm lucky enought to have a band memeber with 2, so he loans his out to me sometimes. Best sounding tone and reverb I've ever heard, and perfectly suited for your type of music.

Also, I'm a huge fan of the older Ampeg combo amps. Traynors are pretty rad too and great for the money. I used to play through a Mark III, and that had great tone and verb as well.

how is the weight? is it about as heavy as a twin? I've been looking at maybe getting the princeton or deluxe. The twin was just way to heavy. i've used a buddies twin at practice and like it. I just didn't want to bring it to gigs all the time.

The princeton is like half the weight of the twin (maybe less), and it travels well as long as you get those clips that keep the tubes in the socket. Only a couple dollars each and worth every penny. Mine has a 12" speaker put in to replace the stock 10", which is super common. It's a vintage fender speaker as well.

The deluxe is a little bigger and heaver than than the princeton, but not much. It's still nearly half the weight of a twin. But it gets loud, and doesn't need to be mic'd when playing with a decent hitting drummer. My drummer played with brushes mostly, so the princeton did ok, but definately needed micing on shows with a bit more rock'n going on.

[donny]

any silverface fender would do the job and sound much better than any current amp, the champ series are too small, the princeton and deluxe are fairly small and break up more easily (could be good or bad, depending on what you're looking for) but they are also higher in price than twins. twins go for much less because they are heavy and never break up. there are a few 50 watt ones, i think they are called "pro reverb" (like a twin but half the wattage?), and a vibrolux (?) reverb, which i think was a 2-10", which would probably be just right for your situation. super reverbs are 45 or 50 watts, 4-10" ... probably a good choice too.

best deal is usually a twin, you can find em all over craigslist etc for like $600-$700 ... your gonna pay several hundred more for a deluxe or princeton, probably somewhere between for the 50 watters.

[???????]

You say you have $1100 to spend, and no more. In that case, I strongly encourage you to consider hidden costs and opportunity costs, and depreciation as well as actual retail costs.

Hidden costs include future maintenance and repairs. Opportunity cost considers the hit you will take from having an amp that does NOT appreciate in value (as many vintage amps will), but will rather depreciate, causing you to take a hit on resale. Even if you feel you will never sell the amp, you must consider this, because shit happens.

Let's focus on hidden costs first. Someone mentioned the Peavey Delta Blues and Classic 30, and people very often buy the Fender Hot Rod or Blues series which are similarly inspired. These amps all have a common problem-- their cheap initial price is more than offset by the fact that they are constructed with only one goal in mind: maximizing initial profitability and price/performance ratio.

They do this by making assembly as expedient as possible, and that is the sole guiding principle of design. In other words, they're made with the same ethos as DVD players, televisions, home stereo receivers, etc. This ethos includes PCB-mounting components whenever possible, using inexpensive parts, and designing for wholesale replacement of entire circuit boards, rather than individual components. They're made to be replaced, not repaired, in other words.

Taking the Fender Hot Rod amps as an example: they have PCB mounted jacks, pots, and tube sockets. This is all a recipe for failure-- each time a cable is plugged or unplugged, or a tube changed, it will flex the solder joints, eventually cracking them. If a power tube shorts, it will often take out a large circuit board with it-- whole board will need to be replaced. If you have just one capacitor fail, you'll have to disconnect ribbon cables and lift a couple of boards just to get to the one component you need to replace. This is lots of bench time at an expensive tech. The jacks are made of plastic and are PCB-mounted and they break constantly.

Now if you treat your amp like you would treat a Blu-Ray player-- hook everything up once and leave it in one place for pretty much its entire life-- this can be OK. However, if you're using it professionally in the field, I wouldn't trust its reliability-- you'll save on the front end and pay more on the back end from repairs and maintenance.

The 1955 Fender price list lists a Twin-Amp (tweed) at $279.50. Adjusted for inflation using the Government's inflation calculator, that is equivalent to $2,281 of purchasing power in today's dollars. I show that to illustrate that there is NO such thing as a free lunch with gear. Quality gear has always been expensive on the front end-- but that 1955 tweed Twin is still running today, has required infrequent and inexpensive repairs, and is worth MUCH more than $2,281. Know what I mean?

