Chugga-Chugga said:That leaves me with getting a tube amp or a really really good modeler. My concern with modelers is that they'll make every guitar sound the same. A friend of mine has a Line 6 Spider III 1x12. He has a Strat and an Epiphone LP and they sound essentially the same. As an experiment we plugged my bass into it and I hit an E power chord across the A, D, & G strings and it didn't sound much different. I don't want that, I want to hear differences between the guitars I use. I *think* the Spider amp models are based on the original POD or POD 2.0, so that's pretty old technology.
Geiri said:Dude
if you are set on a solid state then so be it. But if you want a tube amp an ENGL screamer is a bargain. 50 watts tube power, 4 channels and is simple the best amp on the market for the price. I'm a boogie dude myself but I also own a screamer because I find the engl tone equally addictive.
mk5 $ 2000
engl screamer $ 1300.
You do the math.
ando said:Chugga-Chugga said:That leaves me with getting a tube amp or a really really good modeler. My concern with modelers is that they'll make every guitar sound the same. A friend of mine has a Line 6 Spider III 1x12. He has a Strat and an Epiphone LP and they sound essentially the same. As an experiment we plugged my bass into it and I hit an E power chord across the A, D, & G strings and it didn't sound much different. I don't want that, I want to hear differences between the guitars I use. I *think* the Spider amp models are based on the original POD or POD 2.0, so that's pretty old technology.
Yep, Line 6 is rubbish.
Cleekster said:ando said:Chugga-Chugga said:That leaves me with getting a tube amp or a really really good modeler. My concern with modelers is that they'll make every guitar sound the same. A friend of mine has a Line 6 Spider III 1x12. He has a Strat and an Epiphone LP and they sound essentially the same. As an experiment we plugged my bass into it and I hit an E power chord across the A, D, & G strings and it didn't sound much different. I don't want that, I want to hear differences between the guitars I use. I *think* the Spider amp models are based on the original POD or POD 2.0, so that's pretty old technology.
Yep, Line 6 is rubbish.
NO....Line 6 spiders are rubbish.............my ax2 212 through my mesa cab sounds quite good consideringit's a modeler and the Vetta II is vast improvement over that....Honestly my rect-o-verb doesn't really sound ANY BETTER to my ears at extremely low volumes so in the OP's situation i would go with my modeler EVERYTIME.
Chugga-Chugga said:Thanks for the additional replies guys, I appreciate it. The majority of tube amps out there have way more power than I'd ever use, there's no question about that. I'd never even get close to power tube distortion. That being said, since I'd barely be pushing the power section in the first place, would it really matter if I got a 5 watt amp or a 100 watt amp???
Just as an example, if I'm 'using' 1 watt of an amp's power, on a 5 watt amp that'd be 20% (1/5) while on a 100 watt amp it'd only be 1% (1/100). There'd obviously be less clean headroom on the 5 watter, but since I'd never use all of it anyway does it even make a difference? If it does make a difference, I could always use use THD Yellowjackets to reduce the power of a higher wattage amp down to something more reasonable, as was suggested early on in the thread.
Price isn't a huge factor, but I'm not going to go nuts and spend $4-5k on something. The major consideration is getting a great tone, and I appreciate the amp suggestions all of you have made. $775 is great deal for that ENGL Thunder head, but the 5-6 clips I saw of it on YouTube all sounded like ***. I'm sure it sounds much better in person. That houseofenglamps.com website seems to be blowing out all of the ENGL stuff. No returns or exchanges either... I wonder what's up with that?
Keep talkin'....
Edit - another question: I know Mesa makes a low wattage stereo tube power amp, the 20/20. Are there any other low wattage models out there from other manufacturers, either stereo or mono?
Absolutely!Turumbar82 said:5 watts tube pushed is surprisingly loud.
Yes, I realize that, but what I'm saying is, since it wouldn't be getting pushed in the first place, would it make a difference regardless of what wattage amp I used? If you think of reaching power tube distortion the same as hitting the red line on a car, imagine you have 2 cars, one with a 5000 rpm red line and another with a 9000 rpm red line, and you're driving along at 3000 rpms. If you know you'll never exceed 3500 rpms, does it make a difference?If you did have a 5 watt amp you would be able to push the power section a lot easier than a 100 watter.
I need my palm-muted chug, so in that respect preamp gain is where it's at for me. I'd also like a really good EVH 'brown sound.' Also a SRV bluesy breakup sound. I'm not hyper critical about my cleans, but I'd want them to be good, of course. I don't know if that's asking too much from one amp or not. I'm not a fan of pedals, so I'd like to avoid that if possible.What kind of music do you play? Is power tube saturation important to you? Most modern music relies on preamp gain rather than power tube distortion.
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