Okay, here's where I am. I'm on a budget of no more than $1300 and I've narrowed my search down to a few choices. First though, it would be prudent to outline what I plan to use it for. I need an amp that can do beautiful cleans, that "edge of breakup" blues tone, a good classic rock tone, and thrash metal tones. I'm absolutely not interested in playing any kind of drop C type of stuff. When I say metal, I mean Priest, Megadeth, Metallica, Slayer, Ratt, Accept, Alice in Chains (even though they're not purely metal). Classic rock means anything from Rush to Slash. Do I expect to get an exact replication of all of those tones? Of course not. I have a Line 6 M13 that my brother sold me for $200, so I can cover a lot of extra bases with that.
I guess if I were to score each type of sound according to its importance to me, it'd be something like this:
Cleans: 7
Blues: 6
Metal: 9
Classic rock: 7
So here what I'm looking at right now:
Mark III
Mark IV
Express 5:50 212
DC-5
F50
To anyone with experience with those amps, which one would you recommend and why? Is there another model I'm perhaps missing? I'm not really interested in anything with EL-84s, unless you think you can talk me into it.
I guess if I were to score each type of sound according to its importance to me, it'd be something like this:
Cleans: 7
Blues: 6
Metal: 9
Classic rock: 7
So here what I'm looking at right now:
Mark III
Mark IV
Express 5:50 212
DC-5
F50
To anyone with experience with those amps, which one would you recommend and why? Is there another model I'm perhaps missing? I'm not really interested in anything with EL-84s, unless you think you can talk me into it.