That old amp (and most older amps up through silverface years) has top-loaded components that can be replaced one at a time without lifting any board. They have tube sockets, pots, jacks, and switches that are mounted to the metal panels of the amp and connected with actual WIRE to the internal electronics. The tech can get in and out and do most anything for an hour of bench time. The individual parts quality is higher, too.

Now vintage amps are not without their OWN hidden costs-- if one has not had its power supply re-capped in the last 15 years or so, you better plan on doing that. But a nice Silverface Deluxe Reverb can be had for 900 or less. That allows for a cap job and you're still under budget-- and the amp will likely run trouble free (with occasional tubes, maybe) for another 20+ years. To get an amp made similarly today would cost you twice as much, easily.

Just my 2 cents.

There is no free lunch. A classic 30 is cheap now, but after the first trip to the tech--and the tech has to lift 3 boards and mess with a bunch of ribbon cables etc for hours--you've paid enough to have had a nicer amp.

[roscoenyc]

New tube amp with 2 channels, reverb and tremolo,
40 watts, 2 10" Jensess and classic Fender Tube Amp sound?

Fender Custom Vibrolux

[losthighway]

If you like Wilco get a Vox AC30, that's the Jeff Tweedy amp.

I think a lot of the Fender suggestion are coming from a pretty good sound. The thing to watch out for on the Twin is it's a very distinct flavor, and you have to be sure you love it- cause it's not quite as versatile. Twins always have this bright, crispy, almost compressed sound to them. There is this specific way that old Fenders break up, and few other amps do it, but the Fender can only do it. It's almost more like a fuzz to me than a normal overdrive sound, but not exactly.

I have been in love with my combination of a Traynor YBA-3 and a 2x12 with Celesition V30's for many years. I only recently switched to playing some gigs with a Fender Blues Jr. to try and lighten my load. I also love it, but my Traynor does this singing creamy mids thing that nothing else can. It's like a darker guitar sound, but still really articulate. Perfect with my SG.

The other question you want to ask yourself is how in to pedals are you, especially boost/ od pedals. If you have a hotter guitar and like to get dynamics out of boost pedals, you're gonna want something with a lot of head room.

Ampeg Gemini's are also very cool.

[???????]

The thing to watch out for on the Twin is it's a very distinct flavor, and you have to be sure you love it- cause it's not quite as versatile. Twins always have this bright, crispy, almost compressed sound to them.

Bright? Sometimes. Crispy? maybe if they're set up a certain way, with JBLs.

Compressed? I disagree from my experience. I find that the Twin has the most dynamic range of almost any Fender amp ever made. Very stiff power supply, solid-state rectifier, and tons of power on tap... it doesn't really compress at all, in my experience, relative to other tube amps.

[kslight]

I'd buy a good used Fender and find a tech to recap and replace tubes (probably around $150 to $200 if you have someone else do it). I don't feel you need a vintage model to sound good and avoid depreciating value. If you get a good deal on one from the 90s or whatever it probably is done depreciating... The comments about amps with PCBs being designed to be replaced rather than repaired is just silly... A decent Fender tube amp will last decades if you maintain it, and guess what the maintenance would be the same for a vintage model...caps, tubes, and parts that are mechanical like tube sockets and jacks and switches will always wear eventually.

I think you can get a lot of amp on the used market for your budget...even with maintenance. If you want reverb any of the above recommendations are fine, and I also think a Peavey Classic 30 is great for cheap. I picked up a 1990 Fender Bassman 59 RI for $400 almost 2 years ago...I replaced tubes and caps and jacks, and added a bias trimmer...but after that it's a great amp that I play everything
through for recording...guitar, bass, keys.... I get lots of compliments on it's tone from my tech and pro artists..

[vvv]

I totally messed up when I found my (now resigned) guitar player's amp for him - I shoulda bought it.

A Mesa Boogie Heartbreaker. If you know what you are doing, you can get any sound outta that amp for recording, and many sounds for playing live. It has various output power options, 2 channels, reverb, built like a battle-tank and looks cool, also.

Used, US$700.00: I'm now heartbroken I didn't just buy it and loan it to him.